Well here's another rod that is for myself. This one I actually started the grips and seat on back almost a year ago but just never had the time to finish it. So I figured I'd burn the midnight oil last night and got her done so I could take it on vacation with me.

The blank is a Rainshadow 10'8" 7wt 4pc Switch blank. Grips are something I came up with. I turned them out of all exotic corks (brown burl, rubberized cork, aransas cork, burnt cork and craft foam. Then I decided to dress up the fore grip with something different so I made it in two pieces and trimmed down the ends so they would fit underneath a metal trim ring. The trim ring is actually a knurled threaded nut from a Batson A8 reel seat but I think it gives a nice accent to the long grip. Then the aft grip I turned in the design of a REC rear grip I saw that I liked the shape of. The reel seat is a nice piece of Buckeye burl and is mounted with nickle silver BUL5, but I inverted the seat and mounted the front hood in the rear grip and recessed it to move the reels weight farther back to balance the rod better, and also added a second lock nut from a spare BUL5 to it.

Wraps dont show up exactly like they do in person in the pics but they are Cobalt Blue (No CP) with about 4 turns of silver metallic on the bottom edge of the wrap, single turn on the inner edge, and single turn in the center of the wrap. Used single foot guides to keep the tip weight down and also used a full Titanium framed FUJI SIC (Silicone Carbide insert) stripper guide.

To add to the look I did a "Starburst" style jungle cock feather inlay on the butt and also put the opening line from my favorite movie ( A River Runs Through It" on the butt section ("In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing- Norman McClean". Putting the finish and keeping it level over about an 11" long section was fun lol.















Steve