Building a Rod from the Blank to Finish - Joel Stephens

After joining the rod building seminar at the end of April this year and building my own blank, I had an idea of what I wanted to make this blank into.

I extended the blank using a carbon tubing to add another foot to the overall build.
I used the carbon fiber grips that I built along with an orange Alps reel seat that I was saving for a special occasion.

 

Spiral wrapped the guides with hunter orange thread because I want this rod to stand out. I plan to use this rod for all types of fish to see what it can handle. During the blank building portion, we were able to customize our blanks to our specs and I decided to add x-weave to the lower section to give it more “backbone” and it did exactly that!

It was great that USA MADE Factory opened their doors for people to see what goes into designing and building a blank. With this experience brings many ideas on how to design blanks and other possibilities that may come to fruition in the future.