Build your own rod - Reelseat, grips, guides and thread

After selecting the blank for our custom rod, in this part we will handle all other hardware parts which we will need to build our rod. First we will start with the reel seat.

There are several models of reel seats for flyrods on the market. Different styles, colors and materials you can choose between.
Depending on your blank and the expected color scheme you want to build your rod, you can choose color and also the style.
Most important for me is to check the inner diameter of the reel seat and the max diameter of you blank at the position where the reel seat will be placed. If you don't check this before and your reel seat don't fit on your blank, you're in the shit.

Second I check if my desired reel can be hold by the reel seat. Most producer/ re-seller place this information on their websites. There is nothing worse than notice that your reel doesn't fit to your reel seat after you finished your rod.

After these two points are clarified, I search for the style type. There are so many types of reel seats you can choose from. You have the classic ones without any fancy stuff, then the split grip with wood insert, some with carbon tube insert, etc. Best is you check some styles on a website of a rod building shop and select the one you like.
Currently I like the simple "classic" reel seat, no fancy stuff. I have a lot of fun building a plain clean rod.

Next part is the grip for our rod. First we have to think about the material we have to have our grip made of. Most fly rod grips are made of cork. When choosing cork, you really have to put an eye on the quality grade of the cork, because some ready made cork can have a bad quality and the holes and cracks are filled with cork filler which won't look nice after some time of fishing.
So when using cork, get the good stuff. Categories are AAA -> Supreme -> Floor.
Try to get the good grade cork, it's expensive but worth the money. In the picture below you can see on the left a cheap handle after fishing for two years. Compared to it on the right a AAA quality. On the cheap one you can see all cracks and the filler came out of them.

Of course there a more "natural" materials, like rubber cork, burl cork and so on. How these types are looking you can see in the picture below. It depends on your favor what you choose for your rod.
And then there are also the EVA handles. Some rod builder would rather cut their hands of than using EVA foam for a fly rod,but more and more modern rods are build with EVA handles. Most of the time these rods are used for perch/ pike fishing. In my opinion it's kind of an old school/ new school thing and I don't care about such stuff.

After selecting the material for the handle, it comes to the shape of it.
There are different shapes for the handles and you will see a lot of different names for each type.
In general you can divide them into two style types.

The first type is for light and slim rods, like for trout fishing with drys, nymphs or wet flies.
The handle is thicker in the end and gets thinner in the front. It's designed to hold the rod like in the picture below and to cast the line gently onto the water.

The second type is used for the heavier fishing. It's is thick at the and and also in the front and designed to hold it with the thumb up. This type of handle is used for heavier streamer rods where you have to push the rod and line much more during your cast.

Additionally to the handle you can also attach a fighting butt at the end of your rod. I personally build them on streamer rods with #6 and higher. On the light ones this doesn't look that good because they then loose their slim appearance. Material can be used any of the above, most of the time I use the same as for the handle.



The next thing we have to choose are the guides for our rod. For fly fishing rods you need to know four type of guides.

First is the stripping guide. Its purpose is to guide the fly line as first guide to the blank. Normally it's a heavier guide you can also place on spinning rods, therefore it's more durable when pulling heavily on the line fighting a big fish.

Second model is the snake guide. This is used on various fly rods. They are available in light versions for really fine rods or in heavier version for rods up to class #10 and higher.

Third model is the single foot guide. It's kind of personal preference which guide type, snake guide or single foot guide, you choose. My preference is the snake guide, because for me it's easier to attach them. But If you want a slim finish on a very fine rod, you might want to use the single foot guides.

As last every rod needs a tip top. The tip tip is a big loop which should be bigger and stronger compared to the running guides. Reason is that more pressure is on it during casting. When you want to buy a tip top, it's important to know the exact diameter of your rod tip. If you choose it to small, it won't fit right on your tip and might cause damage.

After presenting the type of guides, now it comes to the decision how many of them for your blank.
Rule of thumb is one guide per foot of your blank. This means for a 8' blank you should use at least 8 guides + the tip top. These guides should contain at least 1 stripping guide and 7 running guides (Snake or single foot). Depending on the blank class, you can use two or more stripping guides. But this will come into consideration only when you build #10 and higher rods.



To fix the guides onto your blank, you can use thread or silk. Silk is more often used on glass blanks because of its characteristic to get translucent when finishing it.

For the thread you can choose between the size (A and D) and if it's color preserved or not.
If you choose thread without color preservation, your thread will change color when finishing it. This won't happen with color preserved thread, it will keep its color during finish.

When wrapping with silk, you have to keep in mind that it will get very translucent when finishing, but that is the main purpose when using it. Depending on the color, you will get nicely translucent wraps with the shade of your thread.

For decoration you can also use metallic thread. It has flash in it so you can create a nice finish at the beginning, at the end or in between of your wrappings. There are rod builders out there who create beautiful pieces of art with it.

Now, as we have the minimum of parts you need to build a rod, we can start assembling everything.
This will be handled in the next part of the series.