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Results 61 - 90 of 582
3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
61. Re: Turning Cork
Another option is use of an 18” hand clamp (under $10 at Harbor Freight) to clamp glued rings mounted onto a mandrel. Drill an appropriately sized hole through the brace on the end of the bar, and a shallow dimple on the handle brace. Glue and mount the rings onto the mandrel, manually pressing them together. Add a cushion cork ring on each end (I also add an oversized metal washer on the ends).
Forum: rodboard 3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
“Generation 4 smooths easily”
Jon, I’ve worked with regular and lite build Gen 4 epoxy and think your words explain how it levels perfectly. That, and how it releases bubbles, have convinced me to use Gen 4 going forward.
Forum: rodboard 3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Works for me. Was able to add a variety of sizes to my cart.
Forum: rodboard 3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
CTS doesn’t get a lot of mentions over on the fiberglass forum, but I am very pleased with the 804-3 Quartz I built two years ago. A few days ago I fished Tricos, then later terrestrials, with it. The rod made delicate, accurate presentations and I was fortunate enough to land some sizable trout.
Jeff
Forum: rodboard 3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
“Another source of blank to blank varability of the same model may very likely be due to differences in blank sanding.”
When it was time for my son to move up to a better fly rod we visited a local shop (managed by a friend) to order a #&%@ brand blank. When I picked up the blank, I became alarmed by the extremely fine tip. The same blank in a finished OEM rod in the shop wasn’t as thin.
Forum: rodboard 3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
“smooth", "fast", "light", "lively", "quick", "soulful", "powerful", "satisfying" on a lawn or parking lot may not translate to pleasure/performance when presenting flies to a trout. Our individual trout settings and casting styles certainly come into play as well.
Of all the adjectives thrown around the one that gets m
Forum: rodboard 3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
I realize changing thread epoxy brands can be daunting, kind of like changing from briefs to boxers. You know everything is going to be OK, but you’re still concerned.....
Andy Dear’s regular build Gen4 thread epoxy is already on the market, and recently I had a chance to test his Lite formula side-by-side with my current Lite formula epoxy. The bubble release of Gen4 Lite outperformed my epo
Forum: rodboard 3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
68. Re: U-40 Resin
Hello David, Don’t forget to leave the lid off the bottle when you microwave the resin. I would add that doing three five second bursts, checking the resin in between, might avoid overheating the resin.
Forum: rodboard 3 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Stan, rewrapping the stripping guide will take some time. But that amount of time is nothing when compared to how long you’ll look back and wonder why you didn’t go back and install the winding check. It sounds like you did a great job of selecting complimentary components for this rod. It deserves to be built out as originally designed.
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Thanks everyone, I’m looking forward to this product being available to the market, especially a lite formulation. Working on a rod right now and would love to give this new product a try.
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Does anyone know if GEN4 will be a proprietary product of Bingham Enterprises?
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Titebond III is also my adhesive choice when gluing up cork rings. TB III is applied to each ring before sliding onto either my 1/4” or 3/8” steel mandrel. The mandrel is then mounted into a hand clamp and pressure applied. The mandrel is then immediately slid out of the rings, taken to a wash basin, washed with soap and very hot water, and dried thoroughly.
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
One thing to consider is reducing the butt section diameter by inserting a stint into the butt section. On a recent fiberglass build I was able to reduce the butt diameter from .452 to .400. Around three inches of the butt section was removed and a section of fiberglass blank was inserted/bonded into the butt (similar taper). Made a large difference considering that I wanted to mount a wood reel
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Michael, as you enter into rod building you’ll find there are “must have” tools and materials. Power wrappers and dryers aren’t on that list. Very fine fishing rods can be assembled with very basic rod wrapping stands, and epoxy can be leveled/cured by manually rotating the rod - 180 degrees every so many seconds/minutes. Your time will be well spent learning and practicing the basic steps in rod
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
In rod building we sometimes use our lathes to turn items like reel seat inserts and cork grips – often on steel mandrels. Those of us who have been around for a while remember the late Mike Barklay’s lathe accident. He was turning something on a steel mandrel, and the mandrel worked itself to the left and deeper into this lathe chuck. The other end of the mandrel lost contact with the live cente
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
20-25 years ago I purchased a variety of spools of what Rice labeled as "two-tone" nylon thread (essentially Jasper). The thread was nice and fine, perfect on bamboo. Unfortunately, my attempts to locate NOS of their thread failed. Though I have been able to locate some Gudebrod Jasper thread in a couple colors, it doesn't compare to the rice thread.
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Yes, but does this company want to do well? An equally important question - is this company willing to do what it will take to succeed? These are fundamental business questions many failed businesses never took the time to ask themselves.
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
I’ll second Donald’s recommendation to use a stint to downsize the butt diameter. In my cases I’ve used either fiberglass or graphite rod blank sections for the stint. You really don’t want to thin down your wood insert by the amount you mention. Wood has pent up energy and may crack even if you’re very careful while reaming the insert ID.
Jeff
Forum: rodboard 4 years ago
Jeff Shafer
79. Re: Clean up
Hello Dondi,
Some builders, including myself, use paste epoxy for assemblies that you describe. For the most part these epoxies don’t run, so they shouldn’t re-emerge once you’ve cleaned up. Regarding how much epoxy to apply, minimize the amount you use. To do so, do some dry fitting of the components. As you do imagine just where you need the epoxy for a secure bond. For example, when I epo
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Howard, update your email address and I’ll contact you offline.
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
82. Re: Nylon thread
For wraps that will have varnish applied to them, threads like Sulky polyneon haven't been a problem for me. And on a recent build I wanted some wide, embedded accent bands in one of the Sulky colors I had on hand. Prior to wrapping these bands I used alcohol to strip out the lubricants from a couple yards of thread. Epoxy applications over these bands showed no evidence of the thread repelling t
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
"After five years use, it sure was not a manufacturing defect! As bad as the break is, I'm surprised you didn't notice it when it happened!"
I didn't detect anything when it separated. Undaunted, I slid the broken piece off the line and presented a tan caddis to a rising trout. Line slipped easily through the last snake guide as the trout made a run for it.
Tip sections are availa
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
My guess was that I didn’t detect stabbing an obstruction in the brush. I’d pretty much ruled out crushing, and it was unlikely the tip section was twisted (though the twisting breakage pictures in RodMaker looked closest to the damage incurred). Sometimes the brain fails to function properly when charging to a pool with rising trout.....
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Before posting about this rod failure I ordered and received Volume 12 – Issue 6 of RodMaker magazine. I was hoping to see a fracture similar to one I encountered recently on a fly rod. This is a rod that has been in use for around five years – my favorite five weight. It was an evening where I’d landed a couple trout, made several additional fly presentations, then moved to another location on t
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
My decision would depend upon the length of the rod. I was in a similar situation with a no-name 8'6" rod that wasn't fun to cast, and a 9'0" Shakespeare that was in a condition similar to yours. For both rods I stripped everything and only used the blank sections and original agate stripping guides to build shorter rods that I've enjoyed fishing. Blasphemy according to some.
Changin
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Chris, sounds like our building styles are similar. I used color preserver on a couple rods in the mid 80’s, then found I preferred the deep glisten of nylon wraps without color preserver.
The action angle on my MHX was 69, so pretty quick. But not nearly as fast as the super high AA’s, and ERN’s, of the Dan Craft Five River blanks from a few years ago. I purposely built a 9’ 2wt so I could c
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Chris, thank you for your detailed reply. I'll be in touch with Mudhole or MHX regarding a new tip section, but you just may have talked me into a new rod as well - hoping the Native isn't much faster than the original. The ERN on my 905-4 blank came in at 5.20, and I've been fishing it with a peach DT5F line. I loved the way it loaded and yet it was capable of casting short amounts of line off
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
My MHX 905-4 fly rod has been my favorite large stream/small river fly rod for several years. Now that I broke the tip section I’m thinking about my options. If I can obtain a replacement tip section I’ll rebuild, but even if I rebuild I’m also considering building another MHX rod in the same configuration.
I’m looking for someone who has fished this original 9’ 5wt, and has also fished the sa
Forum: rodboard 6 years ago
Jeff Shafer
Popular opinion is to bond the reel seat on, then bond the butt cap in place later. Dating back to when I purchased previously assembled reel seats for fly rods, I've always assembled and bonded all parts of the reel seat in advance of mounting onto the butt of the blank. Naturally, I always ensure that when assembled the butt of the blank will bottom out in the reel seat.
Jeff
Forum: rodboard |