Ditto. I use a solution of Simple Green and water. I soak metal parts in it overnight. It will affect plastic but only if you soak the plastic for a long time (hours). When I need to clean something like a reel handle, I will put a coating of Vaseline on the plastic knobs before I soak it. This totally protects it.
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I take a bunch of fine cork dust saved from the final stages of cork sanding and mix it with some Duco cement or Piobond until it has the consistency of peanut butter. I add a little bit of white poster paint to the mix until the color is about the same shade as the cork on the grip. Then I jam it into the pits on the cork leaving a slightly raised bump. For larger pits I put a little bit of c
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Tim, My personal opinion is you should use spinning reels to cast the lighter weights, say under 1/3 oz. When you're at the lower end of the baitcasting reel lure weight range, a lot depends on the air resistance of the lure. A texas-rigged plastic worm with a bullet weight will be less troublesome to cast than a Jitterbug, even if they are both the same weight. There may be super high-tech
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This method has worked for me and I recommend it if you only have an occassional need to use thin rings. First get a coping saw and slice each ring roughly in half with the saw. Then take a block of wood and sink a hole in it the same diameter as the ring and with a depth equal to the thickness of the rings you want to make. Put a cut ring in the hole with the smooth side down and the rough c
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I built and use the cork drilling jig that Tom referred to in his post. Frankly, I just set it up by eye. I usually have to enlarge the holes with a reamer after they are drilled. During this reaming step I try to correct for any obvious off center drilling I may have done. It usually comes out pretty well, meaning there is probably less than 1/16" offset between any two adjacent rings.
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steve clark Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > . . . Rob, have you found > anything even remotely resembling a suitable sub > for HobbyPoxy ? > > No I haven't. I still have enough left for a couple more rods. When that's done I may switch back to varnish for freshwater rods and then start looking at other epoxies for saltwater. Whatever
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I base my choice of whether or not to use CP partly on whether or not I will be using a trim wrap. With a trim wrap, the ends tucked under the main wrap will show through if you don't use CP. (Because the wrap becomes translucent.) Maybe someone has found a way around this, but I never have.
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I've used HobbyPoxy for many years (no longer available). This stuff gives me something close to varnish in the appearance, yet has the durability of epoxy. I use four thin coats, same as I do with varnish. I like the look of a well-made varnished wrap. I try to get away from the "football" look that I see alot nowadays, like on Winston rods for example.
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The 99 series was the predecessor of the Manchester rods, i.e., a cosmetically lower grade of cane and usually made with only 1 tip. I believe "99" name refers to the fact that they were introduced in 1955, the year of Orvis' 99th anniversary. They are well made rods. The main reason that Orvis rods bring a lower price than some other makers is that there were so many made, and the
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There are a couple of things you can do. First, email Orvis with the serial number. They will tell you exactly when it was made and which Orvis builder made it. There is a site where you can get more information, but I don't know if it's permissable to post links here so I will hold off on that until I hear otherwise. Based on the 23xxx serial number, I can tell you that it was made sometime
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What you are seeing is normal for that type of ferrule. It is intended that when the ferrule wears from use, the part of the male ferrule that is exposed will start to be inserted more into the female ferrule so that a good fit is maintained..
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Yes - denatured, as stated above. Any hardware store would have it.
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I also use surgical tubing. Just snip it into sections that are about 1/8" wide.
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The weight of lead sinkers is not very accurate. Most tend to be a little lighter than their marked weight. When I got my scale, I put ten pennies on the scale and got a weight for the group of ten. Pennies minted after 1996 that are in fairly good condition have a well known weight (see the Common Cents System). I used this measurement to judge the accuracy of my Harbor Freight scale. I do
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I also have the scale that Harbor Freight sells. I find it pretty accurate and easy to use.
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Patrick Marshall Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ... and I'll > certainly get a sylk line for this rod and give'r > a whirl at the local lake. You might want to rethink the Sylk line idea if you're planning to use it for warmwater fishing. The Sylk lines tend to stick in the guides. They are intended strictly for coldwater. My personal choice
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The first place I would look is in the book "Fiberglass Fly Rods", by Johnson & Johnson. If I remember, I will look it up for you when I get home.
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I asked this same question here a couple of years ago. There were no brook trout decals then, and as far as I know, there are still none. Big oversight on the part of the decal makers.
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I use three or four coats of finish over CP. I use HobbyPoxy, which is no longer available but I have enough to last me awhile. I like the wraps to look close to what you would get with several coats of varnish. I don't care for the football-shaped wraps so I like to use several thin coats.
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When I bought a tip-top gauge several years ago, I went through all my spare stock of tip tops and found many of them to be mislabeled. The bottom line is it's tough to get the right fit unless you have several sizes on hand. The same is true of nickle-silver winding checks. As a builder that just builds rods for myself, I've always found this to be extremely annoying. It adds to the cost of
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As the others have said, there are pros and cons to both. I two-piece rod will have excellent performance as long as it is made on a quality blank. The downside is that the ferrule joint will occassionaly loosen up and you have to be in the habit of checking it now and then. When you are fishing a one-piece rod you can just forget about that. The real answer is to have some of both types or r
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Ditto on the previous two posts. Solid glass blanks are pretty tough. I wouldn't worry too much about damaging the blank. The citrus type paint removers would probably work as well. Depending on what you have and what color you're putting over it, just painting over the old finish might work out just fine.
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Jeffrey, I recently got a Jet Mini-Lathe which is very similar to your PSI model. I have not used mine for any rodbuilding tasks yet, but I can tell you that most of these lathes do not come already equipped with what you'll need for rodbuilding. They come with what you'd use to turn a spindle of wood. You'll neet to get chucks, which are not particularly cheap. I believe I paid about $36
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I shape my grips using only sandpaper. Get some really coarse stuff for the initial shaping, then go down to progressively finer grades. Cutting tools don't really work well on cork.
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Yes. What Allen said. You have to sort of pull on the motor assembly to switch the belt from one pulley to the other, which I always thought was kind of weird.
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I'll put my two cents in here and say that as a beginner, you should not be thinking about a power wrapper. I think it's important to learn good hand wrapping techniques first. If all you build are freshwater rods and/or fly rods, you may never need a power wrapper. A power wrapper is nice to have for long underwraps on saltwater rods, which would be monotonous (but not impossible) to wrap by
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There is a book by Michael Sinclair about restoring old bamboo rods that is considered the standard reference for doing that. Unfortunately, this book has gone out of print. While it was reasonably -priced just a few years ago, the typical price for it is now ridiculously high. If you can manage to locate a copy and it's a good deal, I wouldn't pass it up. There is also this guy named Bambo
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Personally I haven't had much trouble myself. I use the internet to place many of my orders these days. Mostly I'm dealing with outfits that I've dealt with for a decade or two before the internet. With all the choices that are out there, I would drop anyone that didn't give me good service.
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Thanks John. I went to to Landmark's web site. Sounds like what I'm looking for. They had no prices listed. Do they sell direct?
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I've always founds this to be a deficiency in the rodbuilding supply market. Specifically, the ability of builders to make their own custom-sized rod tube by buying the tubes and end caps separately and cutting the tube down to the exact size needed. When building say a multi-piece travel rod, you would like the tube to be as short as possible. That is after all, the purpose of having a multi-
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