Rod update and other stuff

I got a lot done on the rod this weekend. I glued up the cork rings for the handle Friday night. I spent Saturday making reel seat parts for four rods including the one I am working on here.

Earlier today I finished turning the aluminum reel seat parts and the cork for the handle. Pic #1 is the glue up and Pic #2 shows the turned handle, the reel seat barrel on the mandrel and some of the aluminum seat parts.

I recently got my hands on an aluminum anodizing set up so the plan is to engrave and anodize the aluminum parts. Because I don't want to put a whole lot of time into these I am going to try and engrave it with the "transition" style or flair cut style that Ron smith has been using.

I finished out last week by completing designs for a Chinese New Year parade dragon theme for a knife and a falcon themed pen. I am working on an African safari themed knife for another customer. Its been busy around here.

Wrapping it up!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since I only have one guide on the butt section I will wait to wrap it. For now I wanted to go ahead and get the guide wrap on the other two sections going. I am planning to make the reel seat and turn the handle this weekend. I know that is kinda doing things backwards but ..........................

The wraps on these are black "A" nylon thread with metallic blue trims using sulky metallic blue thread. I have wrapped the trims on these independent of the main wrap because I don't want the tags to show through the black threads once they are soaked with epoxy. The aft trims are five wraps long and the for trims are three wraps long.

The wraps are looking pretty nappy here because I only have one coat of epoxy on the wraps. Usually only enough epoxy to soak the thread is used on the first coat. I put this on a little thicker because I am inlaying jungle cock feathers for alignment markers and on the guides. I let he rod turn on the drayer for about an hour and ahalf till the epoxy was heavy enough to beat gravity but still sticky enough to accept the feathers being pushed down into it. The feathers starts small and diminish in size as they run down the blank to the point that the last three guides don't have any on them at all. Looking down the rod they get smaller and smaller as if they disappear over the horizon like in a perspective drawing.

BTW, I'm still working on the close up photography thing with the new camera. Hopefully close up pics like this will get better as time goes on.

Time to measure

Now that the guides are placed its time to take some measurments and see what line weight this rod will actually through. Using the common sense rod building system the Ern is measured by flexing the rod 1/3 of its total length using post 1996 pennies. It took 80 pennies to flex this 9' rod 3'.

Using the Common Cents tables that gives this rod an ERN of 9.83, putting it at the high end of a 9wt rod rating. Since I usually use a weight forward line with a moderate sink tip and a weighted mini head to get the fly down to salmon, this will probably work fine with a 9wt line. I will test cast it with a 10 wt before setting up a reel with line just to make sure.

As a side note: To find out more about the Common Cents system follow the rodbuilding.org link . On the left of the forum page there is a link to articles explaining the system.

I also measured the Action Angle. My flash washed out the pic a bit but the action angle hit at 62 degrees. Making it a moderate action blank. Looking at the general arch of the flexed rod backs that up. I tend to like slower action rods since I have a sort of lazy casting style. From what I can tell so far I am going to be very happy with this rod when its finished.

pics of Thor

Here are pics of the recently finished Thor pen parts. David used my fly rod hood design as an influence for the sleeve shapes on this set or Norse god pens.

The sleeve and cap top are made of titanium. The yellow is 24K gold inlay and the red is copper inlay. The sleeve has Thor with his hammer and iron gloves. Norse lattice design with Thor's two goats wrap around the back of the sleeve. The cap top has a gold inlay image of a pendant design based on Thor's hammer.

I am still learning to use the new camera and I need to get better control of the depth of field on some of these macro shots. The good news is they look a LOT better than pics I was taking with my other camera. Sam Alfano was kind enough to give me a few tips on taking this type of photo and it has helped a lot.

Salmon Rod Project start to finish

Well its been a few days but I have been busy. I finally finished that Thor pen for David. I had an allergy war and was fighting sinus headache for about three days so it took me bit longer to get it done than I wanted.

I have also started a few more rod projects. It is going to be a while before I finish that Winston handle carving ... so in the mean time I am building a few Salmon rods. My dad, a few friends and I are going Salmon fishing in WI in October so I need to get my rods done fairly soon.

These two rods of mine are not going to be art rods but just good using rods with a few fancy touches. Since they are for me I am using them to experiment on. Both are being built on unsanded 9' 9wt 3pc fly rod blanks from Dancraft. I really like the looks of the ridges spiraling up an unsanded blank so I got excited when I heard Dancraft had these on clearance.

The first thing I did was sand down the reinforcement wraps at the ferrules of the blanks. The wraps stood pretty proud on the bottom but they look nice now that they are sanded and profiled a bit. Once that was done, I put a coat of perma-gloss on for a rod finish (pic #1). Boy did that make the blank come to life.

The next step was to wrap the ferules with some gray size D nylon thread so they don't split when the rod is flexed (pic #2).

Since I generally like to prepare the parts before I get to far along the next thing I did was to taper and sand the feet on the guides. Dancraft also had these sic guides with plated stainless frames on clearance so I grabbed those up to use on these rods. I generally don't like plated guides but the wallet won the day this time. My favorite guides are Ti framed gold cermit or sic guides. I made jigs to hold the feet by drilling and tapping a piece of nylon rod and using a nylon screw to hold the guides through the ring without harming the inserts (pic #3). I use my powerhone with a diamond lap to grind the feet (pic#4). This set up gives me long, clean tapers and a very nice finish on the feet. The slow moving powerhone also grinds the feet fairly quickly without getting them hot.

It was too hot out in the garage today to spend too much time out there but I did manage to get the cork rings picked out, arranged, and drilled (pic #5). After they were all drilled I glued them up on a mandrel to be lathe turned into a handle. I use System-3 boat building epoxy to glue up my rods and cork. There may be better products out there that are geared specifically to rod building but I have to do something with this 3 gallons of System-3 I have left over from boat projects.

I hope to get a lot more done on this tomorrow.

Artist or Craftsman?

This an interesting topic that comes up in discussion from time to time when people who make things get together and talk. It strikes me as quite a coincidence that it has come up recently on both an engraving forum and a rod building forum that I participate on. As both a trained craftsman and a formally trained artist I always have an opinion on this topic. I have given it much thought over the years and here is my post from the engraving forum that pretty much sums it up.

"I always get my self in trouble with this topic.

Because like "Love", "Art" is one of those terms and concepts that is hard to put a two sentence description around. Further more, they both are abstract terms with philosophical underpinnings that have been twisted, butchered and abused throughout history to serve various peoples personal agendas.

So let me say up front, if you disagree with me that's fine. I will still sleep tonight.

I have found that the simpler such terms are defined and the less baggage we hang on them the more meaning they have. So here are my simple definitions that separate the craftsman from the artist.

Craftsman
One who sets forth to produce something to a specific level of skill and quality of fit and finish to produce a piece of work that is higher quality than the mere assembling of parts required to make the basic item.

Artist
One who employs the creative process to produce a piece of work of unique visual or emotional character by use of the principles and elements of design and/or philosophical or emotional concepts.

I don't know where our society got the idea that the artist was of a higher level of skill than a craftsman ... or that somehow it was better to be an artist than a craftsman. An artist is not just a "better craftsmen". They are two different skill sets. To me the ultimate is when a person employs both artistry and craftsmanship successfully in a piece of work.

Not all craftsmen are artist. Not all artist are good craftsmen. The craftsmanship of some artist down right sucks as does the creativity of some craftsmen."

In the mean time

Most everything seems to be in limbo stage right now. I am letting the perma-glosss cure out on the Winston rod while I decide what to do with it. I have a coat of perma-gloss curing on a Dancraft blank as a blank finish. I am still cutting away on the Thor pen sleeve.

In the mean time here are pics of a Baby Browning I finished a while back. The client sent me these snap shots after the grips and fitted case were made for it. Its nice when a client does that. I don't often get to see the finished piece since most guns, pens, etc. have to be engraved and then the parts sent of to be assembled . Its always a pleasure to see how the whole thing came together.