I’ve often thought about building a rod or two but I have never really tried it. I did go as far as to purchase a couple of inexpensive rod blanks off of e-bay a couple of years ago, but I haven’t attempted to do anything with them. I’d like to build these two blanks before I tackle building a fly rod that I would be proud to keep and fish.
I only have two problems. One blank is a MH saltwater spinning or casting blank that I want to build into a flounder rod and the other blank is an old Fenwick yellow glass 6’6" medium action spinning rod. I want to build the saltwater rod first and hopefully gain experience so that I can do a good job on the Fenwick. I had a rod just like it when I was younger that a friend built for me that I unfortunately broke. I’d like to come close to duplicating that rod so I can fish for carp and catfish like I did with the old one.
The reason I need help is that I am unfamilar with supply houses for rod building. Most of the fly shops I know offer plenty of stuff for building fly rods but nothing for spinning rods. I have a catalog for Mudhole, but I was wondering if any of you know of other places like Mudhole that offer guides and grips and reel seats for spinning rods that you would be willing to recommend? My knowledge of rod building supply houses went away when Dale Clemens Custom Tackle closed his doors a couple of years ago.
Have fun and welcome to the addiction. I just bought a lathe so I can start to make my own handles and reel seat inserts. (You don’t need to go to this extreme. I’m just a tool junky who gets bored easily)
Use any of the sponsors there and you will be OK. And it is a great resourse for building in general. For supplies, I’ve used Jann’s, Hook and Hackle, Bingham, Schneider’s, and Utmost. All of these are fine. I would highly recommend Dancraft when you get around to building a fly rod. Utmost is Batson’s factory outlet, and they have some great closeouts at times. And they know the line well.
I’m not familiar with all of those on Joe’s list, but IIRC, Rocky Mountain is shut down now. They took money and orders, but didn’t deliver.
Thanks folks. I’m definitely going to check out rodbuilders.org.
I’d have let those blanks sit forever, but I ran into a fellow while fishing the other day and he was out “test fishing” a half dozen fly rods he built over the winter. He said that building a rod isn’t as difficult as it seems as long as you are patient and take your time so I figure I may as well give it a shot.
