Hey all,
Thought I would post here as the other forums I've checked, although they have a lot of rod building info, don't seem to do much of what I hope these builds will do, ie marlin fishing. It's really interesting how different the long range or tuna rods are.
I learned the basics of putting a rod together over 10 years ago, my early efforts were satisfying but very frustrating at the same time as I struggled badly
with getting the epoxy to properly set in the 99% humidity of Singapore where I lived at the time. A
few months after moving into a flat with enough space to put up the rod
building jigs, I felt it was time to give rodbuilding another go.
My test mule was a cheap, white solid glass boat rod which had been spray painted black some months back.
Huge relief when the epoxy set nice and hard.
Time to try something more ambitious. I'm planning to fish a bit with my dad in Indonesia in the next few years and all the 20/30 lb class gear fished with the old man back in my teens is too light for what I want to target.
I had an old Seeker TS60XH lying around that I'd part assembled but never wrapped, not wanting to mess up a nice blank with a crap epoxy job. The blank had been built with a foam rear grip that I now had no use for. With some regret I cut the rear section off and fitted a size 2 ferrule.
It didn't take long to underwrap and double overwrap the guides and the epoxy set nicely although there were a few lumps here and there caused by over application. I hate to see epoxy go to waste and have a tendency to add more of it than I should. Not a good idea.
Still, everything looked fairly reasonable until I gave the rod a good bend... and hairline cracks started appearing at the tips of the first four roller guides.
Noooooo.....
At this point I felt there was nothing I could do except add a third layer of epoxy to build up the thickness. I'd seen similar cracks develop on other rods but this was the first time it had happened to me. I needed to resolve the issue as my second blank needed building. It would be a complete new build, too, so there were lots of decisions to make. Slick butt or aluminium butt, what size grips and so on - even how long should the complete rod be.