St Croix Premier Redux

[A.W.Wolfram]

Just after high school I had the opportunity to work at one of the larger sporting good stores during it transition to it's current name. During my time there I was a department manager and my main and favorite department was fishing rods and reels. This was the mid 90s and the heyday of names like Gary Loomis and St Croix.

Ever since that time I had a special place in my heart for those Garnet and Gold St Croix premier rods. Nice rods yet affordable for a guy just out of high school living on a retail paycheck.

So here is the project. I came across this PS66ML (Thanks to da_chise31)

At some point someone had rewraped the guides. The RS was loose and we can say that this piece was well used.

I wanted to do something a little different with this piece rather than just restore it. The original label had seen better days and the blank needed to be refinished. I also was not a big fan of the guide layouts used back than. I decided that this would make a good vertical jigging rod and while I was at it why not make it a cold weather jigging rod.

This is what I did.

Striped the rod down to the blank. I than refinished the blank so I had a clean slate to build off of.

Installed a grip that would minimize the amount of synthetic material contact to keep the hands warmer.

I went with a new concept layout with freezing temperatures in mind. It has 8mm runners and tiptop.

And one just has to stay with the 206 Garnet and gold but I added a subtle twist on the original.

[DTro]

Cool!

[bobbymalone]

Great looking work!

What did you use for that handle / reel seat. Smooth.

[A.W.Wolfram]

The grip is a after market kit, similar to a Fuji VSSM or Quick-Lock

[Carpenter]

What did you do to refinish the blank?

[bobbymalone]

The grip is a after market kit, similar to a Fuji VSSM or Quick-Lock

Can you point me in the proper direction to find one?

[A.W.Wolfram]

What did you do to refinish the blank?

I sanded it down to 800 grit and sprayed it with a proprietary product.

The product is still in my testing phase so I can not reveal what it is until I'm 100% confidant with the results.

[Scott M]

AWESOME! Took this rod home last night, can't believe what a great job A.W.W. did with this one.

Thumbs up!

[Dark Cloud]

Sweet! Always liked those colors...