Jeff, Good information: Roger
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Ron, I think your wifes suggestion is a very good one. i.e. sell 5 for every one that you will build. Look at the requirement to expand your abilities. If you sell 5 for every one that you will build, you will get to build many many rods in order to fish a bit. Take care Roger
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Dan, The very best way to learn to build a rod, is to go to a rod building class. Every person that starts building a rod, will make mistakes - no matter how many books, videos or other things that one studies and reads. By going to a class or a rod shop where a rod is built on site - under the watchful eye of an instructor, mistakes will be pointed out and taught how to correct the same mi
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|Joe, I aIssume that you have NOT epoxied the weight into the blank. If so, take off the butt cap and take out the weight. Then, without the butt cap, no weight and no reel - tell us what the finished rod weighs. I have to agree with the other posts in that anything much over about 5 ozs is on the heavy side. The fact that you have a 12 inch butt grip, just makes the rod better bal
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Owen, Toms advice it right on. But if you find that you have no other option except to repair it, you will not have any issues to make this into a one piece rod. If you were to repair the rod to make it into a one piece rod, I would do something just a bit different than what one might ordinarily do for a rod repair. 1. I would find a piece of blank which would be nice fit for the cur
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Jim, To appease your wife- and since you have an ample supply of rods - go yourselves both a favor and sell 2/3rds of the rods you currently own. That will take care of the hoarding issue, make your wife happy, and will give you an opportunity to build more rods - without the clutter of having too many laying around. Take care Roger
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Peter, If the rod was going to be a conventional rod, I would go with the double footed guides all the way to the tip. But if you are using a sprial wrap, I would use double footed guides for the first three guides and then single footed guides after that to the tip. I have used some of these guides in the same color and have nothing but nice things to say about the guides. Fine guides an
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If I have to clean a brush - which I seldom do - the only thing I use is Xylene. Xylene is the chemical of choice - although quite toxic when breathed - to thin and otherwise clean up epoxy. But, the best thing to do with brushes is to throw them away after use and never clean them. I used to have expensive brushes and spend a lot of time, money and effort to keep them clean. However,
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Tom, If you actually do break a fingernail, or tear up your skin - use super glue to glue it back and it will be just fine. After all one of the first uses for super glue was brain surgery, where they still use super glue today when working on brain tissue. Take care Roger
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Andrew, You make the comment " I would rather pay extra for a heavy PVC container, rather than a smashed flat cardboard container. " I just have to comment that if you use thin wall pvc, the weight of the rod will likely be less than the cardboard container. Also, I have found that even using the schedule 40 pvc, that the shipment is seldom any more expensive than using a lighter c
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Chris, For any really heavy action / power rod - it is generally in your best interest to use epoxy to attach the tip to the rod blank. Take care Roger
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Mike, You know it is easy to criticize as to how rods are constructed. i.e. your comment about the way that the reel seat is held to the blank. The important thing to realize is that folks do things differently to meet different expecatations. I expect that one of the expectations of this rod was to use a very specific price point. I am sure that the rod builder met that expectation. I w
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yES
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Matthew, Also, if you are going to have this rod see a lot of rod holder use, you might consider something other than Cork for the grip. Some of the various nylon , eva, foam, etc. tend to hold up to rod holders than a conventional cork grip. One option - although heavier than a conventional grip is the use of rubberized cork . Rubberized cork is virtually industructable. Take care Ro
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Andrew, I know that advice is given regularly to scuff between coats of finish if the finish has set up for some time - say a day or a month. But, have you tried applying finish without scuffing between coats - irrespective of the drying time, and if so - have you actually had any issues with the finish? The reason that I ask, is that although I will scuff a finish - if it has been dr
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Mike, If you need the part in a hurry, you could always run over to your friendly neighborhood machine shope and have your friendly machinest turn a wheel out of aluminum. It will only take the machinest only a few minutes to turn on, and it will not break in the future. Just bring along one of the same wheels off another steady rest and he can copy it and make a new unbreakable part. T
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Jason, What you are suggesting is really NOT a good idea for use on a lathe. The reson that I suggest that this is NOT a good idea is the use of thread and thread couplers. The problem is simply that common hardware store variety threads on both thread rod as well a couplings are simply not up to high machine shop standards with respect to being straight true and repeatable. The issue will
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Mark, Some folks wiill disagree, but I use the blue masking tape - light tack - to remove any dust or other things that might happen to have gotten on the wraps. Before every wrapping the rod, I do use a good wipe down with denatured alcohol. I have never had any side effects from wiping the blanks with this before ever starting the guide wrapping. Take care Roger
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Jason, Penn State Industries has these: -- note, this chuck is for the 3/4 inch threaded shaft. Not the 1 inch threaded shaft. - If your chuck has a 1X8 thread, you can use this spindle adapter to use the smaller 3/4 inch threaded chucks. Perhaps some of these things will meet your needs. Take care Roger
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Chuck, As you continue your drum dryer endeavor, I will pass along a couple of tips that I received from a fellow who had built some drum dryers in the past. 1. Rather than using a round pipe or tube for the center shaft - use a square tube. By using a square tube you have less flex for the same size as with a round tube. Then, with a round tube - on which you thread disks having a square h
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Jason, Of course there is. Just do an Internet search for live tail stocks for your particular tail stock size. i.e. MT-1, MT-2 or what ever. You want to purchase a live tail stock that will be fitted with a rotating threaded shaft what will fit the size of the chuck tha you want to use. I picked up several different live tail stocks for my lathe when I purchased it a bit ago. I also ha
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Tony, My general rule of thumb for passing knots is no smaller than size 6, and if passing heavier line - no smaller than size 7. If no knots are going through the line - then the guides can be much smaller. Take care Roger
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Tom, Your story reminds me of one from long ago. My wife opened the door one nice spring day and found several Garter Snakes in between the front door and the slightly ajar screen door. She has a very negative about any thing related to snakes. So, she certainly let me know in no uncertain terms what needed to be done. I had my son and his friend from next door gather up all of the garter
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Chuck, Do a search of the forum equipment section and you will find several pictures. I have built several driers that have all worked well for drying long surf rods. . I use low voltage DC gear motors to drive the driers. Find a 5-10 rpm low voltage DC gear motor and then pick up the appropriate plug in wall transformer to supply the correct DC voltage to the motor. Drop me an e-mail
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Kerry has it right. I picked up this tip from this forum and it works great. Just be sure that you are not in the line of fire when the tip decides to let go. It will be a hot tip and it will be flying. I do as Kerry posted, but I just take my alcohol lamp, first stretch out the binder which has been connected to a paper clip and cord to a door knob. I lay the rod on a chair, and then p
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Paul, If you have never tried one - check out the Diamonback line of Musky blanks: Lots and lots of folks around the midwest are using these excellent blanks. Give one of the dealers a call that are listed on their web site. The one thing that is unique to these blanks is that they tend to be quite a bit lighter than many of the competition blanis. But they are still very tough and
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Paul, If you find a Musky blank that you like but is longer than the desired length, just chop off the butt of the rod until you get the length you need. Take care Roger
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Chris, Use the rod. Translucent is a very pretty finish. Perhaps not what you want, but nevertheless very nice. I actually very much prefer the translucent look. Unless there is an absolute requirement that it not be translucent - I would certainly leave it alone. Take care Roger
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David, In addition to gluing cork rings together by themselves and turning a handle, you can also ream them to size place them on a rod blank, then glue and clamp them onto the rod blank at the same time as you glue the rings together. As long as you know what you are doing and have a steady hand, this method saves quite a bit of time, because you only have to glue once, and it is much easier
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Robert, As Mike suggested, normally the ability of the camera to capture more mega pixels allows you to have a much more detailed picture. But, cameras have settings to allow you to dial down the sensitivity of the camera if you like. i.e. rather than shooting a 10 mp picture you can dial it back to one of only 1 or 1/2 mp if you like. The picture will get much more grainy and less detailed
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