Mike Jr

First, I must apologize to all who have contributed to this thread to help me identify the problem. I have been battling severe allergies and got another back injection during this thread and I have not been able to keep up with this. Second, I thanks all who contributed here. I learned a lot and even got a bit of a history lesson out of this (thank you Delaware Valley Tackle). I have not been able to correct my issue with the epoxy just yet, but I have to agree with MickD. I did clean off the rod blank with alcohol before wrapping the thread and applying epoxy. Dumb move on my part and lesson learned. So thank you MickD for jogging my memory. Guess I'll try the straw method next. I really appreciate everyone's input and you all have given me several alternative ways to build my future rods. I have some broken rods laying around, so I think I will test these methods on those. The whole Varnish discussion really surprised me. I vaguely heard of a few people doing this but I didn't pay much attention. Anyways, Thank you all!

Finally got a pic of the damage loaded, I did not know a small straw would work better. I'll try that once I replace the current mess.

So I just added a hook keeper to a bass rod. I’m using new 2 part epoxy from ProKote and an alcohol torch with denatured alcohol. After I applied the epoxy, I waved the torch under the rod so as to prevent constant flame on the epoxy. As I was swiping the alcohol torch under the epoxy it started to crackle and burn. What is wrong?