Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Rod Building - Part 8: Initial preparations

When you build a fly rod you just glue in a handle, a reel seat, a tiptop, and wrap the guides to the blank, right? Wrong.

First thing to do is to figure out which side of each piece of blank you must put the guides. I don’t bother you with standard details of why or how you should do it (read it for example here if you want), instead I’ll let you in to the details that you won’t find anywhere else. It is all illustrated in picture below.

From Fly Rod by Mrs Opax.


1. It is important to sit in front of your tipi, cross-legged, and both knees touching the floor (or ground if your tipi is outside).

2. You must have a hat, but not just any hat. Mike has one that could work and it is very different looking than my hat. The important thing which to consider when it comes to the hat selection is that you should wear a hat with significance. I selected a hat which would definitely be considered as a STATEMENT if I go to the very official company Christmas party in my best suit and that prominent hat.

3. Bottle of your favorite beverage. While searching the guide side you will have a moment of doubt… well, you know what to do.

From Fly Rod

2 comments:

- Mike - said...

Nicely done Olli :)

I'm really liking the idea of building a rod sometime soon. I'm going to pester you for advice when I do get round to it.

I reckon a 7'6" #3 is the way to go. Just need to decide on a good blank.

opax said...

Thanks Mike. I have had lot of help from guys that have actually experience of rod building. My main expert is local fly shop owner and local TFO retailer's rod building expert will also back me up.

I think that it will be easier to find the guide side on 7'6" 3 weight blank. With 4 piece 7 weight blank the difficult part was the bottom piece as it is very rigid, other pieces were easy.