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Jacks Grampa

Epoxying wraps

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I personally like varnish. To clarify for Jacks Grampa, it is not the epoxy that protects the ferrule, it is actually the winding itself that reinforces the rod at a high stress point. Then the coating protects the thread from rotting.

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My rod turner isn't working right now.  I've been using Flex UV resin on the last couple of rods where I replaced the guide/guides.  Seems to be working so far.   Usually when I do wraps,  I coat the wraps with a color preserver first.   This prevents the guide foot from showing through the wraps.  You can get a nice effect if you do an underwrap of metallic thread, then a wrap of thread, and just a coat of epoxy or varnish.

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Wrap epoxy just covers the wraps to make them more durable, it doesn't strengthen the rod in any way. The ferrules on modern day blanks for about the past 15 years now don't benefit from being wrapped or epoxied anymore far as talking about strength. For the longest time it was true that ferrules were strengthened buy wrapping and epoxying right down to with in 1/8" from the edge. But now a day with ferrule design they actually don't even have to be wrapped, but most builders simply do it now just because it was done for so long that most non rod building customers would think the rod was not finished if they were not wrapped.

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😄Samsonboi teaching you how to do your job, Steve.  It's a generational thing!

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It doesn't add any structural integrity, even if dropped. Simply dropping  it even if on the ferrule will not damage the female sections ferrule. No real weight coming down hard to damage it at all. Blanks are a good deal tougher than people give them credit for these days.

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Unless you use them where we are in the salt going after large grumpy fish in mangrove jungle areas... but even then, whenever one of my anglers breaks a rod it's usually something the angler did as opposed to any weakness in the rod... I've seen more than one brand new high end tarpon rod that came in four sections - go home in five pieces....  Bad habits learned in a freshwater environment will really cost you in the salt where the fish are a lot bigger than they're used to.

 

The two things I'm always trying to get my anglers not to do - the first is "high sticking"  (the closer the fish is to the boat the lower your rod needs to be....), the second is allowing any fly rod to touch the skiff while bent hard under a severe load - since if it happens the rod snaps every time... No matter how well the blank is made or the rod itself is made... 

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Definitely varnishing the wrap after color preserver is the way to go. It will not make it any harder to replace a guide and the wraps won't unravel or rot. Color preserver doesn't do much. It's just so that the color of the wrap doesn't darken as much when it's varnished (or epoxied)

 

You can use normal hardware store varnish.

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On 6/5/2020 at 7:40 PM, mikechell said:

😄Samsonboi teaching you how to do your job, Steve.  It's a generational thing!

Not teaching him how to do his job, just adding an alternate opinion.

On 6/5/2020 at 7:54 PM, Steeldrifter said:

It doesn't add any structural integrity, even if dropped. Simply dropping  it even if on the ferrule will not damage the female sections ferrule. No real weight coming down hard to damage it at all. Blanks are a good deal tougher than people give them credit for these days.

They are tougher but what about linear fiber? linear carbon fiber or fiberglass can split easily. I realize that does not apply to most modern blanks. I like slower, softer rods and the vintage blanks are not too hard to obtain. They are much easier to chip if dropped. What about a butt-over-tip (uncommon, I know) ferrule, maybe a spigot ferrule, on a butt section, dropped with a reel on it? Maybe even just the reelseat and grip- no reel- to add weight to the falling blank? Dropped just right it could split or chip the ferrule, especially on a vintage blank.

I'm mostly done with graphite and glass now that I've got the bamboo making stuff but I wouldn't pass up a cheap vintage glass or early carbon blank, or just a slower modern blank, if I found one at, say, a local custom-shop closeout or an estate sale of a local fisherman. I find that today's ultrafast blanks advertised as bullet casters are 1. just underlined (a 6 weight would be perfect on today's 4-weight) and 2. snap tippets because they don't flex enough.

 

 

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You are simply over thinking it to put it bluntly. By the way you are thinking then epoxy still would not help if you dropped it because you are not epoxying over the edge of the ferule, so if you dropped it in the exact spot on the edge of the ferule then it still would not be covered by epoxy so if it were to somehow magically hit the the exact perfect spot to "chip" it, then no matter if there is thread/epoxy on the rest of the ferule or not then the crack would split. But again, the chances of dropping it, hitting it just right to cause enough damage to cause a split, it's just not really a fee sable thing to have to be concerned with.

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Once in a while I see a rod that has the threads warn through from rubbing on something. This week on my trip in Sitka one of the conventional rods had the threads warn through. I assume it was from the rod rubbing against something while we were enroute to the fishing grounds this spring (two hours by boat), or when we were in enroute from the fishing grounds last fall or both. If the wraps had had epoxy on them, the they would not have rubbed through. I put super glue on it to get through the fishing trip, now that I am home, I will re-wrap it and put some epoxy on it if I can clear all the junk away from the rod turner.

It doesn't happen on our fly rods because they are all in cases while traveling.

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