The spacing charts are fine to get started with. They will work fine. But in time you will want to learn how to space guides yourself so that you'll always be able to "do it on the fly" so to speak. It's not hard and you might even find it to be a lot of fun.
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My new issue of Rodmaker arrived at the PO this morning. Getting the special "gift" struck me to the point of realizing something that I never thought I would see in this hobby. I've been building rods a long long time and most of that time was spent without ever coming into contact with another custom rod builder. Once in a while I'd hear about one or see a business card in one of the
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If it isn't a craft then I'm not sure what it would be called. Simply calling it manufacturing or something like that wouldn't seem to fit with what most custom builders do. But I'm sure it would fit what some do if they're just copying factory rods.
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There is something badly wrong when a small, unsuccessful, struggling little rod building club is allowed to use our legal system to try and cause trouble for the one major entity that has done so much for our craft. What are they trying to do? Take away the things that have helped the craft so much in the hopes that everyone will be left having to join their silly little club? I have no doubt
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The photo page on this site is the largest rod photo page in the world. Try it here You will have to register there too and you can just use the same name and password you do here to make it easy to remember. I think the photo upload is pretty self explanatory but there are instructions listed above here on this forum for how to upload them. Your rod would make a great project if you're j
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Just in case somebody needs one and hasn't viewed the buy/sell page today-
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I've spent the past few days tinkering with more urethane foam core grips. I had been using the 8lb variety but wanted something lighter but not so light as the 4lb. I checked with the Mfg. and they said that the resin is the same for all and that the hardener is the difference and that I could mix them equally to get a 6lb variety. I tried it yesterday and it appears to have worked very well. No
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I have a 9 footer with a snapped tip section. The butt is perfect and has the three heavy white hard rubber grips. Don't know if they are the same size as what you have but if so they're yours. E-Mail me at williamcolby2003@yahoo.com and we'll get together on the measurements
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Very well put. I have built two fly rods with the carbon skin foam grips. One of the guys I built one for has brought me three of his other commercially made fly rods to have the grips replaced with these. These are Sage rods and have what I think is very nice cork. But he commented that he has better control with these and his arthritis doesn't seem to bother him as much because he can control
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I would suggest that you take a look at the websites of big name companies and take their use of the internet to heart. Good websites are not filled with text. They load quickly so the user doesn't get bored and go somewhere else. Be bold, be concise and make sure your contact information is EASY to find.
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I would like to throw this into the mix but only for beginners. Very often beginners get nervous over details that aren't very important at the early stages of custom rod building. The key is to get a rod or two built, catch some fish with it and get your confidence level up. I sometimes recommend that you copy your best factory made rod. Why not? You know it works and if you copy the handle and
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Once you put guides on the rod both the spine and the oscillation thing go out the window. The lever arm effect of the guides easily overcomes any spine effect so I don't bother with that. If you use the oscillation thing, put the tip top and few guides on there and you'll see that the rod will oscillate straight up and down with them due to the weight of them wanting to travel straight up and st
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I have successfully built ferrules for thin walled graphite blanks. Several of them have been ultralights. The thing to keep in mind and what I think Tom is saying is that you also want a thin walled flexible ferrule sleeve to match the thin walled flexible rod blank. You should not put a stiff thick walled ferrule sleeve on a soft thin walled blank. That would be asking for almost certain troubl
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Greatest number of articles in a single issue that I think I've ever seen. Lots of variety too. Really a good one.
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I watched Tom do this in person at his shop a few years ago. It seemed too simple but since then I have gone to that method along with the hand turning and now my finishes are better than ever.
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One is power and the other is length. Similar but different for similar but different reasons.
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P.S. I have now made and installed almost four hundred carbon skinned foam grips. That's two grips, usually a butt and a fore grip now on nearly two hundred rods. So you can take what I say with a voice of experience behind it. I'm not speculating on what I have just told you above. It comes from experience.
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You don't have to be worried about this if you heed the advice given in the article. I have been working with these types grips for over two years now and have installed many rear grips on surf rods. I knew some of my customers would be setting them in sand spikes and these are on very long rods up to thirteen feet long. That's a lot of leverage down at the butt end. I used the eight pound foam a
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Most of my stuff is for bass fishing, some light saltwater. St. Croix SCIV and American Tackle Matrix are the bulk of what I use for blanks. ONLY Fuji guides and seats. All cork grips, no more EVA or hypalon for me. Flex Coat is my go to finish. It just plains works every time, all the time.
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Steve Gardener's Hot Handle is one of the neatest ideas that I never thought of. So simple and obvious but over or under my head all these years. Steve if you keep this up you're going to be right up there with Rich Forhan for handle innovations! The tip about saltwater rod tip tops was great also. Who would've tought of doing that? Not supposed to mention these things I guess, but when the
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I didn't read the Rodmaker article like that. It didn't say anything about letting the epoxy sag and then removing anything, it was just a photo showing what happens when you apply too much at one time! At least that's how I read it.
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I don't want to turn this into a mere advertrisement, but there is hardly anything under the sun in rod building that you can't find detailed information, plans, instructions, etc., on in Rodmaker magazine. The cost of a subscription is likely far less than the cost of the pieces that many destroy in using hit or miss, trial and error methods. You can save a ton of time and trouble by already ha
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You are not doing anything wrong. My instructions never said that the line wouldn't rub against the blank between those first two guides. It said that in order to prevent that from happening you have to put a guide in-between those two, the Bumper. That's what it's there for, to keep the line off the blank. You could leave it off and just try casting that way, or for a Bumper bend a large ring
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There was something in the Rodmaker article on surf rods that has stuck with me. Put your rod together, naked with no seat or guides on it. Just take it outside and grasp it and go through the casting motion you use a few times. Really go through the motion several times. Now look at where your hands are. This is where the rod fits YOU. Mark that spot and build the rod around that point for your
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Charles, No matter what spiral system you use, you cannot go from one top to one bottom guide and have the line ride directly in the dead center bottom of either or both of them. That is impossible. Any spiral system, even those with many transition guides will have the line riding in different locations within those rings. Any time you change the axis from one guide to the other you make it impo
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It would still work but you might not get the long term weathering ability of the 207. I think that's the one they list as being for continued exposure to exterior elements. But I don't think a rod handle really needs 24/7 protection.
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If anyone in this topic were to announce that they were going to do a similar event I doubt anyone would believe them. And I doubt anyone out there could attract the attention that Tom has been able to. That's because by this point the rod building industry knows the level of thoroughness and quality associated with anything Tom does. If he says he's going to do something you not only know he's g
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I think most better custom builders have known for at least a few decades that good spinning rod casting depends on smaller rings and higher frames. The only question that remained was how small a ring could you actually use. Line isn't very large and the comments many fishermen make about how smaller rings choke the line or increase friction on the cast never seemed reasonable to me. Early artic
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You have a neat feature that locks the blank when you let go. I wanted to see more but each time I came by you had several guys you were demonstrating for. I should have come back on Sunday but family obligations limited me to just one day. I power wrap mostly now but if I was hand wrapping I'd say you have one heck of a nice tool going there.
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I want to throw something into the mix here. I build rods for tournament bass fishermen and they won't tolerate any rod that isn't an accurate casting tool. I discounted the "spine" many years ago and have never looked back. It's the most overated and uncessary part of rod building that has ever existed. It doesn't matter one whit. But there is something else to consider. We talk abo
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