I've been dealing with Angler's for over 15 years and I don't recall having ever been dissatisfied. Everyone I 've ever dealt with there is helpful, courteous and professional. There's a board full of excellent sponsors here and I appreciate all of them but Angler's is certainly among the very best. Sam Stoner
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Frank I've found several that I'm happy with on @#$%& for not much money. There's a demand for the larger skins as display items and they're often used for certain leather craft items too such as belts and hat bands. The larger ones cost more due to the demand. I've managed to find shorter, inexpensive pieces that are of little value for making belts and larger leather items but are quite sui
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Thanks Spencer, I appreicate the information. Mark, the OD of the reel seat should be +/- 5/8" (0.65) so I'm thinking the ID of the slide ring will need to be a little over 3/4" or about .80" to allow the slide band to slip over the foot of the fly reel. Sam Stoner
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I'm assembling components to build a 1 weight fly rod. My objective is to keep everything as light as possible and for that I intend to turn my grip and reel seat both from cork. I'm looking for 2 annodized black slide rings to complete the reel seat. I can find cap and ring hardware, jewlery grade nickel silver slide bands, complete reel seats or grip kits from our sponsors but I'm looking for
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Usually when glueing cork rings together we try to have the glue lines appear the least visable in the finished grip. For cosmetic reasons, I would like to have the glue lines on a particular grip be very evident and dyed to compliement the colors in the wraps and the tone of the grip material. I would be interested to know what pigments or other coloring methods someone may have used that prev
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Brent, In my opinion, the Dan Craft blanks are superior to the Loomis line of blanks of comparable price. I'm not saying that Dan Craft blanks are always better than any Loomis blank, just the ones whose cost is nearly equal. That's my opinion, someone else my offer a dissenting view; I just think that Dan Craft offers an excellent quality blank at attractive prices. For the type of fishin
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Dan Craft Ent. (link on the left in the column of site sponsors). Most of his blanks are priced just a bit higher than you've mentioned in your post but not by a great deal. You will be challenged to find a better blank at such a modest price. Brand loyalty is an interesting and curious thing to me and we all have our brand preferences among the many things we buy and I guess we all get caugh
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Scott You actually hit on something with you feather inlay that you can use to good effect. As you've noticed, when you place a feather on a background that contains the same color as portions of the feather, they become undistinguishable from each other, creating the illusion that sections of the feather have disappeared. This "shadowing" can be used to create a very attractive inla
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Royce I second what Mike said about trying it on a scrap piece of blank or dowell first just to get a feel for it. One more thing to keep in mind: even though the epoxy is allowed to thicken just a bit doesn't mean that the colors won't continue to blend and run together as the rod turns in the dryer. The colors will continue to run until the epoxy dries to the point where the blenind/swirling
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Darrell I generally also like to scale down my tackle to make it more interesting...up to a point. The only thing I would like to add is that fish mortality can also be a consideration. Large fish that are fought for extended periods on light tackle frequently die after they're released. Fish mortaility is increased during mid-summer when water temperatures are at their warmest. I know a lot o
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Nick If I'm understanding you correctly, you're ambition is to make a spinning rod out of a fly rod blank - that's do-able. I'm curious why you would want to use double foot snake guides on a spinning rod. Unless I'm not quite grasping the concept of what you're doing, I would think that light weight spinning guides would perform better than snake guides. I assume you're going to be using
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My experience is the same as Mike's. I've been using Decal Connection for several years and am a big fan. I've applied a good number of decals using Mirco-Sol and Micro-Set with excellent results and have never had a fish eye. I'm sorry to hear that you've had a problem but. from my experience, I think there was a contaminant of some type other than anything relating to the decal application that
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Billy, I hope this doesn't hijack your thread - it's not my intention. I think we're a lot alike with regard to developing uniqueness to our work. I can obsess over the "look" that I want to develop and can deliberate over it for days...maybe weeks. My goal is to present the buyer with a superior quality rod that is attractive and one-of-a-kind unique. I borrow some ideas from the ph
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Dean Good luck on doing this. I've done this a few times and it's tough to cover in an hour or so. I think there's the natural tendency to provide too much information and you will lose your audience that way. It's impossible to convey as much information as you have accumulated over a number of years of building rods and reading about building rods and then condense it into a 60 or 90 minute
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I built 9' 6 WT on an XMG50 that I use mosty for smallmouth bass and I'm extremely happy with it. It is a very fast blank. Terry mentioned that Lamiglas rarely gets mentioned among peoples' favoraites and that's true but I also have wondered why - they're among mine anyway. With regard to the small stream rods that Lamiglas produces, if we're talking about the Appalachian Trout rods - they
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When I first started using decals I had trouble. Like most things, I've gotten better with experience and I don't often have difficulty with them anymore. The best advice that I can give anyone on their first attempts is to what others have previously said - follow the directions - AND don't get in a hurry. Relax and be patient; give the Microsol and Microset plenty of time to work and don't be s
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Tim - I always place the hook around the metal legs of the stripping guide - never against the ring. I don't know that a barbless hook on a fly would do enough damage to fray a fly line (now that I think about it) but it's a habit I got unto when spin fishing and using monofilament line where it could be a danger and I've just continued the practice with the fly rod. Dan - I like your idea and
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I tend to do mine the same as the factory rods most of the time just because I like the way it looks. It's also a little easier to apply the epoxy when wrapped that way. I hope I don't wind up hi-jacking this thread because that isn't my intention, but I've found that I don't install many hookkeepers anymore simply because I don't use them. The leader is often longer that the length of the rod
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Garnet with gunmetal trim looks great. Rust with champagne (tan) look good too as do several colors of green.
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Just to reinforce...............I just finished a rod this week with exactly that combination - regular thread with U-40 Color Lok CP with Threadmaster epoxy over it. It turned out beautifully. No problems at all. Sam Stoner
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I buy the best components my customer can afford. If I'm making a rod specifically for someone, the starting point is what they want. Through the process we get to what they can afford to spend. That usually means making substitions and removing certain "extras" until we get to a point where they're satisfied with with the rod I can build for what they're able to spend with enough for m
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Tim I agree with you..............mostly. The manufacturer has a vested interest in his product being of value to his customer and has normally placed a great deal of expense and energy refining his product. If you follow the manufacturer's exact instructions it is difficult to go too far wrong. However, I've come to repsect the great collective creativity and ingenuity of the group on this b
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Tim That's the grip that I thought you meant and I have used it. There is a cork or plug produced from the rubberized material that you use to fill the hole used for the blank insertion. As Billy mentioned, you just sand it down a little bit to even the surface and hide the seam and you're done. Sam Stoner
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If you're decribing what I think you are, they install just like regular cork grips. You will need to ream the grip to fit the diameter of your blank and then just epoxy it in place. When you slide the grip down to the butt end of the rod you will want to slide the end of the grip past the end of the blank by 1/4" to 3/8" or so depending upon the type of rod you're building. You might w
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Bryon, If I'm correctly picturing in my mind how the fighting butt is attached, I would think you could use a heat gun or a hair dryer and avoid the water all together. I'm assuming that the fighting butt is inserted and bonded with epoxy into the skeleton of the reel seat. I think that if you could concentrate the flow of the hot from the hair dryer onto the metal piece, being careful not
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Joe, Thanks for your input - you've probably saved me about $20 bucks. The downside is that I'll have one less tale to tell. I have noticed though that my repertiore of repair skills gets better with each experiment gone wrong and each mistake. I'll need to mentally catalog this one without the aid of a bad experience to enhance my memory retention. Thanks again.
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Wylie, thanks fot your input. Ralph & Jim, the resins that I'm speaking of are the clear polyester casting resins that hobbyists typically use in conjuction with forming molds. I think of it as the material that is used to pour into molds over flowers, insects and such to create paperweights and knick-knacks; it gives the illusion that the item being showcased is suspended in a clear liquid.
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For those of you who may have some experience in dealing with this material............. Is it possible to mix a small quantity of this material and have it react in much the same way as finish epoxy or a varnish-type finish when it's applied in the same way? In other words, if I were to apply it with a spatula to an object that is turning at low RPM's in the same manner as a rod mounted in a
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I sometimes get a little euphoric and light-headed when I'm working on rods too; doesn't seem to matter which finish I'm using. The dizziness is gone when I wake up the next moring but there's sometimes a residual, persistent headache..........and here all this time I thought it was the bourbon. Sam Stoner
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I've used Both Flexcoat and U-40 ColorLok; no problem with either.
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