If you are using roller guides, All American @#$%& guides are pretty much the only ones designed for this, although I read somewhere that people were using another set of rollers that worked, but it was a mix of brands. For ringed guides, it's not too bad. I am working on one currently with a 25mm stripper guide a few inches off of the foregrip (HBSG style), and a size 12 HNSG a few inches up f
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You can go to the Robinson Anton website, they have much larger spools available, too. I use a lot of the blue, silver and Gov't gold. Without CP, they darken slightly and with CP, they tend to be a bit lighter in color, at least with the Chromaseal CP I use. The ProWrap larger spools should be coming shortly, though!
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RA J metallic is available in several colors! I have red, blue, purple, green, bronze, copper, pewter, aluminum, government gold, silver, and pearl in the RA J Metallic. Love it! I have 4 or 5 spools of the ProWrap metallic that I will try out shortly, mostly in shades of blue. The thing that holds me back is that they don't have the larger spools yet for the metallics. If I have to do a s
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My guess is that the builder felt the single foot fly guides would be too low to the blank and was concerned about the line hitting or dropping below the blank, or that he would have to use more of the guides to achieve proper line flow. Perfect rod for a spiral wrap though! I have seen factory rods using single foot fly guides on the tip section and depending how the rod is flexed, the line
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Mudhole's ProKote is much thinner than TM Lite is!! Very very thin, and it slowly thickens, but you can still work it for a while and add some of the thicker stuff. I let it soak into the threads/guide tunnels for a bit and then add some of the thicker stuff to build it up a little.
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I had the same issue with the Pac Bay thread spools; they overfilled the spools, thinking a little extra line was a good thing, but using the older style thread carriage with the spools held vertically, the thread would fall off the spool if the tension got loosened or the spool got bumped or something. I stripped off some line to get the spool back lower than the spool lip and it was fine after
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Billy is correct, they are working on it! I asked Todd Vivian and he confirmed that Am Tack is working on flat braids, Trimar and Twists, as well as metallics in 1000yd spools.
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I just got several spools yesterday, mostly in blues and a few of D black. Seems to be very nice! I talked to Mudhole and they said the larger spools of the metallics , as well as Trimar type, classic twists and flat braids are a few months out. The 100 yd spools are ok for a rod or two, but they go quick doing a set of rods or underwraps on thicker blanks! But they will be out soon I hope!
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I've been using it a lot lately and I love it. Incredibly clear, flexible and it really soaks well into the threads and fills the tunnels. I use it on all of my heavier rods now because of the way it soaks in. I still use TM Light and High in some applications, but my main epoxy is now ProKote.
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Thanks! I remember when I had to make some skeletonized Titanium handle scales for a Damascus neck knife. I set my work bench on fire a few times from that one knife!!! The Titanium can be very gummy, especially with clogged or worn out belts, so some people may press harder, which really heats it up and makes it more gummy. Then watch the bright white sparks fly!! I dunno how the Titani
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Titanium is softer, but it is much gummier and more difficult to work/machine. It will also clog the belts more and fracture more of the abrasive off; the higher grades of ceramics help prevent this or slow it down. Plus the sparks can catch on fire easily (they burn white like magnesium), so you want to use a coarser belt and less pressure for the larger guides and maybe touch up with a finer
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UL and lighter fly rods get A, along with most freshwater rods. Saltwater rods, it will depend on the guides; I use A or B if I have it. C on heavier saltwater rods like cod and tuna jigging and popping sticks, C and D on heavier trolling/planer rods. Pac Bay has size C in a lot of colors. Most of the rods I build are heavier saltwater rods, so I use size C pretty often!
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I have used several of the suppliers on the left and one that isn't on the list and haven't had any major issues. I seem to have to worst luck with stuff being backordered, no matter who I order from. Some items are special order and can take a long time to come in. One of my suppliers recently felt bad because they went to ship out some blanks and found that the last one they had in stock tha
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Nope! It's been done numerous times before! The rod will flex like that down to the foregrip area and it still has backbone to land the fish; the grip area usually doesn't flex much as it is a 2 piece blank IIRC with the foregrip, reel seat and rear grip/gimbal on the 2nd lower piece. The more parabolic bend helps take the strain and pressure off of the angler. A fast action blank hurts the a
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The Titanium K series aren't recommended for this; their frames are very flexible and people have seen the frames get bent/misshapen from higher drags. The Steel K series should be fine though. They are taller than the MNSG and have a 50mm, but I don't know if you will need the 50 or not; I usually use a MNSG 40 as my stripper guide for my Saragosa 18K. The 50mm is used by OTI and people have
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The flexible thin stuff does have some cracks/crazing in it but it isn't very noticeable. I used the heat and roll abalone on a few rods and the abalone does crack when the rod gets flexed. The more flexible stuff I am hoping will hold up a bit better in that regards.
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I got 3 of the sheets here, waiting for me to try them out! They are incredibly flexible; they feel like a stiff construction paper, maybe a little softer feel. They do look very nice, but you won't have the wide variety of colors like the Aqua Blue stuff because there isn't a colored veneer over them.
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I've built on the Am Tackle ATX, the Batson 56H composite (40-80# rating), Mudhole Gorilla blanks as well as Calstars and Seekers. I really like the Batson blanks I have used so far, very impressed with them, especially with the cost!
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The grips are nice, but in one ID, they would be great for a popping rod, but I need them 3/4" ID and I dunno if I can ream them that much and not have them tear on me. Sometimes, the cuts aren't aligned straight either, they go off to one side occasionally.
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Also something very similar here:
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I have built up several of these popping rods in the past year! I use the 7' Batson 84XH blank and OTI blanks and I met with each customer and had them play with mock ups to see what length they wanted the grips. By having them try the mockups and move the reel seat back and forth for casting and fighting, I found that people 5'8" and under like a total rear grip length of around 14-15&quo
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Keep those black/blue Turbo's please!! They match awesome with the blue Unibutt :) Also, one of my pet peeves is in the Ring Lock NanoLite Tip tops. Lots of blanks I use have between a 9 and 12 size for the tube size and I want a 12 ring to pass knots if needed, yet there are very few 12 ring size tip tops with smaller tubes. Any chance of these in the future?
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Graphite composite can mean various modulus of graphites, or a graphite/fiberglass combination. Nothing "hot dog" about it; it is all about combining the proper materials in the proper ways to make a blank that wouldn't be available as a straight "sirloin" blank. I use composites a lot, nothing second class about them!
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Nice! I used one of the Blue Unibutts on a rod I will deliver tomorrow, paired up with ProBond and ProKote, and the Am Tack Black Frame Blue Ring guides. Nice stuff! Looking forward to using the new guides, too!
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When I am doing up a heavy rod, I work slow. For a slick butt, I use Mesh Fiberglass drywall tape and I make the bushings to fit the slick butt. I make up all of the bushings I need, and leave them on the blank. I unwrap the first one, epoxy and wrap the tape back around the blank, adding more epoxy as I go if needed. When the bushing is fully wrapped, I slide and twist the slick butt over it
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I was glad that is what it was; I use the Pac bay threads almost as much as Gudebrod, more now that you guys have them in the larger spool sizes!! I hate those little 100yd spools, especially if you are doing sets of matched rods with double overwraps! I dunno, I actually like the vertical thread carriage better than the horizontal one??? I always was losing the wing nuts and washers and hav
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That was it Mark! I pulled some thread off each spool until the level was below the lip. I also found a little rough spot near the edge of the lip (mold mark maybe?) that the line was hitting to cause the fuzzies because it was overfilled. Wrapped the second layer of thread with no fuzzies. Once I removed the excess thread, the spool felt nice and firm again, like the other pac bay spools I h
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What about using a sticker or fake tatoo and really color preserving the heck out of it?
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If those Fuji's wont work, Pac Bay has their Channel Lock 2, which is an aluminum ferruled reel seat!
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They spools were a bit overfilled and they kept falling off the spool. I wrapped one rod with each, I will pull some more line off the spool and see how it goes from there!
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