Thursday, April 04, 2013

Build a fishing rod they said...it'll be fun they said...

Well everyone...things just did NOT work out with that casting rod like I thought they would.  After getting the handle and reel seat on, things just kinda went to hell on me.  First, the butt wrap "thread art" I spoke of earlier was a bust.  I just simply cannot remember HOW to do that and was getting frustrated.  Finally, I decided on a simple wrap, some writing, and some decals as to not "clutter up" the rod.  That turned out really well, but I ended up smearing the writing and re-did it in less-than-perfect handwriting.  Then I found out my old finish was just that...too old...and set up very poorly.  The first time due to too low of temperature, the subsequential time due to bad finish.  So I scraped that off, boogering up a decal, re-tied threads and then tried Spar Varnish.  The first coat was really nice, but the second coat boogered it up.  I had to scrape that off as well. 

Finally I went to Cabelas (I hate going to that store) and the fishing dude there handed me "exactly what I needed."  Now, I actually SAID this, "If this works, I'm going to come back here and shake your hand."  He looked at me, stuck out his hand and said, "Might as well do it now."

I was excited and went home to apply this new finish.  After getting the bathroom (yes) to the proper temperature I tried this stuff.  Again, the first coat was okay, but the finish was still really thick.  Looong story short, it got boogered up over and over.  And I stripped guides, stripped finish, tried and tried and tried...but couldn't get it to work "correctly" (or at least how I remember it working in the past.)

Well, I got most of the guides done and they mostly looked good...the guides up near the tip looked particularily okay.  Some of the bigger wraps didn't, so I stripped some of those, re-tied, and carefully put my final attempt at finish on them.  It turned out "okay" so I called it good.


Yea, not the best...but not the absolute worst (trust me, I now know)
This guide got a lot of bubbles in the finish

Just another example

The fish decal I made look like an "old fish" after stripping finish
 
What I resorted to to get proper temperatures


But since I'm refurbishing two (now three) other rods of a friend's...I wanted to get NEW NEW finish straight from the manufacturer.  (I figured that the finish the guy at Cabela's handed me had been on the shelf too long.)  Well, I got on the website and watched an instructional video.  The finish looked NOTHING like what I was using...the consistency was vastly different.  So I went to their products section and poked around and found what I needed...but the bottles looked entirely different than what the Cabela's guy handed me.  So I scrolled until I found what he handed me...

....wait for it....

He gave me FIVE MINUTE EPOXY!!  To be used for reel seats, securing handles to rods, finishing fly wrapping...etc.  THAT's why I was having so many issues!!

Well, I was pissed for a while...until I looked at the rod again and decided, "If that's what I can do with five minute epoxy as a finish...I'm a flippin' chemical genius!"  I called it good enough and I now have a finished rod to give away.  I sure hope the recipient likes it because it took me darn near a month and caused a lot of bi-polar behavior.  Sarah's description is, "one day you were all happy and talking about how you figured it out.  The next day it was all wrong.  The next day, you salvaged it and were happy.  Unhappy and pissed the next day." 

I ordered the correct finish and tried some of it on a different rod last night.  Sure enough, it mixed easily, went on easily, didn't set up too quick, and looks amazing.  "Like glass I tell ya."

Oh well, the casting rod will be extremely unique and it's got a helluva story to go along with it.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice job! Rod looks great to me and I bet it catches fish just fine.
Z

11:30 AM  

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