The average person can build their first rod in 8-10 hours by simply following our PDF Instructions.  The ‘pickier’ you are, the longer it’ll take!  To answer the question another way, you don’t have to spend months or even weeks making your custom rod. A weekend should be enough to ‘git ‘er done’ for most folks.

Absolutely not! No, no and no! Our simple rod building instructions specify what you need to have on hand to get started, but you probably have most (if not all) of these items around your home – e.g. tape measure, single edged razor blazes, small rattail file, denatured alcohol and so on.  

You may be asking yourself, “Can I get some other really cool and expensive stuff too?” Rod wrappers, drying motor, glue mixers and so on. The answer is yes . . . but not right now. We want your first rod building experience to be quick, clean, inexpensive, fuss free and most important of all, FUN! Read the instructions in their entirety before you actually begin construction!

You’ll find our checklist of what you need to acquire here.

Yes you can, but we typically use 2-part epoxies, which are flexible and likely to crack less.  Also, 2-part epoxies can be ‘deactivated’ with a heat gun in case you need to make a change or correction to your build.

No. Our rods are actually much, much better, especially when you factor in the cost!

Color preserver is usually a water-based product which seals the threads. This is only important when the color of the thread wraps must be preserved instead of getting ‘darkened’ by the application of thread finish. We don’t do this much on our personal rods, but when making someone a gift, we typically want the colors to ‘pop’ and color preserver makes that work!

No. Just put the finishing epoxy on the threads to secure and waterproof.

Not the way we do it:  put all pieces together and then mark the spine. The natural curve will be easy to spot. You can also ‘spine’ each section separately, but we know that this is now unnecessary. 

This is a question often discussed by rod builders. Some feel very strongly about their method of guide placement. One thing is certain: the guides must be placed on the spine or the belly, or else the finished rod will exhibit “sideways” torque. The spine results from a number of vectors in the rod blank. If the guides are placed on one side or the other of the spine, the vectors will be front to back or vice versa. If the guides are offset, the resulting vectors will be, too.

During casting, one feels the result, as the casting hand tends to turn in or out during the back and forth motion. This gives rise to a number of casting problems. One school of thought suggests that lighter weight rods have the guides placed on the belly (2 thru 6 weight lines) and heavier weight rods (7-13) have the guides placed on the spine for more efficient casting or retrieval of that particular line weight.