Here is one of many sources for 1/16th inch wide masking tape: or This tape is wonderful to use when attaching micros or any other size guides for that matter. Plenty of room to get several wraps on the guide after taping the micro in place on the short guide foot. Just don't touch the end of the tape with your fingers when applying the tape to the blank. Otherwise the skin o
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Josh, If you don't have one, do yourself a favor and get a color wheel. The use of a good color wheel makes color matches and contrasts much easier. REW
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Dean, Prep all of the guides. It just makes a much better job and it makes the guides much easier to wrap. I wouldn't use any adhesive of any kind when wrapping rods. Just something to get in the wrong place and cause an issue. Lots of methods to easily secure the guides with little hassle. The easiest thing to do is to simply use thin ( 1/16th inch wide masking tape. Don't touch th
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Yep!! Roger
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I agree with Joe, I would also go with a size 6 tip. Just lots fewer issues, if you use a bit bigger tip with most lines and terminal tackle. Good luck REW
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Steve, As one of the other posters suggested, you may have received a bad spool of thread. I have used many many spools of thread and have only run across a couple of spools. I did have the bad luck to get a nice rod wrapped with the bad spool I was able to use the razor blade, knock down the fuzzies, and recoast with no issue. Then, I threw the thread in the garbage. Take your current sp
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Ben, I have been using the minima 4 for a lot of builds and generally have been well pleased wiht the results. With respect to the tip, I would likely use a size 4 tip of the appropriate ring size. I always wrap my tips, so in this case, I would put a layer of wrap starting at the tip and going down an inch to an inch and a half. If you use size A thread, the thickness of the thread is abou
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Steve, If you have nubbies sticking up from the finish, I use a single edged razor blade, held nearly perpendicular to the finish and scrap the nubbies off of the finish. Just be careful to not go through the finish or you will cut into the thread. I find that the razor blade is easier to control to knock down the nubs, rather than using sand paper. Good luck Roger
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You can do an internet search to find the bands in all sizes down to very very small. You can also get them off of the big @#$%& site. Roger
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Ed, I like to give them at least three days of nice warm drying. Roger
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Larry, Simplify Any time that I do a 2 piece 7 foot rod, I just put the first guide about 3 inches below the splice, then put the rest of the guides on the 2nd half. Seldom do you need more than one guide on the butt section of a rod of this length. REW
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Greg, Actually, you are right on. I have seen too many rods, where the reel seat has been trimmed too close and there are issues in installing and removing the reel. Too many folks will select a reel, trim the reel seat to exactly fit that particular reel. Then, 6 months, a year, or 5 years down the road, a person wants to install a different reel with a different length reel foot and it
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Dave, If you don't have a selection of guide sizes on hand, it is not a bad idea to pick up a full set of inexpensive guides ranging from size 50 down to size 3. That way, when you need to run tests you will have the guides on hand to do tests before you make your final decision. Good luck Roger
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Peter, Actually, you are about the only one that will notice whether the tip is a size 6 or a size 7. Do you really think the extra work and result is worth the effort? Roger
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If you happen to have a bulk spool of th read and a stand alone tension device, and don't want to respool thread to a smaller spool, the following thread stand is a nice thing to use to hold the thread and allow the thread to spool nicely off of th e top of the spool: I had run out of thread a while ago, purchased a bulk spool of thread and had respooled a small spool to fit on my tensio
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Bruce, I have built many rods with the Fugi Graphite arbors, before the poly arbors became available. Since the poly arbors have come availabile, I have used virtually none of the fuji arbors. I have some identical rods, built with either the fuji graphite arbors, and some with the newer poly arbors. I can feel 0 difference in sensitivity between the two arbors. I really think that as lo
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Greg, Sorry for the misunderstanding. If this is a ball bearing, just take the bearing to a bearing supply house and have them supply the necessary bearings. Any good bearing house will be able to supply literally any bearing that you might have - you may have to have it special ordered, but they will be able to get it for you. I know that in my area, there are numberous bearing supply
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John, This might be a good time to simply update the rod. Strip the guides, tie on new guides of a more modern design and go enjoy the rod. Good luck Roger
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Jeff, Just go with a good crank bait rod, and it will work very well for use as a lead core trolling rod. This rod would be a good candidate for a spiral wrap as well. In this case, It is really more important to tailor the rod to the line, than to the weight of the lure. The weight of the line is what the rod is going to have to work with. The weight of the lure is just incidental. Most f
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Peter, Just get the size tip that will fit on the end of the rod. If the tip happens to be size 7 or 8 - so be it. It will have 0 effect on the castability or the usablility of the rod, and you will have a nice strong tip section. With muskie rods, the tip is very important for the long term durablity of the rod. Many many of the musky builders around here will use only silicon carbide guides
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Pedro, Many many rods are built every day that use only one size handle ID - for example a 1/2 inch or 5/8 th inch. Then an arbor of some construction is used to make up the difference between the cork grip internal diameter and the OD of the blank. The material may be poly, graphite, wood, masking tape, cardobard, fiberglass tape or some other material. Expecially in the production rod
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Greg, In the pac bay catalog, the roller is listed as part # RW-roller. Another source for rollers: Or you can go with a plain bearing, and simply put an O ring on the outside of the bearing for blank protection: I have built a bunch of rod rests, using skate board wheel ball bearings. These are high quality bearings at very inexpensive prices. For a wrapper, which doesn't s
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Jonathan, Yes, folks do it all of the time. If you do remove material from a guide foot, just do it in such a way that the main guide strength is not compromised. I do all of my guide foot prep on a 1 inch wide belt sander with about a 150 grit sanding belt on the sander. I adjust the sander so that the vertical belt is sitting sideways to me. Then , it is easy to thin the thickness
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Eric, St. Croix has some new excellent Muskie blanks out now and work very very well. Take care REW
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Jason, There is a 50 /50 chance that the finish will go away when you remove the decal. If so, just finish the rod in a different fashion. Certainly there will be no structural damage to the blank, but you may have to do a different finish in the area. If I have something similar happen to me, I simply cover the area with a thread wrap and move on. Good luck REW
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Bruce, I have used both, but the remaining graphite arbors that I have stay in the strorage bag. The issue is the difficulty in working with the graphite arbors. These arbors are much much harder than the poly arbors, ream and machine much harder as well. I don't know that there is any advantage at all to the use of the graphite arbors, and the polly arbors are simply much much more user frie
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Over the years lots of both retailers got stuck with merchandise that was not actually defective, but actually damaged by the user. The user ended up with new merchandise, and someone else got stuck with the user issues. As a result more and more manufacturers and retailers both - will simply do not returns, unless they have an RMA number from the manufacturer. The net result is that the real
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Tom, Do a trial wrap o fthe rod with this setup, and then suspend a 5 gallon of water from the tip of the rod to get a nice deep bend on the rod, and see how the line follows - or touches the rod. My guess is that your setup is about right. I had a 9 foot predator heavy muskie blank in my hand this morning and I wasn't kidding when I suggested that you use a 5 gallon of water to load the blan
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On a lathe, I simply use my Kitsmo knife that I picked up at a sportsmans show years and years ago. It is a thin bladed serrated edged blade that makes quick work of EVA as well as other handle materials. (If you use any type blade, you want one with either very very fine teeth, or a knife with no teeth at all. You want to avoid chunking out pieces of the handle. Also, an abrasive cutting wheel m
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