Building BaitCasting Rods

Finally I am done.. finished... completed 3 BC rods. It took me plus minus a month to assemble the 3 rods. A month is not the actually time spent building up the rods but just a time frame of completion.

The processes of the building a fly rod and building a BC rod are quite similar... taking out the bamboo blank making. For fly rods, I shaped cork grips and I shaped EVA foam for BC rods. No difference in guides wrapping.

Here are some of the photos of the 2nd and 3rd BC rod I assembled.

The Orange StiQ

The above is the a mock up arrangement before I epoxied the reel seat and grips. I used Minima Reel Seat from Pac Bay. The design is almost the same as Carrot Stik. I like the reel seat design.

I added a silver ring to the grip and shorten the locking thread to make it more compact.

 

Spiral guides layout. Initially I did the straight or inline guide for this rod but when I loaded the rod, the line touches the rod. So, I have to do all the guides wrappings again.

The completed "Orange StiQ"


MHX Rod

This is the last of my BC rod blanks. A 6'6" Charcoal black blank weighted for 10~17lb lines.
Similarly to my other BC rod, I chose to have spiral guides. Looks much better than common factory made BC rods from the shelves.

As you can see, I always keep my rods simple. No fancy weaving above the grips and what nots...it's because 1st,  I like it clean and simple and secondly, I do not know how to weave those god damned weaving and I don't intend to learn for the time being.

I have yet to get  the chance to test all 3 BC rods that I have built. By December, I hope I will hook up a few big snakeheads and jungle perch and really see the effect of the spiral guides and the performance of these BC rods.

Lawn casting #6

Managed to find some time to lawn cast #6. Moderate slow action and cast out a WF3 with little effort.
Well balance on my Orvis CFO II.

Wait till you see this......

Balance the rod on the hook keeper.

Continuation of Bamboo #6

Finally... my long awaited reel seat has arrived last week and I have officially completed my #6.

It's an up locking burled wood mortised with black color hardware to match the color of the guides.

Intended to be a 3wt and it felt like a 3wt but I need to test it out to confirm it....just in case.

Experimenting with spiral guide

I have done some reading on building casting rod and the deflection of each rods are different based on the stiffness of the blanks. Since the fiberglass blank is on the soft side, it would be safer to fix spiral guides on it so that the line would not touch the blank when bending.

I placed the guide on the inner side of the spine as if I am doing the spinning rod and slowly adjusting the lower guide to the other side of the blank, so that the line from the reel will gradually turn following the guides.

I wrapped the guide foot with masking tapes and securing it with some cotton thread before the rod was subjected to a static loading test.

It worked as what was stated in the internet. Great bending action without line touching the blank.

Next, I have to remove all the cotton thread and do some readjustment to the guides before wrapping it........