Michael.’s setup is next level stuff. That track system would suit my setup very well; I tend to slide my wrapper about depending on what I’m doing and the rail setup would be perfect. I’ve come to the conclusion you cannot have too much slat wall and I wish I had covered a much larger area. The rod dryer.... Ugh...stand up bench. Just all very nice.
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I am afflicted with the no upload button even though I am logged in. I have logged in to the photo side from multiple computers and my ipad but always the same result. More or less over it but thought I'd ring in
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Ross Pearson Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sometimes customers ask for impractical or even > impossible products to build for them. This may be > one of those situations. I would think a 13-14 > foot center pin rod comes the closest to what is > possible in this case (long drift rod). Maybe this > could be presented as the best available
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Norman Miller Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > B’n’M rod are a mainstay down here in the > South for crappie fishing. They are actually a > very good buy and hold up surprisingly well. I > modify a bunch of them every year. They do make a > trolling models of 16’, 18’ , and 20’ > > /products/pstlong > Norm Thanks for this Norm.
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Mark Talmo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Bob, > I am not sure if this may be of help, but if > length is your main concern, B&M > > has some pretty dang long crappie poles (16ft, > maybe longer). I don’t think they sell blanks > but the “poles” have no guides, just some type > of clip on the tip. While these are low-budget
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roger wilson Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Bob, > Actually, there are a lot of drifting setups that > use 15-25 foot drifting length. > Often, these are relatively short rods that are on > the ends of 10-20 foot extensions to have the > line at the desired distance from the boat. > > For example - a trolling boom: > &
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Spencer Phipps Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'd want everything specified in writing, signed, > money down. Spey rods would be my first point of > interest. Good advice... NFC has a 15 foot 10 wt spey but it's 3 feet short hahaha. I thought maybe I could buy two blanks and cut the bottom three feet off one and stent it to the main blank as a
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Les, Im not actually sure now what the intermediate guide size is. I thought it was a #3 snake but am second guessing it now. I've been kind of operating under a self imposed restriction of 6wt and up gets two "ringed" guides, and 5 wt and down get just the stripping guide plus appropriately sized snakes. Bob, this is rattling my brain trying to remember what the recipe was for my 5
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Hey all, Someone has asked me if I could build and 18 foot drift rod. Kind of out of my wheelhouse as most of my builds have been fly rods and some casters (one 10 foot mooching rod). But I kind of figure, in many ways, as rod is a rod is a rod as far as the build itself goes. I am kind of intrigued. I'd like to do some research on such a rod but straight off it seems blanks that long are a ra
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Omg a little at Tom's bench...very nice. This little studio space is approaching 1 year old. I'm happy to have it and it's more or less my happy place. I use two rolling heavy drawers I salvaged from my work place when we did some renos and if I had to do it again I would build such drawers because basically they are awesome I am waiting on the flex coat 4 rod dryer to mou
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You don't ream out the stents. The stents are glued into the butt of the blank using arbors and epoxy much the same as you would use gluing up a reel seat or a grip onto the blank. In the picture, on the white 8 wt blank you can actually see the arbors thru the blank. They just reduce the blank diameter to give the flexibility when shopping reel seats. A matter of semantics around here but the
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I built on two iconoglass last winter, an 8 wt and a 5 wt. I used stents on both of these and they worked out fine. I got the hardware for the builds, including the stents, from proof fly fishing. I used one stent and wasn't happy with how heavy they were and used a section of an old carbon fiber blank for the other rod. But the stents allow you to run whatever reel seat you like. This seems
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Norman, I should revisit the method you describe actually. I always worry about not being able to snug the wrap but one thing that is very disheartening is accidently cutting the wrap instead of just the tag.
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For my own casting rods I measure from the center of my palm to my elbow and subtract 1 to 2 inches. So my rods end up 10 or 11 inches from center of the palmed reel to the end of the fighting butt or rear grip. This length allows me to trap the butt between my forearm and my ribs if required also.
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One thing you might try that I have been doing for awhile is to pull on only one leg of the pull thru loop. I found that when I pulled both legs the loop tended to bunch up just as it pulled tight against the wraps. I find pulling one leg the bunching does not occur and I mostly can keep pulling the one leg to complete the pull thru. I think the one leg moving across the thread as it pulls the ta
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This may not be the case but I ran into a spool of thread a few weeks back (fishhawk i think?) in size a that broke immediately when I tried to use it alongside the fuji size a. Not sure if that was normal or what but I turfed it straight away. I tried it a few times thinking it may have been the first couple of feet on the spool but a soon as I applied any tension it broke.
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Thanks Mark, getting close to it being a done deal. Still have to source a decent rod tube for it but one more coat on the guides, a decal or two and a final coat on the base wrap and it's a wrap. no pun. Hadn't really planned to but after I got the last guide wrapped I found myself setting up for epoxy so decided to just let myself go at it... It's funny what the ca
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Lee Wulff, One of his videos showed him climbing out of a little bush plane and he grabbed his 6 footer out of the back and it afforded some good views of the rod. I freeze framed so many shots from that video haha. obsessing over the grip and trying to get a feel for the guides n such. I found his lifelong commitment and died in the woolness inspiring. As he and his companion share a shore of th
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Thanks Scott, Awesome with a capital "A" no less haha. I think it is something I would for sure like to do. If for no other reason than to creep the building challenges. People build such amazing things. I've been obsessed with various pursuits in the past, custom bikes, leatherwork, woodworking, audiophile things, guns...I'm always amazed that no matter the interest there is so
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Thanks all for the kind words, It is a really fun little rod. Until I built this i hadn't touched a fly rod since i was a teen and even then did not exactly learn much about casting. So I more or less learned to cast on this rod. Joan Wulff made a comment during an interview that Lee taught her to cast the 6 foot rod using an oval cast. Eventually I managed to get the hang of it kinda sorta.
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Hi Les, I really noticed the flow thing standing way back and looking at it, imagining I was watching someone else run the rod and noting how the rod and the line more or less would draw the same arc. t was kind of funny as when I did the layout this time all my mock guides were out towards the tip and I took 5 of them of to mid span then ran them towards the reel seat. Then I took what I tho
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I rerigged the layout with 11 guides. I think I like it and am going to run it. I was struck by how well the line flowed and feel the difference between 10 and 11 was low level dramatic and my feel is the added weight is more than mitigated by the improved flow. I may be leaning towards being an extra guide kinda guy... So.....on to wrapping the guides....
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I have built on this blank. I built what I called a grayling rod for my wife. I paired it with a zebco spincaster and she really likes the rod but one thing we / she did notice is that the action is a little slow (the rod is firm?) and unless she is right on top of watching the slack, the fish will flip off the hook. She has gotten used to it but initially she found it frustrating as the rod did
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Have been thinking about sharing a previous build. This is the 6th and last rod I built during the winter of 2021. I had stumbled on a site that was selling blanks that were acquired by buying out the blank stock on hand in 1982 when an Abu Garcia / Conolon rod factory was shut down. I bought a casting blank, two light casting kits, and a 6 foot 6 wt blank that they were able to discern matche
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Thanks El, I'm excited to get the guide wraps happening also. I think the layout looks ok? It's sort of subtle. I think I am going to try the layout again with 11 guides just to compare. I think I like this approach though. In the past I have spent quite a bit of time trying to find guide layout information for a given blank when the reality is that the blank itself is waiting to tell you the opt
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Thanks Darwin, I've often been called out on overthinking in a general sense but am also familiar with how unforgiving hindsight can be so I try to do my overthinking on the front end. It seems the epoxy thing is coming together and while I have been making changes to my technique in application which have been resulting in a better end result but it still seems like it's an accident somehow.
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I like the color stick idea, and the tweezers is something I hadn't considered. I've been randomly dabbing at the dander and such with a thread pick and hoping the debris will get caught up in the surface tension of the epoxy. I spend a fair bit of time looking at different wraps on the internet and am always struck how such wonderful combinations of color and components can also be quite simple
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Second coat...
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Tom Kirkman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Action is progressive. Even fast action rods will > bend all the way back into the butt area as you > put more and more load on them. So the arc the rod > forms with a slight load is not going to be the > same arc it forms as the load increases. The > article I linked to in the library explains t
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I haven't looked that closely but this site seems to provide patterns for weaves and such? I ran away from it as quickly as I stumbled onto it but it jumped in my head when I saw your thread. Good luck,
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