This was taken while the rod is mounted in my finishing fixture, with a barbecue rotisserie motor spinning the rod to keep the epoxy from running and dripping, above my terribly messy workbench. The old Penn Spinfisher 710 box contains rod making supplies. You can see spools of thread, a razor knife (orange/red handle), scissors, hemostat, and more miscellaneous tools than I feel like naming. The rod uses metallic blue and red threads, as well as non-metallic red, blue and white thread. You can see the metallic blue easily where I have the most of it, at the ends of the diamond - the red threads are in the wrap itself and hard to see here.
It's dry now. Might even be fishable in the morning, when we're planning to get out and play.
That is gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteI love the color combo.
That is truly a beautiful piece of art. Enjoy its use!
ReplyDeleteThanks. And thanks to Phil, too. It is pretty in the daylight. The center thread in the diamonds is red metallic, and it doesn't really show up without the sunlight.
DeleteThis is a rebuild of the first rod I made from scratch parts, pretty much 40 years ago. It has caught far too many "personal best" fish to recall.
Looks great Si. The metallic thread is neat. Never used it.
ReplyDeleteTerry
Fla.
It is beyond a bitch to work with. I really planned to use a lot more metallic thread, but it pushed me past my patience - and I'm a patient guy. Some of the hobbies I've cultivated over the years require extreme amounts of patience, but this was too much. You need to keep the metallic thread under more tension than regular thread, but not too much or it unravels, and then if a previously completed wrap should touch any part of the bench or the winding supports, it self-destructs instantly, like a uncoiling a spring.
DeleteI eventually made a fixture with the spool on a socket head cap screw and a plastic clamp on the other end. The clamp acted like a spring, exerting more tension on the spool the more I tightened it down - but was more forgiving than a wing nut. I held the head of the SHCS in a drill chuck in my lathe tail stock, and adjusted tension to make it behave. Maybe I've learned enough to overcome its nastiness.
Beautiful workmanship!
ReplyDelete