| Rod Building Set - Fishing Product Review | |
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Part 1 - The Kit
F.R. "Fritz" Nordengren
Producer - Co Founder
New Media for Non Profits
www.nmnp.org
Cabela’s Premium Rod Building Set $99.00
St Croix SC III Rod Building Kit $70.00
Because I wanted something to do during the winter months, I was lucky to receive a rod building kit for Christmas. I wanted to add a spinning rod to my small collection of rods and since I already had a medium heavy and medium power rod, I decided on a medium light. To help put it all together, I ordered Cabela’s Premium Rod Building set, and I am very pleased with both products.
First, some background about these kits. When you build your own rod, you can order each item separately: the blank, the winding thread, the handles, and guides, and the tiptop. You can truly create a rod to your own demanding specifications. The choices can be bewildering. So as a first timer, my gift of the St Croix Rod Building kit included all the parts necessary to build the rod:
Blank
End Cap
Cork handle
Reel seat
Foregrip
Winding check
Guides
Tiptop
3 colors of winding thread
5-minute epoxy (for glue)
Rod finish epoxy to coat and protect winding
Instructions
You can build a rod with those items without much else.
I ordered the Rod Building Set, which includes $150 worth of tools for $99. It includes:
A Flex Coat Hand wrapper (a work bench to turn the rod on
A drying Motor and stand (4 rpm motor)
A video by Artie Heber with step-by-step demonstrations
3 rod reamers
3 color gel pens for labeling and signing your rod
a tip sizer
tip top adhesive
and a tool pack including a burnisher, pick, and winding cutter.
I’m not sure I would have ordered all the things separately, but the price of the Rod Wrapper and motor are nearly the price of the kit, so it’s a good value.
Rod kits, the parts to build a rod, are as inexpensive at $35 in the Cabela’ s catalog and go as high as $163. I’m sure you can spend more or less. The video presentation makes one point, and that is, just by following a few simple steps, you will have a better-made rod than most off the shelf rods. That step is finding the rod’s spine.
A rod blank, when it is manufactured, has a natural curve to it. Finding that curve, and aligning the guides along it or on the opposite side – depending on the style of rod, give it more responsiveness and better strength and cast ability. As I watched the obviously home made video, I was impressed with how clear and easy to follow the instructions are. While there were a few points slightly different than the printed instructions, it did a great job of showing what to do.
Artie says the average rod can be built in 2 hours over a few days. I did mine in about 3 hours – mostly because I worked a few minutes at a time, and then went back to other chores.
After finding the rod’s spine and marking it, I used the rod reamers to expand the cork handles to the right size for the rod butt. The reaming was rough on my hands – in the future, I may invest in a ¼ inch round file to make it easier. The blisters will heal in a few days.
After test fitting the handle components, I slid them into place and glued them with the 5-minute epoxy included in the St Croix kit. After that, I attached the tip –top and then marked the location of each guide. The instructions included easy to follow measurements for a number of rod and guide styles.
With each guide held in place by masking tape, I began winding thread around the feet of the guides. Here is where the Rod Wrapper made the job easy, holding the rod in padded cradles and having a thread tension bobbin to make the wrapping go smooth.
When wrapped, the next step is to apply a color preserver to the thread so it looks good for years to come. Here’s the only complaint I have with the kit: The instructions say the kit includes "No Color Preserver" thread – meaning it doesn’t need color preserver. And they don’t include color preserver in the kit. However, my kit had standard thread – so in a few seasons, I expect it will fade. I’ll order color preserver for my next rod.
The final step is to mix the two-part rod finish and brush it over the winding. This includes an optional butt wrap for decoration. The rod spins slowly on the 4-rpm motor for a few hours as the finish hardens. If the rod didn’t spin, gravity would cause the finish to flow to the low spot, making it dry lop-sided.
All in all, these kits de-mystify the process of rod building by giving you all you need within out having to research and pick out each component separately. And if Artie is right, the rod is already better quality than one off the shelf.
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