How to "Soaring Ealgle" Wrap

[upnorth]

It is as addicting as the rest of rod building, once you start you never go bacd

[fishinJohn]

What a great gift! My father in law is a great carpenter and does most of his work as a gift minus the cost of wood. I never have been artistic so I doubt I will jump into rod building but it sure blows my mind when I see it done well.

[upnorth]

Not everyone does stuff that elaborate. It is just want I like to do. There are many, many very finely built custom rods out there that don't have that kind of thread work on them.

The biggest things is you can build it exactly the way you want it. You select the exact blank with action you want, you get the guides you want, the handle and reel seat that fit you, and if you want the colors that are pleasing to you.

It doesn't have to be fancy to be a nice custom made rod.

[fishinJohn]

Well the more I fish the more picky I get about what I want in a rod... Did you start with really cheap blanks? I haven't spent a lot of time in this forum, maybe I can find a post that points to a good place to purchase blanks. A brief [YouNeedAuthorization] effort did not turn up much for me. I have a more than a gallon of epoxy from a project I ended up scrapping; although I am not sure if a certain type is preferred. Thanks for some inspiriation.

[A.W.Wolfram]

FJ.

I can help get you started. Email me at [email protected]

[upnorth]

I wouldn't buy to cheap of a blank no matter what, but then I wouldn't buy top dollar for my first few rods. At one time I had found a place that sold some pretty good 2nds cheap and I used those. But you still want to wind up a good usable rod.

Mudhole may have some stuff to start out with, you can find them using a web search.

[Mid-Lake Rock]

I am not a rod builder and have no business being here, however I had to chime in and say one word - Awesome!

[upnorth]

Anyone interested in pursuing the craft or even taking a peak at what some other who do pursue the craft are doing belong here. Keep coming back and checking things out and you may just get the itch to try one yourself.

And by the way thanks!!

[A.W.Wolfram]

That is sweet upnorth.

How much time do you have in it?

[upnorth]

Probably 5 hours in wrapping the butt wrap, but adding taking pictures and explaining what I was doing added a lot of time to it. All in all that is not a horribly difficult wrap to do, I have done others that were more of a pain to do.

Three hours making the handle and fitting it. The guides take me about 4 or 5 minutes per and of course a couple hours messing with the finish. Probably 10 or 11 hours total.

[A.W.Wolfram]

Nice.

Have you done any +1’s or fish?

Do you have Dream Reamers?

I got a set a couple of months ago, and I don’t know how I have lived with out them.

[upnorth]

I have done a couple of fish for myself and others, and there are a lot of different plus 1 patterns and I have done a few different ones. There is the spider, St. John's cross and some others I really don't know the name of. Many I took pictures of most I didn't. There is a Rose pattern that someone did and posted on another site and I spent some time putzing around til I figured it out, now just need to do a rod for a woman so I can wrap it.

Here is a thread from a while back that someone started and I posted some of my stuff in.

Rod Crafting Thread

And yes the Dream Reamers are great. I just got mine and it cut down the time I had to spend fitting on the last handle I made by at least 2/3s. It will take some time to see how well the hold up tho.

[A.W.Wolfram]

Thanks,

A couple words of advice on the reamers. When using a drill run it backwards until you get close to size you need, it removes the dust and goes faster. When you get to the end of a reamer size, flip the handle over and bore out the other side before starting the next size.

[upnorth]

I had a homemade reamer a while back and I made the mistake of using the drill going forward and it screwed itself in pretty freakin tight and I wound up taking it out piece by piece Not going to make that mistake again.