Be careful, man -- you can waste a lot more time figuring out decorative rope wraps than you can figuring out thread wraps. The cord stuff looks fantastic when it's finished, but it takes a looooooonnnng time to do.
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You can use this as a teaching moment: start blind (i.e. not knowing anything about the blank) and, through wiggling, testing, casting, and otherwise screwing around with this blank, figure out its tendencies, and then use that information to determine what kind of rod the blank was meant to be. Anyone can copy information from a blank catalog, but learning to "read" blank performan
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Bill, what kind of fishing are you looking to do? What Alvey reel is it? I want to say that it's probably the 650c5, as that's the reel that weighs closest to 3 lbs., but you didn't say for sure. I ask because I've built a bunch of Alvey rods, and have found that a lot of the stuff that Alvey recommends is not necessarily so. Take length, for example: I'm assuming that you're looking for a 15-
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I don't know very much about fly rods this heavy, but It would seem to me that one of the primary concerns with most other fly rods -- weight -- wouldn't be quite so important, and that, to me anyway, would seem to be a factor in favor of ceramic guides. When you're fishing for billfish on the fly, the method that I've read about most often is that the fish is brought near the back of the boa
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Are you sure you can't find a 3 or 4 piece steelhead blank that will work for you? I ask because while you can get a fly blank to work as a light spinning rod, the action of the typical fly blank is so much softer (i.e. slower) than the typical spinning blank that most guys, when they try a spinning rod built on a fly blank, hate them. I know that was the case with me. This action may be what
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The power ratings will drive you crazy. Take a "Medium" power freshwater bass blank, and compare it to a "medium" surf blank, and you'll see that these two blanks, both labeled "medium," don't even belong in the same ZIP code. The ratings are somewhat useful when you are at least a bit familiar with one or more blanks in a particular series. If there are six blan
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I do what Bill and Gabe do. I have no idea whether an arbor is any more "sensitive" than mesh tape. But there's one very good reason why I use arbors: gluing up mesh tape makes an ungodly mess; I can't seem to do it without getting epoxy all over everything. With arbors, it's a piece of cake. I recently replaced a reel seat, as a matter of fact: I removed a plate reel seat and in
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Definitely try to find another builder or two to share cabfare, Bill: the cab ride to and from the airport for me last year was surprisingly expensive. I was thrilled when I got a plane ticket from Philly to Greensboro for about $100, and then groaned when two cab rides back and forth to the airport cost almost that much. Also be careful about when you're arriving: I got to the airport late, abou
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Ah, you're learning of one of the miseries that plagues builders of surf plugging rods. I use size 6 running guides for a lot of my surf builds. I do this because when nothing is going through the guides but the fishing line, you can go really, really small with the guides, and reap a pretty significant weight savings (it's the old micro guide argument). And this kind of setup works great, wi
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Do a test run on a scrap piece of cord first: not all types of nylon will absorb any kind of finish. Some will repel anything you try to put on there. If the type of cord you have does accept finish, then you probably do want to apply something, because if the cord will absorb the finish, then it will absorb water and fish guts, too, and the grip will eventually smell. PermaGloss is the absol
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Double-foot snake fly guides have worked as hook keepers for me. They're much more durable than the stuff that's marketed/designed for use as a hook keeper.
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If your brother hates it, it should take you about 10 minutes to sell it for what you paid for components. A serviceable saltwater fly rod for fifty or seventy-five bucks? Guys will shove each other out of the way for one, and the fact that it's a custom makes it an even better deal. Saltwater fly fishing equipment is, generally speaking, pretty expensive, with even the budget rods costing over $
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These make great backup fly rods. I have 8-weight and 10-weight Sevier/Tiger Eye fly rods, and love them both. For $20 or $30, how can you go wrong, especially when it's so easy to spend $300 or more on a saltwater fly blank?
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The type of blank matters a lot here. One of the reasons many builders, including me, prefer the O'Quinn spiral method for surf rods is that conventional surf rods, in both plugging and bait slinging varieties, are usually used with blanks on the heavy side (i.e. meat sticks), and the butt sections of these blanks are very stout, and bend very little under anything less than an extreme load.
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Thanks for the reply, Bob - I apprecite it. I've learned that Fuji has evidently discontinued the HV guides, and that they will be going the way of the dodo soon. The K guides, they feel, make the HVs obsolete. I don't know that I agree with that, but I guess I'm going to have to find a way to live with it.
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I was perusing my favorite online fishing catalog (OK, it was Mudhole) when I noticed that virtually no HV guides were listed: no Hardloy, no Alconite, no SiC, nothing (there was a single HVSG guide available, in size 25, but that hardly counts). So I browsed over Anglers Resource, and they have no HV guides listed in their catalog, either. A brief search on a few other online retailers showed
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Thanks, guys. Lami 1221 it is. I've seen this blank, and was hoping someone who's used it would chime in (thanks, Clyde). It looks good, but I'm always wary of Lami's blank ratings. Cheers.
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1) The choke guide should be the same size for your running guides. For you, this would be an 8. 2) The running guide placement, like all things in the NGC article, is a suggestion, a way to get you started. If you want to make your spacing progressive, then by all means do it. The NGC is not a straightjacket - you can vary from it if you want, if you think doing so will result in a better-pe
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Does anyone know if there's a true 10-foot, 8-10 + bait heaver blank out there? There are lots of heavy surf blanks in this power class out there, but every one I've found is 12 feet and up, and I'm looking for something in the 10 - 10.5 range, and I can't find a single one. I would be open to the idea of cutting something, but only if someone else has tried it before (my few pathetic forays
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I'm just starting to dabble in decorative wraps, and I would be thrilled if my first one looked half as good as that.
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I just got back from the hardware store after a regrettably frequent occurrence: I went to finish a couple of cord wraps, only to find that my trusty can of Minwax Helmsman was not sealed correctly the last time I used it, and instead of a pint and a half of liquid goodness, I was greeted with a solid block of hardened urethane that would require a jackhammer to get out of the can. So I went
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What reel are you using, Tom? I ask because I've built quite a few setups that are very similar to what it seems like you're doing. I have three or four rods that are essentially 3-8 bait rods, all of which have Alvey reels. I went through a fair amount of trial and error when learning to configure Alvey rods, and what I went through might save you from going down a few blind alleys. The reel
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Does he want a Tsunami, or does he want something that's similar to a rod he knows and likes? I ask because while Tsunamis are decent budget factory rods, you can do way, way, way better with a custom. He may just be telling you this because the Tsunami is all he knows. If you get into detail with how he fishes, why he likes this Tsunami, you should be able to find a blank that's much better
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There's an old music joke: the world is divided into two people: fans of , and those who haven't heard them yet. I mention this because as you'll see from the posts above, cord deservedly has many fans as a grip material on surf rods. Most guys who try it love it. I'm tempted to say that there are two kinds of people: those who love cord grips on surf rods, and those who haven't tried them yet.
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I love it, man! i just built my daughter, who's 3, her first fishing rod. It's a light-duty saltwater back-bay rod, 6 feet long, and intended for fluke and other assorted back-bay fish that tend to be on the small size. And, of course, it's pink. She even picked out her own reel - a Penn 109 (aka "knuckle buster") at a flea market this spring. These are pretty powerful little re
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I use it over cord grips on surf rods, and hard as a rock is right: my cord grips, when cured, are absolutely bulletproof. I love this method on grips - they hold up to saltwater, fish slime, sand, being banged against jetty rocks, pilings, my mother-in-law's head, etc. Some guys don't like these grips - they're a blah off-white color, and not very aesthetically beautiful to look at; they're also
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A lot of guys intentionally use a tip with a larger ring than the running guides. They do this because the ring in the tip top sits closer to the blank than the rings in the guides do, and therefore the larger-ringed top lines up better with the rings in the running guides. If I were in your situation, I'd use the 7-7.5 top and not think twice about it. You might even grow to like this setup bett
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This is just personal preference, Joe, but I hate umbrella rigs as much as I hate the New York Yankees. I know they work, but dragging all that junk through the water seems kinda unsportsmanlike to me. You should give Stretches a shot. They're not that expensive (around $11 a pop for the Stretch 25), they're easy to use (ready to be rigged right out of the box), and, when the conditions are r
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Joe, I'm probably the worst guy in the world to ask - I'm a surf guy who builds boat rods for fun (my brother has a boat), and because I like trying new stuff. I'm using a Penn 225LD that I bought used (I don't know why they don't make these anymore; it's a beautiful reel). It will be spooled with braid - I'm gonna ask my tackle guy what test he recommends (probably 50 lb). This outfit might
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You'll need to post more information for the guys here to help with spacing, but if I were building this rod, I'd use American Tackle's Virtus Lites for the guides. They are absolutely perfect for medium to heavy surf casting rods. If you have the money to be able to afford them, take a look at them - I've become a big fan of them on these kinds of surf rods.
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