Early season flies.

[Malcolm]

Thanks Paul, I may well take you up on that if the low build varnish is crap.

[Malcolm]

Well the blank has arrived, I already have rings and handle, reel seat ands bits and bobs are ordered from Daviad Norwich. So rod andf all the bits have cost just over £100. The blank is very stiff! It does this by having a very stiff bottom 6ft and the tip section is very flexible. I had a wee cast with taped on rings and a 4 weight and it seems to cast very well. Of course I won't really know until I have it built up and have it balanced with a handle and reel. I fancy it will feel a lot softer with the hardware on board. 

These winter projects aren't cheap... nearly £90 for the makings of a wading staff, Cedar strip canoe is £530 so far but at least that's not my boat so I won't be paying for the materials although I get the fun of building it, £25 for a new drawer for my fly tying desk. It costs a lot this saving money lark.

[Inchlaggan]

These winter projects aren't cheap...  It costs a lot this saving money lark.

Tell me about it!
£30's worth of wood arrived the other day for my winter project and I started marking out. Lovely stuff to work with and it takes a fine finish. I was planning to turn up the bolts myself and went looking on the web for dimensions- they need to be early 19th century style and stumbled on a supplier of the sizes I need, and that will save me a lot of time and effort. But 50p each and I'll need over 100! I don't mind a project that grows arms and legs, but why do they always cost?

[Malcolm]

I'm after a bit of advice here.

I have all the bits here and although I've built rods before I'm no expert so:

1. Ring Spacing: I had this sorted out or so I thought. Having looked at various options I decided to leave 4.5 inches between the tip and second rings then increase spacing by 1.2 inches every ring - so 4.5 in, 5.7, 6.9 etc - meaning 12 rings which I've got. Putting them together I now think I've ben a bit mean and should in fact order another ring stripper ring to make 13. Any thoughts?

2. In the past I've built up the blank under the reel seat with masking tape to take up the gap. Is there a better alternative.

Apart from that I've got a small motor from David Norwich as the basis of a rod turner so the only thing I've missed is a wee cosmetic detail - a silver ring beween the handle and the blank which I could ignore.

[Traditionalist]

I'm after a bit of advice here.

On longer rods using an extra stripper ring is fairly common. Can also improve casting. Some info;

http://www.hexrod.net/Guide/guideN.html  ( This is good)

http://www.hookhack.com/html/guidespacingchart.html

http://www.flexcoat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/fly_rod_guide_spacing_chart.pdf

It's best to tape the rings on ( sellotape is fine), and make sure the spacing looks OK  and then have a gentle cast.   Tip to second ring spacing is critical as the wrong spacing can cause line looping over the blank.

I don't know of any better method than using masking tape.

You can find a lot of info here;  http://rodbuilding.org/list.php?2

[Traditionalist]

Just something else I thought I might mention which may be of interest. I gave up using epoxy on my own rods a long time ago and I don't use it on whippings either.  I don't like high gloss rods at all and I invariably use matte finished blanks. Using epoxy as a rod finish just adds weight and I have found no advantage at all in using it.  I just use a good matte varnish on whippings and nothing at all on the blank itself.  This also makes it a great deal easier to refinish rods, or replace rings etc at a later date should this prove necessary.

The epoxy ( or varnish for that matter), does not make a carbon fibre rod more robust. In the majority of cases you can just leave the blank "naked" without any problems.  This also makes the whole process a lot simpler. If you have high gloss blanks to begin with then very careful use of fine steel wool will usually render them matte.

The "flash" from high gloss rods can put fish down, and often does.