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.