My guess is you'll be fine, Chris. I used a Pac Bay A8 seat on a 10 weight, and it's worked well. The A8 and A9 reel seats are very similar except for the fact that the A9 is bigger, and I think that for a 12wt using the bigger seat might be warranted. The A9 and A8 seats are about $14 and $17 respectively, which is probably not a whole lot considering the total investment you're likely putti
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Though I'm not far removed from newbie-ness, I don't mind the newbie questions. For one, as Fred says, it gives folks a chance to introduce themselves to the board. And secondly, it allows those of us who have not been at this for 30 years to try to help other rodbuilders, the way others have helped us. I don't have a ton of experience -- two years or so and about a 15 or so rods -- but I like to
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I vastly prefer two-piece fly rods, and I've noticed the trend away from 2-piece and toward 4-piece, so this is an issue I've been quietly asking about for the past six months or so. What I've found in my wholly unscientific study is that yes, fly rods and blanks are going to 4-piece, and 2-piece rods are becoming scarcer, because they are what fly fishermen want. What I found curious about th
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I love the experimenting people do when building rods. Using vegetable oil on cork makes sense to me, as cork is really a wood, and there are many applications where oiling wood creates a beautiful finish. I just refinished an old table by sanding and applying about 100 coats of tung oil, and the old thing looks great. I don't see why you couldn't do something similar with a cork grip. I perso
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Not usually. The cork tape that is used for fishing rods is designed for that use, and is thicker (I believe) than the stuff that goes on bicycle handle bars. But thinking about it now, I'd bet that good bicycle handlebar tape would work very well on a fishing rod. The stuff on my road bike would feel great in the hand, though I'm not sure how durable it would be. I have seen a few rods with grip
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Jesster, post more info about how you'll be using it (reel, how and where you'll be fishing it, target species, etc.) and I'll try to help. I'll leave suggestions on guides to those here who are more experienced than me, but two things that I wish I had known about when I built my first surf rod are: A) use a plate-style reel seat. Or at least consider one. I will probably never build another
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Here's what I suggest: - build a rod that will be used for a type of fishing you're very familiar with. If you've never been fly fishing before, a fly rod is probably not the best project for your first rod. Start with what you know. - Be patient. My biggest mistakes in the beginning were almost invariably because I tried to go too fast. This is an understandable impulse -- you want to
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Al, what kind of surf rods are you rebuilding? I have a surf rod fetish, but I've never seen a surf rod that went right from reel seat to blank. There's always a grip on either side; the length (and type) of the grip is determined by the type of rod it is. A spinning surf rod, for example, usually has a long rear grip and a very short foregrip, as when using a spinning reel, the hand is normally
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Thanks for the feedback, guys. I've long heard so many good things about Rainshadow blanks that I'm eager to give it a shot. I was hoping that someone had built a plugging rod on this blank -- and maybe someone will still chime in -- but I'm 99% sure I'm going to order it.
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I did a search and couldn't find this exact topic, but I apologize if this question has been asked before. I'm looking to build a surf plugging rod, and am going to give a Rainshadow blank a try. I'll be using a Penn Slammer 460 with 30 lb. braid to throw artificials, both on open beaches and in more sheltered backwaters. Though at times I'll throw lures ranging from an ounce or so up to 3 1/
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I always wrap up to and over the end of the tip top, because I tend to use my equipment pretty hard, and to me the extra durability is worth the extra hassle of redoing the thread wrap when I need to replace a tip top. I don't go nuts wrapping the tip top - depending on the size of the rod, I'll only wrap about an eighth to a quarter of an inch of the top's tube - but I do want the thread and epo
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I build all my rods with cork tape, Tom, and it's really pretty easy and forgiving to use. Just resist the urge to hurry, and take your time and work slowly and deliberately, and your results should be fine. There are some good suggestions above, but I've always used the following as ends for cork tape: -- rear grip: Butt cap (over cork tape) on butt end, EVA surf grip on fore end -- f
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Let's hope the guys from the mainstream press don't blow it, as I've seen done more than once. A few weeks ago, for example, a regional (Northeast) weekly fishing magazine did a two-part series on building your own custom rod, and after reading a few sentences it became glaringly obvious to me that the guy who wrote the article knew as much about building a custom fishing rod as I know about
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Yeah, I've been using a modified version of the instructions as well, one similar to yours, Ralph. Do a guides-on-top static test to determine the position of the first two butt-most guides, then rotate everything but the butt guide to the bottom of the rod, add a bumper guide, and do another static distribution test, this time like a spinning rod, to determine the position of all the guides on t
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Justin, I think I understand your question. With the hope of getting some more responses, I'l try to clarify: 1. You need a gimbal on the rod because you'll be using it in a kayak. When you're paddling, the rod will be in a rod holder, and you need the gimbal to keep the rod in the holder while you're moving. 2. When you catch a fish, you will not be using a belt, and consequently you don
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It shows you how much thought I've put into this, Tim (virtually none), that I wasn't even aware of Batson's spey blanks, which by the way look very nice, and are certainly priced right. And I also thought you could use regular fly reels on a spey rod. I know that they sell reels that are specifically designed for two-handed rods, but I thought that any large-arbor type reel would do the job.
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From my limited anecdotal experience, I agree with Tom -- interest in spey rods for saltwater fishing, while still relatively small, is growing. The one big obstacle spey rods/blanks will need to overcome to gain wider acceptance is price. I know quite a few saltwater fly rodders, and many of them would love to add a spey rod to their aresenal, especially for fishing open beaches with high su
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I use E for wrapping plate style reel seats, and I know that Mudhole has Gudebrod E thead in at least black, and perhaps more colors. Update: I just checked their website, and they have 100 yard spools in dozens and dozens of colors, at only $2.25 per spool.
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Dave, I'm not as experienced as most guys here, but even still I have seen blanks with tips both smaller and bigger than what's listed in the catalog. Evidently this is a natural result of the way blanks are manufactured (I asked the question a while ago, check out this thread: ). What someone suggested to me then, and has worked well since, is anytime you order a blank and top together, tell
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I did some more searching on the board, and found posts stating that: A) the ferrule wraps are meant to reinforce the end of the female ferrule, and therefore to prevent splits. B) Breakage at the ferrule is usually caused by overloading the rod, and a ferrule wrap is too little defense against the kind of overloading that will result in breakage. So another question (I must be Mister
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This is interesting to me. I think that you're right, Patrick, and the fact that I haven't had a problem with the ferrules (while tossing as much as 12 ounces of lead) proves, at least to some extent, that multi-piece rods can perform well without ferrule wraps. I'm going to wait and see if this thread generated any more responses, especially from some of the fellas who work with rod manufact
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Boy, it seems like at least once a day I'm reminded of what a moron I am, and today is certainly no exception. I've been killing the last few minutes of my workday perusing the board, and an idea, and a question, popped into my head, something that I had totally missed previously. When I see threads about wrapping ferrules, I invariably think that their purpose is primarily cosmetic, but also
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I am a fervent believer in spiral rods, but in following these kinds of debates from a safe distance I have a couple of conclusions/thoughts: 1) Spiral Wrapped rods are inherently more stable than guides-on-top rods. 2) If you build two rods that are identical, except one is a a spiral and the other guides-on-top, you will notice a difference. The difference gets larger the heavier-duty the
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I second Jim's recommendation of the Penn Slammer, under one condition (see below). The Slammer is all-metal, handles braid great, is very simple, and the parts are very readily available, and is easy to work on. If I can work on a reel, it must be easy, because I'm not exactly the most technically adept person in the world. I have Penn Slammer 460s on both of my surf plugging rod, and they both
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That's what I thought you meant, Bill, that you paid $XX.XX for an item, and got a much better product than you would expect to get for that price. Maybe Chuck read it a different way -- I know that I've done the same thing a million times.
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What's helped me get my mind around prepping guide feet is keeping it simple. When I look at a guide, I picture it (before it's wrapped) as though it's sitting, wrapped, on the blank. What I want to accomplish with filing and grinding is: A) Make sure that the foot sits as perfectly on the blank as possible. That means that the entire foot, from one end to the other, sits absolutely flat on th
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I also highly recommend Black Dog. Joe is great to deal with, and the products are superb. I built two saltwater fly rods (an 8-weight and a 10-weight) last winter, both from Black Dog blanks and components, and have had more than a few people ask me if I could build one for them -- they turned out that good. And I don't even sell rods; I just build them for myself. It's good stuff.
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Brian, first of all, don't be too hard on yourself. Your first rod looks better than my tenth. Second, I won't be able to improve on the advice above, but I will pass on one tip that has worked well for me. Go to a costume shop and pick up a couple of bottles of black nail polish (you can try to find it in a beauty supply store, but they usually don't carry black). After you're done grinding
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For whatever my 2 cents is worth, and excluding heavy offshore stuff, like tuna rods (I don't know anything about them), I don't think that underwraps are "necessary," on any rod, at least from a performance-while-fishing standpoint. Your rod will perform as well or better (probably better) without underwraps. Having said that, though, I use underwraps quite a bit. Why, then, if the
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Robert, this is a subject near and dear to my heart, as chasing the striped one from the beaches of New Jersey is just about my favorite thing in the whole world to do. But please note that the following information pertains only to fishing for stripers from land -- boat fishing is a whole separate endeavor, and one that I frankly know little about. It's difficult to answer your question with
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