Finished 13 and 14

These two rods have been on my workbench for a long time. I started on them a year ago. They're finally finished. I still need to sew up the rod sacks and put a few finishing touches on the cedar rod tubes before they'll be off to Missoula.

These are the seven foot versions of the ST2 and ST4. I cast them in the yard yesterday with a 4wt line. They have the same casting characteristics as the 7.5 foot tapers. The ST2 is comfortable up to about 25 feet. It will push out more line but the mid section wants to bounce a little with the 4wt line. I'll try it with a 3wt in a few days. That should eliminate the bounce.

The ST4 doesn't load all that great in close with the 4wt line. But it really comes to life at about 25ft. These are two very nice seven foot tapers with significantly different casting characteristics. One for close in work and the other for consistently longer casts. The ST4 might also be a good taper if the fisherman is struggling with tailing loops on short casts. You would have to work at it to over power it with a short line.

I made everything on these rods except the guides. I have the tooling to make guides, but haven't given it a try yet. I used Snake Brand black nickle snake and stripping guides. The strippers have georgous agate stones. Mike and Susan McCoy are making some of the best quality guides in the world. I'll probably never make a guide so long as they're in business.

I made the ferrules and reel seat hardware from drawn nickel silver tubing. The grip was glued up and turned from from 1/2 inch cork rings. The reel seat inserts were turned from burled cherry, I think. I've lost my notes on the turning blanks. Whatever it is, it looks good. The blanks are mortised with a fingernail bit and finished with several coats of Waterlox Original High Gloss tung oil applied at high speed on the lathe.

The silk wraps are YLI100. The java brown (#227) wraps are tipped in black and the gold (#231) is tipped in java brown. The wraps were made translucent with the secret stuff (see the secret stuff category for details) and built up with Southerland Wells marine grade spar varnish.

The rods and wraps have six very thin coats of Varmor R10 high gloss urathane. Three or four coats would have been plenty, but I had some drain tube issues with the first two coats. I heated the varnish to thin it for the first couple coats and got runs. After way too much sanding, the remaining coats did much better thinned with mineral spirits at room temperature (about 73 degrees). I worked harder than ever to get a smooth flat finish on the wraps. This is by far my best finish work yet, but I still have a long way to go on the learning curve.

These are really cool rods. They're not your typical Montana big wind rods, but that's not what they wanted these for. I'm sure they'll enjoy fishing them as much as I enjoyed making them.

About the pictures in this post. I've never taken a rod picture that I liked. I've read a little about digital photography, just enough to know how to turn the camera on. I went all out this time to try to get some reasonable shots of these rods. This is the first time the rods actually look better than the pictures. I thought you might enjoy a picture of my make shift photo lab. Check out the clamp on lights attached to guitar stands. That's my fly tying light in the middle. No, it's not an Ott light. It's a $20 imitation from Big Lots. And yes, those are paper towels taped to the light fixtures for diffusers. How's that for a rod shop photo lab!