Build your own rod - Apply the finish

Due to the current situation I had some time to do the 7th and last step in this series and finish the rod with some nice coats of epoxy.

Build your own rod - Wrapping the guides

This is part 6 of the build your own rod series and after we have placed all guides properly to the blank, we can start wrapping them.


Depending on your personal choice you can wrap the guides with nylon thread or silk.
The biggest difference between nylon thread and silk is that silk becomes translucent/ nearly invisible when applying epoxy finish to it.
For sure also nylon thread is changing its color, white ones is also becoming nearly translucent, but not invisible and the colored ones have the tendency to get darker.
If you don't know whether you like the translucent wraps or you don't know how your thread will change color, you should do some tests on your blank. A good place for such tests is the butt section of your rod blank in the area where the reel seat and grip will be placed. There you can do test wraps and cover them with finish. In the end the reel seat and grip will cover everything so nothing of your tests is visible.

Before I start I want to point out that this is the way I have learned it and I'm not saying this is the best way for wrapping the guides. There are for sure several other methods of how to start a wrap and how to wrap the guides at all, but until now I had no negative experience with it.

First of all we attach the thread to the blank with a piece of tape on the right or left side of our guide.
Then we start spinning the blank slowly and move our thread over the guide to the point where our wraps should start.

Build your own rod - Finding the spine and guide placing

This is part 5 of the Build your own rod series. In this part we will find the spine and place the guides on our blank.

As fist step we clean all blank parts with alcohol. The next step is to find the spine of each blank part.

The spine or overlap is the weakest and strongest part in the blank. This is caused by the base material, because the carbon or fiberglass mat has a start and a end and therefore there is more or less material at these places.

Finding the spine can be done in several ways, my method is to simply hold the part in one hand and press with the other hand in the middle of it. When start rolling it now, you will notice the blank is bouncing into two positions of the blank. One of these points is most of the time stronger than the other. I prefer to put this point to the underside of the rod and place my guides onto this point. In this way I have more power when throwing the fly line forward. But this is only my preference, many others might have a different view on this topic.

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.

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.

Build your own rod - Choosing the blank

This is the second part of the Build your own rod- series and we will handle the topic of choosing the right blank.

Build your own rod - Basic tools and materials

Building your own rod has something special, like creating something for yourself after your very own desire.

I've been building rods for several years now, but wouldn't call me a professional in rod building. There are so much guys out there doing this as a full time job and they create pure pieces of art.

My rods are more or less functional based, I think because I don't have that much patience on doing the fancy stuff.

But what I learned from talking to other guys about rod building is, that a lot of fisher man are aware of starting to build their own rod because of the quite overwhelming topic on how to start and what you need to build a rod. I always say that it's not that complicated and with a little bit of skill you will manage to build a rod with that you can catch fish.

Sure the first one doesn't look like a piece of art, but the more you practice, the better the result will become.

For that reason I will show you in a series of posts how to start rod building and you might get a little bit addicted to it.