Advice

[cklenske]

I'm going to be building my first fly rod this spring. One of the guys in our local club is going to help me - he's really good at it. We are going to start it after he gets back from his winter-long vacation.

While he's gone, I want to learn as much about rod building as I can so I won't seem like so much of a dumb a$$ when we are doing it.

Any books or videos on rod building that you can recommend?

I haven't picked out a rod blank yet. It's going to be a 7-weight rod for bass fishing. Any recommendations on which blank to use? How about other components? Anything else I should know?

Appreciate your help. Thanks.

CJ

[herefishy]

Try to find someone's old broken rod so you can have a piece to practice your thread wrapping on, then go to "features" on the main menu, and click on "rodbuilding" down toward the bottom - go through that series by Al Campbell, and you'll have most of what you know to build a rod. Then you'll have your friend to ask the hard questions of, and you can look at the tutorials on www.rodbuildingforum.com for the fillins. It's fun - jump in.
My only other advice is pretend you have to take the entire winter to do the project, and it has to be "perfect". It doesn't have to be perfect to be fun, far from it, but some of the pictures I see of peoples first projects just amaze me. Oh, and get a compass or calipers so you can measure things precisely. My first few rods would have greatly benefitted from "do-overs".
Oh, and you'll get lots of advice for blanks - I'll start it off with the "rainshadow" series from Batson, another idea is the "tradition II" from Cabelas.

[Sully]

Curtis Creek Manifesto. Its got good data in it with some comedy tossed in....and the paperback is cheap.

[dudley]

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/begin/graphite/

[Betty Hiner]

I, too, would recommend the Al Campbell tutorial. If you really need a book, check out "Handcrafting A Graphite Fly Rod" by L.A. Garcia. It's a Frank Amato publication, ISBN 1-878175-58-0. $15.95. Great pictures!

[harleybob87]

I will throw in my 2 cents here as well. All Cambells articles on here are excellent. have fun with it. you are going to make mistakes and have do overs and that is part of life in beginning rod building. Like what was previously stated don't rush anything, take your time and enjoy the rod your are building. Watch it transform into a piece of art. Don't be afraid to ask question here or of your friend, THERE IS NO DUMB QUESTION!!!!!!!!!! My recommendations for a blank are rainshadow/batson or my all time favorite is the tigereye blanks. Either one will give you lots of use and preform much beyond your expectations. And lest I forget beware this like tying flies and fishing is very very attictive.

[herefishy]

There's also a good tutorial on the flyfisherman.com site by Bob Widgren of Los Pinos fly rods. There're just a lot of little tricks that will make your rod look prettier, although not fish any better.

[jw healy]

I found this Youtube video very helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NKKA...eature=related