Rod Building

Those who build their own fly rods

Rod Building - articles

Article Rod care Feb 28. 2005 Equipment The first part of a three part harmony about maintaining your precious fly fishing equipment - Rod, Reel And Line - by tropical fishing guide Roland Henrion. Learn how to prolong the lifespan of your fly rods. See lots of good advice and instructional pictures in the article.	Article Bamboo part 7 Aug 23. 2004 The last installment Follow along as Harry Boyd takes us through the process of trimming the bamboo blank to the proper length, preparing and mounting your ferrules, and adjusting the fit of the ferrules. Many thanks to Harry for this well received series of articles. Click here to read the last chapter.	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