It’s nice putting something together tailored to your particular need. It’s a fulfilling hobby. My eyes aren’t what they used to be for thread work. I don’t do much rod building these days. Normally when I build now I use quality blanks, no frills foam or cork stock grips, alconite guides and black guide wraps, no real thread work. Super plain Jane looking. The one I just did I wanted for skipping baits for bass up under brush and overhanging tree limbs close to the water. I went with a 6’9” medium heavy with extra fast tip. I was getting a fair amount of weak hooksets with a fast tip, and need some power to horse them out of the crap. I did the new guide concept layout with a tweak on the choke guide. I’ll try it out next week.
I took up rod building out of necessity when I started surf fishing. At the time, there where no off the shelf rods designed to throw bait & 8. By chance, a well known local rod builder and I became friends after I commissioned him to build a set of #30 trolling rods for me.
The first rod I built was a 1418 (11'-9") AllStar with SiC guides and cork tape wrapped butt. Learned the hard way how tough it is to work with metallic thread. Bought and built a second one after learning the blank had been discontinued. My favorite surf rod to fish. To this day, they are the first rods out and the last rods back in the rack.
I build all my personal spinning rods "New Concept". Don't think anything else comes close performace wise, but people sometimes take issue with building a rod for a specific reel. The reel is the cheap part...lol
