How to start on selecting rod components?

Started by Wolfram M, July 05, 2021, 11:22:36 PM

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Wolfram M

Considering a fall/winter project. (As if I don't have enough.) I have a few larger open-face spinning reels now for 8-14lb line, but no rods to fit them. I'd like to build a medium to medium heavy rod, around 6'6" or thereabouts (I'm not real picky on length) for hybrid bass trolling and mud bank catfish. I've decided abusing my ultralight and "heavy ultralight" rods don't deserve to be abused like that anymore, no matter how cheap they were to buy initially.

I've repaired and re-fitted guides to rods before, and I have a wrapping jig. Have always used Coats polyester upholstery thread and "rod varnish". I have several old junk fibreglass rods that could be used as practice, but buy the time I order a set of guides, actual wrapping thread, and a modern epoxy topcoat/sealer, reworking an old, sun-degraded fibreglass rod with a broken reel seat and powdery foam grips seems like false economy.

I've looked at the spinning rod kits from Get Bit Outdoors, and they have a "heavy" graphite blank, 6ft long, for a tenner. "Heavy" is not medium, but it *is* 10$. They have Fuji rod guide sets for another 10-18$, proper wrapping thread is only 3-12 bucks for two colors if I go one solid/one metallic, reel seat sets around 25$ with the cork, seat, and arbor, etc

But what size seat? Do I need a 5.5" or a 7.5" or 10" cork grip below the reel? How many guides of what size? Better off to just buy a 40$ kit and work from that (Looking that way, actually.)

Here's what I do know:

I prefer cork grips over EVA foam.
I mostly fish lakes from docks or a pontoon boat, so longest casts are only 40-50ft.
I am looking for a 10-12lb line weight, and fish monofilament.
I am looking for a reason to use my $2.50 junk sale fishing reel collection  ;D ;D

Anyone with some tips for selecting rod components to maximize the chance of building a first rod equal to or better than what I could buy for the same money?

Swami805

I don't know that building your own rods will save you much money, it's more about getting a rod the way you want it.Kits aren't a bad way to get started or pick out the various components  for something unique to you.
Mudhole and Anglers workshop have a good selection too.
Do what you can with that you have where you are

Wolfram M

Yeah, these days a good rod is easy to find and not as expensive as I remember them being when I was a kid. I essentially took 15 years off from fishing due to having to work 50-60 hour weeks to survive in industrial maintenance, now I'm running my own machine shop and if I wanna go fishing, I go fishing.

I wish now I'd bought more of the closeout-clearance Gander combos when the local one shut down, I could have bought a 55 gallon drum full of them and instead only bought the one-love the rod but the reel turned out to not last long.

philaroman

#3
why don't you list those "several old junk fibreglass rods"
might be a gem of a blank in there, disguised by age / ugly components

you want 1-pc., correct?   prob. EXTRA S/H charges on that $10 blank

happyhooker

I suppose you are looking at those "Mahogany" blanks & kits at Get Bit.  I know nothing about those blanks so can't help you there.

I agree with Swami that you normally won't save any money building vs. buying complete.  Extensive and careful shopping of clearance, etc. can change the equation, but it's a lot of work and you'll be tempted to compromise on some things just to meet a price point.

If you just want the satisfaction of building your own rod and maybe getting some techniques down (and those are not bad things at all), a complete kit is tempting, but then you don't get to select the exact components you want. 

Some of those bigger rods for use with a bit heavier mono will have a little longer grip to balance the heavier reel you might be using.

As far as number of guides and spacing, there are any number of online resources that could help you.  Traditional way with spinning rods is one guide per foot of rod length, or maybe one per foot and add one more; start with a large (25-30 mm) gathering guide and "funnel" the line toward the tip with gradually smaller guides.  More modern ways include the "New Guide Concept" (NGC), which starts out smaller, uses the first couple of guides from the butt to funnel line, then finishes with a series if the same, or almost the same, size guides out to the tip.  It is not an exact science no matter how you choose to go.

Another online company that has been in business a long time (and the place I got my first components over 40 yrs. ago to build my first rod) is Netcraft (now Jann's Netcraft) in Ohio.  They sell guides in sets as well as individually, and have a good selection of handle parts, thread (you'd be surprised that a lot of folks use certain kinds of sewing thread, just as you have done), blanks, etc.  There are many companies that would want your business.

And, yes, it is a legitimate way to go with a good, used blank, that you can strip and rebuild with.

Frank


oc1

Deciding what you want is the hardest part.  Putting it all together is easy. 

The best place to start is put your reels on a bunch of different rods to find what is comfortable, functional and what you do not like about each one.

I think Get-Bit sells Batson-type rods.  The seem to be from the same factory that makes Rain Shadow and some other brands.  In my opinion, they are not very rugged but they are very light weight with decent action.

You could go to Mudhole and price out a RainShadow blank with those same fittings.  Don't get me wrong.  I hate Mudhole.  But, they do have a lot of stuff.

The usual cautions about falling down a rabbit hole.

JasonGotaProblem

#6
Dude. You sound like me a few months ago. Careful, that rabbit hole is steep.

In toying around online the cheapest I can build a rod with decent (all fuji) hardware (and a CRB color series blank) would be like $75 on mudhole.

You don't build to save money over the cheap rods. You build to get an excellent rod for the price of a decent rod.

Good luck.
Any machine is a smoke machine if you use it wrong enough.

Breadfan

I fell down the rabbit hole but now it's a business, so it's paying for itself. And my habit. One thing I learned early on is that it's expensive to build a cheap rod, but you'll spend less money building an expensive rod. In other words, that 20 dollar rod in Walmart will cost you 40-50 to build but that 350.00 Lamiglas will only cost you 250.00 to build. I did run into some cheap (good) blanks and some cheap (good) cork handles. Got some cheap guides and cheap (but good) reel seats and I'm making rods for less than ten bucks a pop, mainly just to hone my skills. Whatever you choose, go with the Fuji NGC system, you 'll cast much smoother and farther. Any rod blank you buy will have a spec sheet with dimensions for the reel seat size and possibly a guide spec sheet. Read up on the links below and you will learn a lot about placing guides. I would encourage you to join rodbuilding.org. they are very nice people and will help you through the process.

https://www.rodbuilding.org/library/newguide.html



Swami805

Check out voodoo custom rods too. They have a rod finish,diamond II that's all I use, pretty much tried all the others. If you're refinishing blanks CPrxtra is a really good product. The have Fuji and alps guides as well. Super nice people
Do what you can with that you have where you are

RC4600

Lots of good advice here so far. Count me in as a guy who loves to build rods, so my advice is jump in and see if you like it. Forget component cost, shop around, shop wise, you will never remember what it cost unless you keep notes (I do). And, buy/build with quality.

On blanks: I have used Lamiglass (older from the Dick Posey era), Sabre, Seeker, Baston, and assorted Fly Blanks. My current favorite is Seeker and they are US made. Anglers Workshop has good prices on Seeker blanks.

Sorry for the babble, I got carried away.

I just wanted to pass on a source of quality Cork, well priced!!! Also. It's Corkspecialties.net I've used his cork an its excellent. RC

philaroman

if you have a good set of reamers, here's a good source of FREE decent cork:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=chimay+750ml&FORM=HDRSC1
well, the beer is fairly priced $12-30, depending...  but cork is free  ;)

JasonGotaProblem

Quote from: philaroman on July 07, 2021, 08:08:17 PM
if you have a good set of reamers, here's a good source of FREE decent cork:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=chimay+750ml&FORM=HDRSC1
well, the beer is fairly priced $12-30, depending...  but cork is free  ;)
I've seen this mentioned before. I'm starting to wonder if you're on the chimay payroll as an online rep. I mean theres worse ways to earn bait money  8)

I kept a cork from a bottle of st bernardus (christmas ale is spectacular) that may one day become a reel knob. Figured you'd approve.

But on topic: there's lots of ways to cut costs on building a rod. For one, most these websites have a clearance section. 2 months ago the mudhole clearance section was full of Fuji guides, and I stocked up at a comfortable discount. Blanks go on sale too. The lamiglas website has a large clearance section for example.

But also, and I'm already certain I'm gonna be in the minority on this one, but I'm not convinced there's a huge difference between a $50 blank and a $300 blank. Higher modulus graphite allows you to achieve the same strength with fewer layers, so a $200 7' 6-12# fast taper blank will certainly be lighter than a $30 blank of the same specs, and there will be a difference in the quality but it likely won't be 7x better to justify the price difference. And with the advent of high speed cameras (and rod builders realizing they can use them) we've come to learn that in fact it's not the friction on the guides that robs power on a cast but instead line slapping on the blank thats the real culprit. As such the shape and position of the guides seems to be more important than the material the rings are made from. So spending more for the super fancy rings is optional. I've never seen a ring with an indent from line, and I've also never seen a ring crack from trauma that didn't also destroy the frame, but that's just my own experience.

I'd summarize by saying a cheap blank with decent guides that have been carefully placed, and fine tuned after doing test casts and test pulls, will outperform a fancy blank with fancy guides that have just been thrown on in a way that makes it look good on the shelf. So if you're already great at the mechanics of building a great rod, high end components may take your creations to that next level, but if you're not there yet (and I know I'm not) the basic-but-not-garbage components will get you there. And with the price difference you can build 2 more for the same cost and get more practice.

With that said I only use Fuji guides and reel seats. But alconite is about as fancy as I go. Aluminum oxide is just fine by me.

Also, there's a lot of stuff on the shelves that can be stripped and redone. I'm willing to bet you can't buy the blank a star aerial spinning rod is made on for less than you can buy the built rod for (economies of scale, etc). But they tend to be built correctly on spine with Fuji seats. So you could strip and redo the guides, and you just built a great rod for under $100 and didn't need to mess with the cork or the seat.

Any machine is a smoke machine if you use it wrong enough.

Breadfan

Quote from: JasonGotaPenn on July 08, 2021, 02:08:41 PM
Quote from: philaroman on July 07, 2021, 08:08:17 PM
if you have a good set of reamers, here's a good source of FREE decent cork:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=chimay+750ml&FORM=HDRSC1
well, the beer is fairly priced $12-30, depending...  but cork is free  ;)
I've seen this mentioned before. I'm starting to wonder if you're on the chimay payroll as an online rep. I mean theres worse ways to earn bait money  8)

I kept a cork from a bottle of st bernardus (christmas ale is spectacular) that may one day become a reel knob. Figured you'd approve.

But on topic: there's lots of ways to cut costs on building a rod. For one, most these websites have a clearance section. 2 months ago the mudhole clearance section was full of Fuji guides, and I stocked up at a comfortable discount. Blanks go on sale too. The lamiglas website has a large clearance section for example.

But also, and I'm already certain I'm gonna be in the minority on this one, but I'm not convinced there's a huge difference between a $50 blank and a $300 blank. Higher modulus graphite allows you to achieve the same strength with fewer layers, so a $200 7' 6-12# fast taper blank will certainly be lighter than a $30 blank of the same specs, and there will be a difference in the quality but it likely won't be 7x better to justify the price difference. And with the advent of high speed cameras (and rod builders realizing they can use them) we've come to learn that in fact it's not the friction on the guides that robs power on a cast but instead line slapping on the blank thats the real culprit. As such the shape and position of the guides seems to be more important than the material the rings are made from. So spending more for the super fancy rings is optional. I've never seen a ring with an indent from line, and I've also never seen a ring crack from trauma that didn't also destroy the frame, but that's just my own experience.

I'd summarize by saying a cheap blank with decent guides that have been carefully placed, and fine tuned after doing test casts and test pulls, will outperform a fancy blank with fancy guides that have just been thrown on in a way that makes it look good on the shelf. So if you're already great at the mechanics of building a great rod, high end components may take your creations to that next level, but if you're not there yet (and I know I'm not) the basic-but-not-garbage components will get you there. And with the price difference you can build 2 more for the same cost and get more practice.

With that said I only use Fuji guides and reel seats. But alconite is about as fancy as I go. Aluminum oxide is just fine by me.

Also, there's a lot of stuff on the shelves that can be stripped and redone. I'm willing to bet you can't buy the blank a star aerial spinning rod is made on for less than you can buy the built rod for (economies of scale, etc). But they tend to be built correctly on spine with Fuji seats. So you could strip and redo the guides, and you just built a great rod for under $100 and didn't need to mess with the cork or the seat.



Well said. I do not understand why anyone would pay 75.00 for ONE guide, thinking they have the latest and greatest when all they really have is just another guide.  Yes, those large Fuji Torzite guides are 75.00 bucks. I have a rod that is 30 years old, still in use and has Fuji aluminum oxide guides on it and not a wear mark, or speck of rust on it. I'm sure every one of you do to! Unless someone wants to pay, I will never up sell those expensive guides. I'm doing a test right now of some of those really cheap .30 cent guides just to see how long they will last. Otherwise it's mostly American tackle Aluminum oxide or Fuji Aluminum oxide on all my builds. I have a surf rod with chrome boat rod guides (cause' I thought it looked cool) on it and it makes no difference in casing distance. All my surf rods, no matter what guides are on them, cast within 2 or 3 yards of each other!

Wolfram M

I will probably start with thrift store and pawn shop rods that have a tip top broken off, or a cork handle rotten off, or some such damage.

There are *barrels* of rods in various pawn shops and thrift stores around town, I'll pick a few of what I think are the best 10$ specials and see what I can come up with.

philaroman

#14
Quote from: Breadfan on July 08, 2021, 05:08:13 PM
Well said. I do not understand why anyone would pay 75.00 for ONE guide, thinking they have the latest and greatest when all they really have is just another guide.  Yes, those large Fuji Torzite guides are 75.00 bucks. I have a rod that is 30 years old, still in use and has Fuji aluminum oxide guides on it and not a wear mark, or speck of rust on it. I'm sure every one of you do to! Unless someone wants to pay, I will never up sell those expensive guides. I'm doing a test right now of some of those really cheap .30 cent guides just to see how long they will last. Otherwise it's mostly American tackle Aluminum oxide or Fuji Aluminum oxide on all my builds. I have a surf rod with chrome boat rod guides (cause' I thought it looked cool) on it and it makes no difference in casing distance. All my surf rods, no matter what guides are on them, cast within 2 or 3 yards of each other!

you're absolutely right:
Alconite is lighter in weight which is nice, but I get no other functional benefits over Hardloy & older, softer Fuji ALO2
all doing fine for decades, even w/ thinnest, uncoated, slightly-hairy braid -- don't really need the better specs of SiC & higher

HOWEVER, you simply MUST try the luxury of solid Ti frames (esp., tall single-foot spinning)
that's just different/better metal, unavailable w/ cheaper ceramics
not suggesting you pay retail, but keep an eye out for a good deal

this frugal consumer was tempted by a Johnny Morris Inshore 7'6" M, on clearance for $99
basically, in order to make me buy $120 ballpark of all-Fuji premium components w/ 7+1 SiC TI,
BPS paid me $20 & put everything together on their best blank w/ so-so cork
guide size/height not ideal, but good enough to use as is for last decade+
eventually, I think the guides can be split into TWO complete reduction trains
to be completed w/ micro running guides at reasonable cost

                                    ******************************

yes, Jason, the cork on this otherwise high-end rod is not as good as Chimay  :P
I can easily find, spell & pronounce Chimay -- other tasty Belgian ales miss one of those categories