Shortly after after Christmas both of my AC synchronous motors had gear failures on the same night when I had rod to finish and deliver the next day. I took the opportunity to upgrade my drying system and convert to a DC gear motor that can double as a finishing and drying motor. The motor and voltage controller I went with are these: DC Gear Motor: Voltage Controller: The gear motor
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Mo, I like the way you think. The ones I've done are either carbon tubes or carbon fiber sleeved urethane foam. The carbon tube ones came from Batson and I used their EVA caps at each end and have a couple of pieces of urethane foam arbor under the ends of the reel feet. The sleeved ones are carbon fiber over a solid urethane arbor with 1/8" EVA trim rings for a soft edge to drape my fing
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You did it right. I prefer to attach the reel seat directly to the blank, and use the older exposed blank seats for the majority of my casting rods. Arbors are only used when required to take up the extra space. I just wish we could get some of the newer exposed seat design in models designed to fit the blank instead of an insert.
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You won't find the holy grail of rods that casts well with 1/8oz and 1oz. You are looking for at least 3 rods based on your description. If you buy from any of the manufacturers of rod blanks on the left, you are not buying a low end rod. If you stick to the mid-modulus and high modulus offerings, you are going to get the performance you need. The closest blank you come to a do it all rod
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I think TiGrey is PacBay’s Name for TiCH. I also don’t think I’ve ever seen Minimas offered in that finish.
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Take a look at the 1022 series. It is very likely one of those. If you have good familiarity with steelhead rods and how much effort it takes to flex the tip by hand, and some measurements from a caliper could narrow it down pretty quickly.
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Sometimes you don't know what info you are looking for until someone points it out. Personally, I would rather rehash old topics than let the discussion lay dormant. You never know what new perspective or insight might come from a discussion with a different group of individuals involved.
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Herb, the ECS is an exposed blank casting seat. where the back end gets reamed to fit the blank. Right or wrong, I usually ream and fit the seat first (a good option is to glue it up and let the epoxy set before installing the arbor). Then I ream and install the arbor. You can get a little bit of movement in the barrel once the seat is installed, if the arbor is installed last you can tweak th
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When I skin grips, I'll spin the grip on my drill lathe and come in with a #11 scalpel or exacto knife and with light pressure it will make short work of cutting through the carbon fiber. You could do something similar by shimming a drill bit with tape to a snug fit inside the grip. Have someone hold and run a cordless drill flat on the table, or better yet use a drill press or lathe while you
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A couple great articles in the Library page above can go a long way to teaching you the fundamentals of guide trains. For spinning rods: New Guide Concept - Spinning rods will teach you the fundamentals of modern spinning guide trains. Angler's Resource, the US importer of Fuji components has a couple links regarding their New Guide Concept and the KR concept that will help you to select Fuji
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A blank is a blank. Manufacturers put them in categories based on what they think most people will do with the blank, but if the blank has the right action and power for the application you are using it for, then build it to suit whichever type of reel you wish to use. I have a number of casting rods built on spin jig and bass spinning blanks that suit my fishing style well and are the reason I
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I use an old Hirsch drill lathe that was passed on to me by another local builder. I power it with a Skil corded drill. It's a pretty simple set up with a support with a dead center at one end and a support that holds the drill with a pipe clamp at the other and a steady rest that will slide along the pipes holding it all together. A drop of oil on the dead center and only being clamped down u
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I delivered the rod to my sister and brother-in-law this morning. They were thrilled with it. I'm sure it will be well received by its new owner.
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This evening has just been one of those days. I finished up wrapping a Christmas present for my brother-in-law's nephew so he can deliver it later this week. The build is an MHX SJ783. It's a pretty sweet little blank. Had I ordered the SJ783 for myself instead of the MB782 a few years ago, my brother-in-law probably wouldn't have a custom rod yet, but when the MB782 wasn't what I was looking
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Dave, I noticed similar results when I built my first micro guide rods. I'm still not terribly certain that I can pin down the physics of why micro guides aid in pitching accuracy. For me, I made my first jump to a high modulus technique specific blank with the addition of micro guides. I would have had to try to make those builds poorly performing rods. In traditional casting, the inertia
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Inertia is the difference between the guide trains. By reducing inertia, the blank is able to react and recover more quickly and transfer energy more efficiently to the load being cast. It's the same reason that single foot guides have become favorable over double foot guides in most freshwater and a lot of light saltwater applications, the same reason that rods with micro guides cast as far
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Mark, thanks for the good work and taking the time to do it. It's always worth doing these things to convince yourself. Keeping track of where the choker or first of the low profile guides gives the following: NGC 27x (Reel Quantum Catalyst 10 PTIa) with a spool diameter of 1.477" puts the choker effectively at 39 7/8" (39.879"). KR places the choker at 38" and typ
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I remember the first time I saw a spiral wrapped rod at an expo about 20 years ago now. My buddy and I chuckled as we walked by. I wish I would have stopped at that rod builder's booth and got an education. It may have set me on this path a few years earlier. In any case, I eventually did my homework, and I'll be hard pressed to put guides on top of a casting rod again.
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Here ya go. When I did some reading the last time graphene came up here, I stumbled across at least one place (possibly one of the manufacturers above) claim in a white paper that adding graphene nano particles (really, just thing extremely fine graphite powder) to the resin helped reduce the spread of certain types of fractures. I want to think the percentage was a bit lower than tha
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Yes, a 90 degree transition it is.
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You did a 90 degree transition spiral. There is nothing wrong with it. It works well and fishes well. After reading my original post, I realized I wasn't clear on the spacing I mentioned. When I said 8"-10", that should have been between the butt guide and first 180 degree guide. The bumper goes in between those two guides. Put another way: For the simple spiral, you can start
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Yes, I use the same guides I would use for a traditional guides on top build. The guide choice is determined by the application, line size and type, and any knots that need to be passed.
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If you do a search for spiral wrap for all dates on this forum, you will find gobs of reading material. There are all sorts of different techniques. They all work quite well. When I built my first couple of rods, I received a ton of help from Steve Gardner when it came to layouts for those rods. His advice on the spiral wrap was straight forward. Place the guides where you normally would f
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You can scrape off a little paint if it's really close to being able to fit. Measure carefully how far the tip top should come down the blank and wrap a piece of tape at that point. I've found that a gray scotchbrite pad will make its way through the finish on those blanks pretty well, but sanding about 3/4" of the tip top can be tough. Another option is that you can use a razor blade hel
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Judging by the shape of the inset line on the palm swell, the seat on the Denali looks like the PacBay variation of that seat.
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The sticker is yours to do with as you please because you paid a royalty (through the manufacturer) to the owner of the artwork to use that image on that particular sticker. The imagery is not yours to do with as you please. If you duplicate the image, you are in violation of copyright law. If you have access to a decent quality inkjet or laser printer with UV resistant photo quality ink, you
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Dan, you mentioned liking the Lamiglas honey blanks. I know in bass fishing the mooching blank MB 841 E or F is one that some of the popular crank bait rods are modeled after. I have a new old stock honey Lamiglas 6702 that was passed on to me several years ago that I use for some of my heavier bass cranks. I believe this to be very similar to the MB 841. Those blanks have the properties that
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Danny, this is a topic that will draw a heated debate from both sides. Before going much further, take a minute and read this article, from the Library on this site, related to a spiral wrap demo device: At the heart of the spiral wrap demo is essentially the same piece of equipment that Mud Hole sells as a spine finder. So, for a little cash, you can get one to tinker with without hav
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It's good to see some blanks on the custom market drawing some attention from those guys. I suspect if he had a little better build experience the rod would have gotten a higher rating overall. I've long enjoyed reading material from the TT guys, but haven't checked in on them enough lately. Jim, you get some major kudos for encouraging Cal to build the rod himself to promote the craft. Eve
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1. The spine affects a rod's fishability. 2. High modulus graphite is inherently brittle. 3. Smooth handles are slippery by nature. 3. (a) Fiberglass rods cannot be built to have the same action and power as a graphite rod. (Natural frequency and weight will obviously be different.) These would probably be my best estimates. I'm sure Tom has some insight into this question.
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