I used to sand wraps. I have given it up. It seems like no matter how careful I am I always end up fuzzing a thread somewhere. Maybe a trim ring out on the end where the finish pulled thin, maybe a trim ring in a wrap that got sorta pushed up when I tightened the threads. Yet I get wavey wraps that I need to fix.. I almost always cut and scrape with a sharp knife now rather than to sand. I c
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I would give the REC recoil snake guides a serious look. Have not tried them, but I have used the REC single foot wire guides and they are excellent. I use ceramic guides on the first couple of sections and light wire guides at the top. Neat way to go if that is an option for your build. You do need to use fairly light guides on the tip of a Winston to preserve the action of that very thin tip
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I just got 3 from Andy. They are very nice. He is on vacation and apparantly pretty covered up when he is in. He has a lot of blanks cheap right noe. You could make one if you have a 3 jaw and a jacobs chuck for the lathe. Use ground tool steel in the right diameter.
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I just got 3 from Andy. They are very nice. He is on vacation and apparantly covered up when he is in. If you have a 3 jaw and a jacobs chuck why not just order some ground rod and a center drill and make one yourself.
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I guess I am one of the "diamondback nuts" that you might run into. I have no idea what a Marryat blank is and have not seen a green diamondback blank, but I think that soon before they quit selling them they were offering their rods in custom colors. I have heard of plum and blue. I am mostly familar with the "classic trout" and the "western" series of blanks.
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How do you use the heat? Do you need to heat it with a burner to make it level, or just to release bubbles that are trapped. Tom clearly stated that he does not use heat on flexcoat. Everybody else seems to. Why?
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Thanks for all the help. I went up and read Tom's article. Never had clicked on the library before. I had read Toms article in rodmaker seveal years ago. I emailed IRS and got an immediate, helpful answer. Seems like they have gone out of their way to make it as user friendly as a government tax can possibly be.
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I have never mastered the art of finishing wraps! Currently I am trying the approach of using flexcoat lite and applying it in multiple coats. I fill up the guide feet with the first coat and trim all the tag ends, etc. then apply a second or third coad. My problem is that on the larger wraps down near the butt this approach just does not work. It seems that the 2nd and 3 rd coats don't
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I built my travel rod on a Winston LT 8'9" travel blank about 10 years ago (Before I heard of Dan Craft). It is an excellent general purpose rod. I fish with it 90% of the time and I have many other rods. You can go in a Winston shop and cast a factory rod. Then if you like it you can order the blank through the shop at the same price as you can get it mail order. The factory rod s
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Like many hobby builders I have accumulated too many rods. Would like to sell some of the older ones, more or less to recover part of the cost of components to build more. I think I an correct that any sale of a rod that one puts together requires payment of excise tax? I don't really mind doing that, but have had some negative vibes about the tax from reading posts. One that bothered me wa
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Well, it would be easy enough to try just adding a little weight. Use some lead tape. My guess is that you won't like the final result. I don't really know why. I have cast heavy, light line rods (bamboo) that felt fine, but when I have tried adding weight to a graphite rod I did not think I got the same feel. On problem is that the 3 wt line has a lot of air resistance and you can't just &q
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While I am sure that Toms remarks on nanotechnology are spot on, I don't think it is quite fair to consider anything less than a integrated, total, grown in place from the atomic level, as not nanotechnology. Sure, nano is a buzz word right now, particularly in the goverment research funding world. Sure, it can be hyped in a product in almost any context. But basically the term nano refers
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I use maroon and orange almost exclusively. Without color preserver the maroon and the NCP orange work pretty well. The maroon does go a little dark on a gray blank, but looks nice on a green or yellow blank. A little better match on a light blank or with CP is the garnet and and orange regular thread. Really nice on a yellow blank. Have not tried a white blank but I bet it would be good
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I have built 2 LT blanks. to the best of my memory all the sections were the same length. I think you need to call winston and see what they say. I think you have a short section.
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I have tried it. No difference that I could tell. I let go of the line to shoot it, so it mostly comes from straight down under the rod. I do like the double stripping guide, 4" or so apart. Can't say for sure it casts further, but the looks like it is running smoother.
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I have made a couple of mortised seats on the wood lathe. Works fine for the seats that take a square mortise, like the Pac bay. Won't make the oval fingernail style without more work. I made a sliding plywood jig that slides back and forth on the lathe bed. The router (a small one, I used a dremel tool with a router attachment and 1/8" bit) is mounted at the height of the exact center o
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A good place to make a trial wrap is down on the butt underneath where the handle and reel seat will go. Do a wrap with several color threads and then give them a coat of finish. When they dry you can cut it off and it gets covered up anyway. A burnisher is a plastic or metal tool for mashing down threads over the tag ends and for flattening the threads a little and making the spaces between t
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It is fairly common to rough turn green wood. Then let it dry and re-turn to finished specs. It is also possible to turn it to finished size and just live with the warps that occur during drying. One woodworker developed an art form of very thin bowls turned green, dried in a microwave, and then soaked in epoxy and sealed. The good ones warped, but did not crack. It is necessary not to let
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I am a scientist. I use both systems. It is hard for me to see how the "metric" system is "superior" to the English system. Both work just fine. Both are traceable to international standards for accuracy. Why do we speak English? Should the world use a common language? Right now which "system" we use is optional. Lets keep it that way. If you like meters
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I had a couple of Sage RPL's. I think mine had the Struble G reel seat, a machined alumium black uplocking seat of a small diameter. I think you need to talk to Sage. If you send them the rod and 20 bucks (I think,) they will fix it and send it back to you. I do not know if they will just send you a part. Anyway you need to call Sage and find out how to proceede.
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Yeah, you can dry small piecies in a microwave. You need one with a turntable. It would be best to have a dedicated microwave in the shop or garage. When you do catch a piece of wood on fire in a microwave it is impressive how bad it smells and how bad it is to get the odor out of the plastic liner of the microwave. The microwaves heat the wood and the water. As the water boils it takes up
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Okay, I will admit it. I am an old guy and I have used nail polish on guide wraps. In the late 50's and early 60's. Everybody did not have enough money to order stuff from the Orvis rodbuilding store, which was the only know outlet at that time. We used nail polish over silk thread for bamboo repairs and sometimes nail polish over nylon for fiberglass repair and sometimes even a new rod built
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Built a 7 wt on a St. Croiz legend ultra blank last year. Fished it a few times and cast it a few times. Took it out tonight to practice my double haul. After a few casts I noticed that the top section seemed loose. So I took the top section loose and re-seated it, pushing it down and twisting it into position. The next section down split for 3 inches right through the rod to the core. I d
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Much better off starting with a new blank and building from scratch. And I just can't see how 8' can be too long for anybody that is seriously trying to fly fish anyway. In fact, I find it is much more difficult to cast and fish with shorter rods. Build her a 8' 4 wt from a modern, light blank with a grip fitted to her size and see how that works.
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I like single foot ceramics. I like the titanium framed SIC fuji's because they are light. But they are expensive. So what I do when I build a rod for myself is to mix guide types. Weight at the tip is more important than elsewhere. I would use either a REC recoil tip or a Alconite tip and then use REC recoil guides for the first 3 or 4 from the top and then use the Alconite single foots t
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Your rod will not break because of where you located the guides in relation to the spine. I put my guides on the inside of the curve when the rod was bent in its relaxed position for many rods. They all work fine. Now I tend to put the guides on the outside of that same curve. rods still work fine. You can make minor improvements or adjustments to a fly rod by using the spine location. Yo
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Yeah, I think the recoil guides need a locking wrap or some sort of security warp. I dont do the lock, but I do continue the wrap 4 or 5 turnes past the leg of the guide. I also put trim rings on both ends of the wrap on single foot guides on some rods. Depends on the look you want, I guess. I pretty much do the whole rod at one time. I used to worry about sticking it together. Now I don't
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I agree with Steve. And an even happier day was the day that I realized I don't need to look at a "guide chart". My reccomendation is to cut the threads, take all the guides off. Then put them on with tape following the chart. Then do a static test and look at that for a while. Then maybe take one guide off and re-position them a bit and load it again. Then wrap them.
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St. Croix should take note. This is the 3rd crooked blank post I have seen about their blanks in the last couple of weeks.
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An all wood slide band? If it is drilled or turned with the grain going in the rod direction it just will not work. Wood splits parallel to the grain very easily. If it is wrapped from veneer with the grain going around the band it has some chance. I think you would have cut pretty thin veneer, heat it in hot water to soften it, and wrap it around a mandrel to let it dry, then wrap it and glue
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