Rod Building how-to

So you wanna build your own rod? Let me show you how to do it. I'll be pulling some of this thread from other posts I have made elsewhere to avoid retyping it all.  Buckle in cause here we go:



Why Buy a Custom Rod:Many people ask me what the advantages of a custom rod are and why should they spend more money on something that doesn’t have a $15 over the counter warranty. The list of reasons as to why custom rods are better is staggering and I will outline some of the most important issues that factory rods have that the custom rod solves:

The Spine: Essentially, the way a rod blank is manufactured is by sheets of graphite, fiberglass, or graphite and fiberglass that are wound around a mandrel. This is then placed in an oven where it cures the glue used to hold everything together. After the curing process, the mandrel is removed and the blank is trimmed to length. Because the material is rolled on the mandrel there is more layers on one side than the other (think about it like a paper towel roll) and this causes the blank to want to bend a certain direction. When put under load, the blank will naturally rotate to the same orientation every time; this spot is called a rods “Spine”. I mark this location and then assemble the grips and guides in accordance to the spine. Wrapping the rod on the spine helps to reduce twisting and torque on the rod while under load and is something many major rod manufactures ($200+ rods) do not take the time to do.

Guide Placement: Every singe blank, even if they are the same model from the same manufacturer, made one right after the other will bend differently. Rod companies average the bends and find the guide placement that will work for the range of flex’s that come off of the assembly line. Every rod that I am wrapping for someone has the guides placed in specific locations for that particular blank. This will give you the optimum performance available from the rod.

Grip Length: Since every person’s body type is different the length of grip will be different for every person. Also, the type of application will determine how long the grips are. A rod made for fishing 100# line for tuna if being used in a harness is going to be a lot shorter than if I’m building the rod for someone who likes to fish the rail. Same logic applies to bass fishing. A lot of people like rods with a bit of a longer butt if they happen to be a larger person, or if they want a little more casting distance or leverage for pulling fish out of cover.

Components: This encompasses the type of grip setup you want, what type of guides, what guide inserts (alconite, SiC, Silicone Nitride II, Zirconium, etc). Most factory produced rods come with decent quality components but if you spend a lot of time on the water or you just want the best that is available, a custom rod is the only way to go.


Those are just some of the many reasons to build your own rod.  The biggest advantage I feel is that you don't have to compromise.  You can build it how you want, have it look like you want, and have a piece of equipment that you can fish with pride.

The necessary tools:
A rod lathe/hand wrapper - This can be as simple as a couple cardboard boxes with "V's" cut in them, all the way to a $1000 Renzetti rod lathe (that is what I use). Other great power lathes are: Custom Power Wrap, American Tackle/RodSmith/PacBay, and Batson.

Drying setup - even if you wrap by hand, you will need a dryer (unless turning the rod 180 degrees every 30seconds for 4+ hours sounds like fun). Flex coat, batson, pac bay and others all make reliable rod dryers.  As far as RPM goes, I have always had excellent luck with 18rpm.

Thread carriage - most machines come with a carriage to hold the threads that you are wrapping on the rod, but if you are going to use the box rod support method, just take a phone book, open it, lay the thread through it, close it and that will provide enough tension to wrap effectively.

Thread Clippers - spring loaded are the best imo

Masking Tape - 1" and 1/4"

Alcohol lamp

Dremel/bench grinder - used to grind the guide feet to a point so that it is easy to wrap the thread over them.

Paper towels - you will go through rolls like no one's business

Exacto knife - used for cutting tag ends.  Get a 100 count box of blades as well.  Thread dulls them pretty quickly

Rod building mixing cups - Silicone will make the finish not cure evenly and cups made for rod building are made without silicone whereas most plastic pieces made for general use have silicone used as the mold release agent.

Burnishing tool - the FlexCoat tool is the best imo

Rod building thread - same silicone issue as the cups

Color preserver - any threads other than NCP thread, metallic thread, or black requires color preserver to maintain it's luster when the finish is applied

Rod finish - my favorite stuff is Bullard DII Diamond.  Really easy to use, dries crystal clear, doesn't yellow, and it has a long pot life.

Disposable brushes - used for putting your finish on. I like the purple FlexCoat brushes

Rubber cement

Rod builders epoxy - the stuff I like the most is U40 Rod Bond because it doesn't run all over the place.  It is a paste epoxy.

Cork reamers

Denatured Alcohol


Assembling the grips and reel seat
The method I use is the one outlined by Bill "SaltyDawg" Havens in this video.  If you are using cork, just ream the grips so that they slide down to where you want them without much force and epoxy them in place.




Guide Placement
After a while you'll be able to guess where the guides should be, static test the rod and make adjustments from there.  When starting out, copy the placement of the factory version of the rod, tape the guides on with the 1/4" masking tape, put a reel on, thread the line through the guides, tie the line off to something and load the rod.  The line should NOT touch the blank.  My rule of thumb: use the least amount of guides possible to keep the line off of the blank and to have the line make a smooth transition from guide to guide (no sharp angles).  There are a ton of different theories and techniques when it comes to guide spacing and sizing; don't worry about that until you have a few rods under your belt.

Wrapping

Here is a video that outlines how to start and stop the wrap.


Use 1/4" masking tape to hold the guide in place as you wrap over the guide foot.  Once you reach the masking tape with the thread, peel it off and then finish the wrap.  Another tip: start all of your thread wraps, tie offs and inlays on the bottom of the rod (that is the side of the rod that is facing the ground when being held by the fisherman).

One thing to keep in mind, it is important to keep your guide wraps even on double foot guides.  You don't want uneven wraps as it won't look clean.  Use your compass or calipers to make the wraps even.

Putting the tip on
Most people like using the heat reactive glue to hold the tip on but imo, that stuff sucks.  Use 5min epoxy.  If you have to replace the tip you can heat it up, let it cool and then heat it up again and it should come off.

Lining up the guides
When wrapping the rod, dont be concerned about the guides being perfectly lined up.  When your done wrapping , you'll be able to move the guides fairly easilly.  Put a reel on the rod and line the stripping guide (guide closest to the reel) up with the center of the spool.  Take the reel off and flip the rod so that the guides are on the bottom. Use the blank as a center mark and adjust all of the guides to line up with the stripper.  The reason we do it this way is that almost all blanks have a slight curve in them and you'll pull your hair out if you try to line up the guides by looking through them. 

Applying Finish
This is pulled from a post that I made on another rod building forum:

"The most beautiful wrap job in the world will look like 3day old dogshit if it's under an ugly coat of finish". -My rod building mentor

I heard my mentor say that about 10 years ago and it really stuck with me. Although I heard the words, I still had MANY issues with my finish that I could not get ironed out. I was at a point where my finish jobs were on par with factory rods and I was content with that. Then the shit hit the fan when I started to read this forum and the stripersonline forums. Builders were churning out rods with finishes that looked like they were encased inside of crystal. I was floored.  Lots of experimentation and failures lead me to what I do now.

Below I will outline what I do to get a relatively flat, clean finish. Let me preface this withthe statement that there are a million ways to skin a cat and what you do may be different and you may have a much better finish than I do, but I hope that this can help some of the beginners.

Things you will need:
Rod Finish - I like Bullards DII Diamond. It is The best and most user friendly finish I have ever used. That's my experience with it and if you have a particular finish that you like, stick with it.

Color Preserver - I use and like good ol' FlexCoat. It looks like elmers glue and smells weird but it works great.

Brushes - I like the FlexCoat disposible brushes. I'm not going to clean a brush multiple times a day when working on rods. Use em and toss em. Also, this plays into the cross-contamination issue where something may get on a brush and affect your finish.

Rod dreyers - anything will work. I have a couple but I would throw the cutest kitten in the world off of a cliff for a 4 or 6 bay rod dryer. The more dryers you have, the better. (being broke sucks)

Rod building mixing cups - yes it helps to use rod building cups. Most plastic pieces are molded with silicone as the release agent. Rod building cups are made without silicone. As most of you know, silicone is the devil in terms of rod finish.

The most valuable piece of rod bulding equipment I own is not my renzetti rod lathe, it's my PacBay epoxy mixer. I love this little bugger because it introduces no bubbles into your finish. Also, I measure my finish, put it in the 2oz cup and then put it in the mixer. While it's mixing I do a once-over on the rod to make sure i dont have any dust bunnies on there and I set up my brushes and paper towels. It's a time saver.



An alcohol lamp

Epoxy syringes

A CLEAN working area to apply finish. It doesnt matter if your finish goes on beautifully if the surface of it looks like the top of your television set (not a single human has a dust-free television set).


The How-To

A good rod finish starts at how things hare handled from the get go. After your grips are on make sure the blank is clean. Use denatured alcohol as some rod blanks cannot withstand acetone (super seekers are one of them, ask me how I know ).

When wrapping the rod, handle the thread as little as possible.

Wash your hands every 30-45mins. Hand oils can and will cause fish-eyes.

Don't show the rod off to your buddies before it's done. Invariably they will have just eaten fried chicken and will finger fuck your guide wraps (again, ask me how i know)

Clean your thread tools. This means your thread clippers, razor blades and burnishing tool.

When measuring your epoxy, BE EXACT! I don't just go to the same mark on each syringe, I go to the same spot on the mark (ie: the top of the 3cc line). If you have a bubble in your syringe, that is empty space so it won't be equal to the other syringe if that one has no bubbles.

Don't be cheap with your rod finish, mix more than you think you need. Lets say for example you are off by just a little bit. You filled to the top of the 1cc line on your resin, and the bottom of the 1cc line on your hardener. Your finish may come out fine but i dont want to risk hours of work on a small, avoidable mistake. To combat this, mix a larger batch of epoxy. If you went to the top of the 3cc line with the resin and to the bottom of the 3cc line with the hardener, it won't affect anything because it is such a small percentage of the overall mixture (if mixing two 5gallon buckets of liquid together and being off by one gallon it would be a big deal whereas if you were mixing two olympic sized swimming pools together, 1gallon is negligible).

Set your rod up in your rod turning lathe. Some people use their dryer with a slip-clutch to turn the rod, but ive found that i can get smoother edges with the rod turning at a faster speed. Also, the way I apply finish, as you'll see, the rod isnt turning under power a whole lot.

Your first coat of epoxy should be nothing more than a thread sealer. I put this coat on very thin so that all I am doing is bonding everything in place.

Under power come to the edge of the wrap with your brush and start your lathe spinning. It is important that your rod is centered because if it is not your edge wont be straight.

Once you have the edge done, use HORIZONTAL brush strokes to apply finish the rest of the way. Once you have gotten to the other edge, spin the lathe under power again to get a nice clean edge.

Around the guide feet you'll notice that the epoxy will soak in to the threads and you'll see the threads continuing to show through the finish. Keep applying finish until this stops. You want the channel between the guide foot and the threads to be a solid block of epoxy.

After you have your finish applied, what i like to do is to go back to the first wrap I applied finish to and get the rod spinning under power. While it's spinning, take your alcohol lamp and heat up the epoxy. Don't over heat it. Having the rod spinning will help to prevent this and the spinning will assist in leveling the epoxy. Additionally, the heat will thin the epoxy allowing the small bubbles to escape leaving you with a clear finish.

Transfer the rod to your dryer.

I like to apply my subsequent coats within 48hrs of the previous coat. I feel that the finish layers will bond together rather than on top of each other if done this way.

The 2nd, 3rd and even 4th coat will go on the same way as your first. The only difference is that you should apply the finish more liberally. Make sure the edges of the guide feet are completely encased in finish. No air gaps = no water intrusion.

Again.... HORIZONTAL BRUSH STROKES

Trouble Shooting

My finish is still soft/tacky after 24+ hours, what do I do? I would suggest cutting it off and redoing the rod. It sucks but here is why i recommend it: epoxy is only as strong as what you bond it to. If you put the worlds strongest, eleventy-ton epoxy only on your masking tape bushings under the reel seat, the bond between your reel seat and the blank is only as strong as the masking tape. The same thing applies to rod finish.

I put the finish on, went inside and made a sammich, pooped, read the front page of the newspaper, and when I went back to check on the rod, I had a huge fisheye on my crosswrap! What do I do?. If you plan on putting additional finish coats on, dont worry about it. Just make sure to keep an eye on that area when you do apply your next coat. If it's your final coat, what works for me to get rid of them is this: take your alcohol lamp and warm the epoxy in your cup (without melting the cup), apply a drop of the thinned finish to the fish eye and then heat up the area around where you put the drop. This will thin the finish a bit so that the drop and the epoxy already on the wrap blend together. Also since the epoxy is already getting gummy, it will revert from this thinned state back to being thick before the contaminate can cause a fisheye.

After the finish has fully cured, i have a large, cured bubble that is protruding out from under one of the guide feet, what do I do? Take the tip of your razor blade/exacto knife and cut the top of the bubble off. The next coat of finish will flow inside this void and will be unnoticeable.

The finish over my crosswrap/tigerwrap/scales/etc is lumpy and uneven, what do I do? Get some fine-grit sandpaper and affix it to a sanding block. With the rod spinning in your rod lathe, sand down the high spots while making sure you don't sand down to the threads. Clean the area with acetone on a lint free, clean rag.




That is the gist of it.  Feel free to post up your questions if you have any.

Links:
http://www.rodbuildingtutorials.com
http://www.mudhole.com
http://www.acidrod.com
http://www.anglersworkshop.com
http://www.bdoutdoors.com/forums/rod-building/

Some rods I've built:

Thanks for tutorial bro

I love custom rods think im gonna stick to them for my saltwater use

Finished my first build, and I'm hooked.  Definitely some things to work on for the next one, but overall I'm happy with it.
Scold helped me with some questions I had along the way (THANKS!), so hopefully he won't mind me posting these up here...

Awesome job man!  Beautiful tiger and clean work!

i've seen some of Jonathan's rods and their very well made and nice! 

WOW how did I miss this thread till now?

makes me want to wrap a few myself despite my notorious laziness.  Great job and thanks for sharing with the group!

Allen