This is me in the morning before showering, looking in the mirror and thinking to myself; I gotta do something about this. Yeah, I’m down to my underwear here with the bare threads showing, though they are clean!
This rod has thrown me; I’ve gotten sideways on this thing and it’s been a lesson in corrective steering more than anything else. I’ve always been drawn to this blank, it’s color really. I’ve always imagined the palette it presented; alluring, inviting, coy and beautiful as any dream can be. It had the potential to be garish and PINK?, which was only more of a draw. What others saw as circus, I saw as dance.
It started off with a sudden need to get it built and sent out to sisters who were participants in a Casting for Recovery weekend of fly fishing. The colorful rod justified itself if for no other reason. First hiccup, a reel seat needed to be fabricated to fit NS hardware I was using. Staring at pictures of raw unfinished blocks of colored wood didn’t lend insight into what they looked like once turned. I took a shot gun approach and ordered three different ones. That left me with a blank I needed to get started on, but working a bit backwards; guide placement, wrapping, turning cork on handle and finishing the thread epoxy, and faith that the reel seat once received would fit to specs and it’d just be a matter of 5 minute epoxy and off she’d be sent in the mail to her recipient.
Things went well for the most part, but I had no backup cork to replace the grip should I not like it’s outcome. I wavered with either sticking to a shape I typically use, know and like, or going with something a little different who’s shape has been knocking at the back door. This whole thing was a bit of an untethered space walk so…. hell, let’s try that new idea.
Sitting well, finished the butt section applying the stripping guide and finishing wraps. Signature was one continues line, something I typically break into two, but somehow it looked nice and simple as one. This is where things started getting slippery as the epoxy finish over it started to give me troubles; too blobby, not smooth, lost a letter or two and off she came, wiped off clean with a little DNA before it was set up. However in my attempt to level the epoxy by letting the rod sit rather than rotate, the epoxy over the wraps butting against the face of the cork started to spread and I didn’t notice it till it was too late. Speaking of underwear and stains!
Second attempt I split the signature line into two to save me some troubles, but was back and forth between completely saturating the cork face with epoxy to make it uniform. I did, but then didn’t want a glossy front surface and tried to wipe it down as if that would soften it. It was all hands on deck and working against best practices with epoxy - leave it the f#ck alone! Mixed up another batch of thinned epoxy and spread it thinly across the face, turned off the lights and walked away for my own good, and the rod’s.
This has been a lesson between having a plan, executing it with skill and precision, and having to be reactionary to curve balls and unknown high speed pitches from every direction. In the end someone is going to love this rod, or at least it’s intentions, and yes there are things to compliment it by. But to me, it’s a little like the difference between looking at a painting by Picasso that looks like a three year old had done it, and one that a three year old had painted. In the end it’s all jazz, or so I've been told.