A few months back Mark Mc or Yoda as some of us call him called me up pitching an idea about finished some rods he had started, we talked about a lot of swimbaits or grub tails that sort of thing and eventually stuck him on the work schedule.
Well his turn finally came up. He settled on Purple, White and Black as the theme for the thread and decoration. I like purple so that was easy (Purple/Violate are my favorite colors). He also wanted me to do these rods so they showed something of me in them.
The first rod is a Seeker CLB708 live bait rod (I think) wrapped as a standard casting setup using Alps XN guides. I had just ordered some new microflex abalone veneer and was dying to try it out and darn if I hadn't ordered a sheet of Purple
The pic isn't so hot (need a defuser), but you get the idea
He also wanted the guides underwrapped. I don't normally underwrap lighter rods like this, but played around with and came up with this. Oh I cheated again and tossed in some White Pearl Metallic in the middle
This next one took a bit to get to the work bench, but here is his jig rod based on a Seeker CJBF65. I've built a ton of the H model of this blank and this one looks like some fun for tuners. Again Purple, Black and white was the theme and I had indicated I'd make them the same. Well I woke up the morning after wrapping this and realized must have had a wild night as this one came out acid wrapped and looking nothing like the other one.
The purple here is the same thread as above, but because I was wrapping over white thread I left the color preserver off the 2nd layer of thread, gives it that deep plum color.
Now seeing as Mark had spent time in California and I had not done any wood veneer rods in a while I decided to use some Redwood burl veneer I'd been saving. Sadly it was too brittle to work - darn it all to heck.
Well heck I hadn't done a tiger wrap in a while so I plopped down. With that wrap some blanks and their tapper just don't work well. I've never gotten a Calstar 270 to work right, but I had done a couple on the CJBF60H rods I'd built so caution out the window.
Wrap, wrap, finish, time and I got to the point of adding the last layer of finish and something happened. It was like the CP and the finish decided on its own that it wanted to act like Poly thread and just went south in a hand basket fast. This was Saturday and Mark picking up his rods today, I didn't have much time to screw up. I was able to remove the errant finish along with the top (color layer) of the wrap. I have to tell you that hurt. The wrap had turned out so amazing I almost couldn't bring myself to get the thread pick out. Off it came, snivel, snivel.
I've fixed a lot of wraps, but I just didn't know what was going to happen with this one. Taking the finish off I also needed to sand a bit to smooth it out. What would the 400 grit lines do when I had to apply color preserver over it - I almost didn't use the color preserver but I wanted white as the predominate contrast and not black (You get one or the other depending on your color layer). Heck with it I can always rip it off again if it doesn't work, this was Sunday mind you
I was pleasantly amazed when I added finish and saw the pattern come out (you cant see the pattern through the CP).
This is a collage of four different pics to show all the way around the wrap
Tiger wraps do not always turn out this wild and unusual, but it turned out fantastic. Your turn Mark lets see some tuna pics.
Yoda Rods
siletzsal
Linear Mode
