Kaboom1

Since we hijacked ol’ blue’s thread enough I’d thought I start a new one. The whole scrounge rod idea got me thinking when I first heard about it. I didn’t have any blanks laying around but I had several extra other parts. I had plenty of cork rings, misc guides and winding checks and a butt cap (from a reel seat that ended up with a permanent fighting butt). I was going to be driving right past Janns about a moth after I got the idea, so I started perusing Jann’s site for ideas. I came up with this 5’ UL spinning blank for $8. A $3.50 Pac Bay black graphic spinning seat just need a butt cap to make it useable for a fly seat. I had almost enough black snakes, just needed a stripping guide and tip top. Also got a full length graphite arbor. Total investment is less than $20 in this rod.

The butt cap, reel seat/arbor, turned handle and winding check are allepoxied on, tip top glued on. guides are spaced and laid out and of course spine is marked. Just need to get guides wrapped. Stopped at that point to rebuild deck and get outside yardwork/landsacping/garden done. Now I’m ready to take rod wrapped out on new deck to work on this rod, AND a 4pc 5wt Tiger Eye I’m trying to build at the same time.

Tiger Eye it as same state. Seat, handle and WC are on, guides are ready to wrap. The plan was to take wrapper out on deck after work in the evenings with cigar.

Bug

Mine started out that way as well. I had all the guides. I used single foot so there would be half as many wraps to do.
I used crappy cork I had from other builds. After it was turned, it still looked crappy, so I covered it in rattan( had that too).
I decided that I was not going to spend a lot for a reel seat, so I went to the big box store and got a plumbing fitting and made a sliding band reel seat. The wood for the seat came from Rusty Gates’ wood plie!
Winding check and grip check were turned from cow horn that I had laying around.
So my little experiment turned out to be a tricked-out tadpole!
Bottom line is that I have a total investment of about $10.00 in the rod. I don’t count my on labor since I work for about 3cents an hour!
The little bugger fishes well for me with a DT4F line…YMMV.

Brad