me again for another round of what the heck is this guy doing! I am rebuilding a 11'6" GL3 float rod from scratch. I have already removed the rods finish by scraping which worked pretty well. The blank is refinished in clear satin polyurethane, a very thin and even coating, this also went well. The handle is glued up and the blank spined. Everything is done except for the wrapping and fin
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bear with me here, its been a long haul heres the backdrop: I have been working on a recent rod project for the past two weeks, a rainshadow IST1283F rx7 steelhead blank. 10'6" in length with a 8-12lb line rating. The only thing that i have left to do is install the rubberized cork butt plug. I stripped the rods original finish off with citri-strip as described on these forums. I want
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The paint stripper I have is the Zinnser brand of citrus stripper gel. It @#$%& bad, its very very slow and hardly does a good job at all. So far Its been well over 13hrs with hardly any finish removed Its a biodegradable formula so maybe thats why its so slow. I will go on tuesday and try to find citri-strip brand specifically. chuck, do you use spray or gel citri-strip? Jason
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I have some citri strip. I have tried it in the past with mixed results, perhaps that was due to colder October weather when I used it. I will try that on the blank and see if works as well as you say now that its June. I also cracked that skip morris book back open and he only uses sanding to modify blank actions after the blank was stripped, he also uses stripper to remove the finish. Looks
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The only reason that I am sanding the blank is that in the book "the graphite fly rod" skip morris sands his blanks to remove the finish completely on the blanks, blanks that he is customizing. He uses a rod lathe, I do not have a lathe so I sand slowly by hand. The process takes weeks but it works and I can control how much I take off. I have tried multiple brands of paint strippers wi
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hello again everyone. I screwed up. Pretty bad. I ignored my gut and listened to my obsessive side, i did the direct opposite of what I should have done. I still cant believe I did this. I ordered a Rainshadow rx7 IST1263F steelhead blank from a online retailer and it arrived to me scratched badly on the butt section, the blank was an olympic green version. I made a post about this about 6
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I have yet another specialty need for a steelhead blank and that is a crankbait blank that is moderate in action yet longer than 7ft and two piece. I like to cast crankbaits for steelies while I drift in my boat, I have been using a fast action rod and my hookup rate has been absolutely pathetic. The rod I was using was a wild river sc2 8'6" medium power spinning rod, again fast action.
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Thanks for the replies all, looks like I have some deciding to do. This rod will be built as a spinning rod and yes I have a US reel supercaster reel to go on it when its finished. I am very happy with that reel after field testing for steelhead. I was casting small light float rigs on 6lb one day and then large jerkbaits on 10lb the next.
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hello I am in need of a steelhead blank in the 6-12lb test range, 8'6" blank length range, sensitive and capable of casting lighter weights such as 1/8 or even 1/16oz. The finished rod will be used for casting jigs for steelhead. I use lighter jigs that fall slowly in the cold clear waters of winter. The biggest problem is that I cannot find all four attributes that I need in one blan
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Ordered a new flex coat sable brush, that should help. what are some techniques for adjusting the finish on a wrap after the first pass and the finish is lacking or too much in some areas?
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It's mostly my fault. The blank was ordered during winter while I was away at college, by the time I was out in spring it was too late to send the blank back. And yes the rod was ordered through a distributor and not from batson directly. what about wet sanding the whole blank with 1200 grit sandpaper?
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Hello again, I have a 10'6" batson RX7 steelhead blank that I want to tie up before winter really gets here, anyways the blank came to me with more than a few annoying scratches on it, actually quite a few. The blank is a gloss green model. How can I get the scratches out of the finish safely? Thanks for any suggestions. Jason
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1. 2mins plus, or until the finish cleared again. 2. yes, aluminum foil 3. around 6, per guide around 2-3 mins. 4.not sure on total time, 20-30 mins perhaps, I know I spent longer on the first guides than the later ones due to size. 5.I went over the wraps twice with a hair dryer a few minutes apart after all finish was applied and the rod was spinning. I usually apply my finish
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Well I am going to redo the 3wt. I want to try PG for that one. Sounds good for lighter work. I will give TM a try and compare that with flexcoat. thanks for the replys.
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Hello Been building for a few years now. Built a dozen rods so far, looking to improve my work. I have built a rod drying box and am working on creating a thread finish station with a shelf/hand rest, this should help my thread finishing. Been using flex coat light finish on all my rods with modest success, I feel its too hard to control for me especially with only a 22rpm finish motor.
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