Building Rods as a Hobby

I wanted to try out the photo upgrades and show off my hobby as well. I have been building rods for about 2 years and have been having fun with the lathe at the same time. The wooden handles fish much better than you would think. Many think that they are to heavy, (they are heavier than cork) but they balance much better than the factory rods. I just like the looks of them and thought that I’d share. Any comments are welcome. Thanks Mark

Pretty fancy. I have a wood handled rod and love it.

Thats some really nice decorative work mb757
I see you have put in some time and frustration wih the decorative wraps also.

Wood handles are great. Yes, they are a little heavier, but they dont absorb the shock like cork does(more sensitive).

Very nice. After only 2yrs.I would say your rods are exceptional! Do you sell any?

Impreessive work nice job!

What kind of blanks are you using?

Those are gorgeous!

WOW!!!

Nice work!

Nice rods

Nice I know Rodman on here used to build some nice rods, I also noticed he liked and used wood handles too, I’m sure he’ll pop by soon enough.

I keep thinking I’ll build on, right now I just don’t have the time.

Very impressive Mark! You have a gift.

Sully

nice-very nice- – I do my own rod work, but no way do I have anything as nice as yours. I do however, agree with you on the wood handles, never will go back to cork- – jerr

Great work, how much time to finish some of those handles

2 years, holy cow!! I’ve been at it for a while and mine don’t come anywhere near that. Very impressive!!!!!!

SWEET! Even more reason to learn how to build my own rods.

Yes I do sell a few, (I have a few I should put on the sale board) but my turn around time is slow. That’s the nice thing about it as a hobby. You can do it as you please. I build mostly on St Croix and Batson blanks. I also like to use some burl cork. The burl is heavier than regular cork but seems to hold up and look better thank regular cork. I turn a few pens as well, it makes use of the left overs from the rods. Dman the handles will take any where from 1 to 10 hours to build depending on the segments in it. I did a segmented turning for a handle that looked like a spider (couldn’t get it to load) web when done it took about 10 hours to do.

what type of wood do you use ? How do you do the one with the circles going around the handle/

It depends which one you’re looking at. If it’s the picture that’s third from the left hand side top row? It’s called an elliptical or celtic knot. They are made but cutting the blank diagonaly and inserting a contrasting piece of wood the thickness of the saw blade on 4 sides of the blank. The wood varies by what I have available, the darker wood was IPE, there’s maple and just about anything else. If you want you can contact me I can try to explain it better. Thanks Mark