Build your own rod - Assemble the handle

This is Part four of the Build your own rod series.
After selecting all materials and components we finally can start building our rod.

As the very first action, we clean our blank with the alcohol to remove finger prints, lipids or anything else. This will help the epoxy to settle down on every part of our blank.

Then we take our white china marker and mark the positions of our buttcap and reelseat on the blank.
This way we know where we have to spread the epoxy on the blank.

Depending on the inner diameter of the reel seat, we have to create some wraps of masking tape to fit the reel seat to our blank. It should be that thick, that the reel seat is sliding smoothly onto the blank.

Leave some space (about 1cm) between the wraps. This way the epoxy have better contact to the blank.

One thing I learned the hard way was to wrap your end of the reel seat with tape. This way you won't fuck the reel seat end with epoxy when gluing the stuff on the blank.

Now it's time to mix the epoxy. I use regular rod building two component epoxy which need at least 24 Hours to fully cure. I wouldn't recommend to use 5 Minute epoxy, because you won't have that much time to assemble all parts as you will need.

Spread the epoxy all over the wraps and the spaces in between. Be sure to cover every piece of the blank with a good amount of epoxy.

Then start sliding the reel seat down in rotary motion. In this way the epoxy can get in every corner of the inner reel seat. Now you can see, why it's good to wrap the end of your reel seat. Move down until your mark and spread the epoxy on the rest of your blank.

Then put on the butt cap and slide it on in rotary motion.

Push it as far as it get against the reel seat. Now you can gently remove the tape and the left over epoxy.

Some epoxy will be left on the cork, so use the alcohol and give your reel seat and the butt cap a good clean. Epoxy leftovers doesn't look that nice on the cork later.

Now it's time to put on the grip. Mark the position on the blank, where the grip starts...

...and put a good amount of epoxy on the blank. Don't overdo it, but use enough that the grip will never ever come off.

Then push down the grip in rotary motions until you reach the reel seat. If everything is in place, mount a fly reel on it to align the top of the blank with the reel seat.

As last step put some epoxy around the grip and blank. This doesn't need to be very much. It's only used to fix the winding check, which will be covered later with a good amount of rod building finish anyway.

And here you go. Now all parts of the handle are glued in place. Depending on the used epoxy, let all parts cure for at least 24 hours.

The next steps are finding the spine, level the guides and place them on the blank. This will be the topic of the next part.