Cornel

This is coming from a beginner rod builder, but... ...my first built was on a Cabelas IM7 ($30)... And if we don't take into account the Shikari's I got at half price from Mudhole a while ago, that blank has probably the best price/performance ratio of all the blanks I used... That doesn't really mean much since I've only built about a dozen rods, but I've used G.Loomis, St.Croix, Shikari and Lamiglas and while Lamiglas takes the crown for the best blank (their XMG50 is AWESOME), the IM7 never let me down no matter what kind of crazy stuff I did: horsing a 20# grouper out of mangroves, pulling 50# braid till something breaks, etc... C.

Thanks again everybody, I took the rod for a test drive this past weekend and it behaved nicely 8-) Oh, I almost forgot... Special thanks go to ReelMech. His stickies in this section were pretty much the most useful pieces of information I could find on rod building... Cheers C.

Thanks everybody I made them both (well, sort of... ) The weaving was done by me using a home made version of Wonder Weaver, Gudebrod NCP size C (black) and Sulky metallic (gold). The butt cap was also done by me out of a solid piece of titanium on a manual lathe. The engraving was done by a very good friend of mine on a CNC mill. REELMECH, Over all, I estimate I put close to 100H in this rod, spread over 3 months. It took me probably more than half of this time to finish the weaves. The rest was spent in the machine shop, wrapping guides, making the tools I needed (I didn't buy any tool whatsoever, everything I used was home made or in my friends shop ;D) C.

Hi all I finally finished building my second rod. Have a look at the pictures and let me know what you think It all started with this (about 3 months ago): Finished handle... ...and a couple of rings with no particular purpose other than the fact that titanium looks cool And that's how it looks now with only this to be mounted: butt cap (machined titanium, of course ) Here's a close up of the guide wrap and a couple of pictures of the butt wraps Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to take a clear picture of a 7.6' long object... I'll try some more and post it if I can get a clear one... Thanks for looking and feel free to comment C.

Thanks, Avid Leather can't increase sensitivity, sorry for not being perfectly clear. What I was trying to say is that when it comes to feedback, leather is a lot better than using some cushioned PU grip. C.

Here's how you measure your correct racquet grip size: http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/LC/Gripsize/Gripsize.html And here's how to increase that size... http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/Features/increasegripsize/increasegrip.html ...using: http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/descpageACGAMMA-SLEEV.html (one tennis grip size is 1/8") If you need a big increase in you grip size, you might wanna use a tennis leather grip. They are great for sensitivity too... Here's a link to what I'm talking about: http://www.holabirdsports.com/cgi-bin/product?product=060152&group=null&selection=menu&id=null&manufact=null&& C.