Rod Building

Those who build their own fly rods

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Article

Rising Star

Jun 11. 2004
Review The Austin blanks from All Star Rods are quickly gaining a reputation among custom rod builders as being among the best performing blanks on the market, regardless of price. Bob Petti had a chance to build and fish a 4wt recently.
Click here to read the review of All Star Austin 9 4wt 2pc blank
Article

Lamar Reel Seats

Dec 12. 2002
Rod Building Andy Dear hits a home run with his custom reel seat spacers and complete reel seats. It's a rare thing for a product to get a "Global Class" GFF rating, but Andy's woodworking skills earn him that high honor easily.
Click here to see Andy's work
Article

Venneri's Reel Seats

Dec 10. 2002
Fine Craftsmanship Recently, GFF partners Bob Petti and Steve Schweitzer had the chance to visit Bob Venneri at his house and get a look-see into his workshop and how his seats are made, by hand, one at a time.
Click here to see and read more.
Article

The Making of a Prize Rod

Dec 6. 2002
Rod Building The grand prize for the Flymeister 2001 contest was a custom built fly rod made by Neal Hall, owner of Classic Destiny rods and president of the Custom Rod Builder's Guild.
Click here to see how the rod was designed and built.
Article

Bamboo part 6

Nov 13. 2002
Split cane Now that we have our strips of bamboo tapered into sections for our fly rod, the next step is to glue these strips together into whole rod sections.
Read Part 6 of Harry Boyd's continuing series - Gluing Strips into a Blank.
Article

Rainshadow Xcel

Nov 10. 2002
Rod Not only do all the major rod companies sell their blanks, there are several companies that produce and sell only blanks. Where to begin? Rainshadow might be one choice. Great, afordable blanks.
Read Bob Petti's review of RXF905
Article

Making grips II

Nov 1. 2002
Cork work There are two basic strategies for building a cork grip for a fly rod. The first involves gluing the rings directly onto the rod blank and then shaping the grip. Another way involves gluing the cork rings together off the blank, and then shaping the grip in a lathe setup before reaming and fitting to the rod blank. That process is described by Bob Petti in this article.
Article

Build a Grip Lathe

Nov 1. 2002
Cork Work As we've alluded to in other articles, making your own grips from cork rings is an important part of building a custom rod. "Staying with the cost-effective strategy, I decided to try and build my own cork lathe using common materials and a drill." Read more of Jon Jenkin's article.
Article

Bamboo part 5

Oct 16. 2002
Split Cane Harry Boyd teaches us the tools and techniques required to turn strips of bamboo into tapered sections of a fly rod in Part 5 of his continuing series.
Read on here
Article

Bamboo part 4

Oct 15. 2002
Split Cane Split cane: In the fourth installment of Harry Boyd's series on bulding bamboo fly rods, he describes the tools and processes of binding strips together and then heat-treating them in some sort of oven.
Read more here
Article

Bamboo part 3

Oct 14. 2002
Split cane This is the third section of Harry Boyd's continuing bamboo rod course. Here we begin to mold the raw bamboo into something that approaches the shape and form of a fly rod, and the real fun begins. Read more in Part 3 - Staggering Nodes and Rough Planing.
Article

Bamboo part 2

Oct 13. 2002
Split Cane Harry Boyd continues his series on the construction of bamboo fly rods with a look at selecting, preparing, and splitting your culms of tonkin bamboo.
See the article here.

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