suffering from a little cabin fever up here in the great white north... i finally got enough posts to post pictures, so i figured i'd post up a couple BPS rods i recently customized:

(L-R)7'6" Bionic blade, 7' Crankin Stick, 6' Bionic Blade spinning

 

i'm working on replacing the BPS screw in butts on the blades.. you know that annoying screw that comes undone and falls into the lake 3 days after you buy the thing? Think i've got a pretty good system going, we'll see when the epoxy dries.

Cheers

-Justin

Pretty nice!  I especially like the designs on the rear handle.  

How'd you take the fore grip off?  

Beautiful work.

And yes, that darn weight screw always falls out so if you want it to stay put you need to glue it in place.

HOW DO YOU DO THAT I WANT TO MAKE MY BPS RODS LIKE THAT ;D

you must show us how to do that that is so cool. I want all of my rods to look like that...did I mention that that is so cool.

Harshman

Those rods look great. How did you get part of the grip off?

Gentlemen -

Thanks for the kind words!

Removing cork is pretty easy and done simply with a razor blade and some pliers. Once the cork is off, i use the razor to scrape off the large clumps of glue and then sand the blank as smooth as possible. To finish things off i add a thread wrap or pigmented epoxy finish over the sanded blank. To top it off i use a very basic marbling technique in the final coat of finish.

This article explains how to work the cork (same concept applies to the foregrip):

http://www.georgescustomrods.com/split_your_grip.htm

The only thing i do different is i don't remove the cork at the base of the rod so there is no need to turn a new butt.

There is a good article on the marbling here:

http://www.rod-crafting.com/articles/marbling-help.html

here's a closeup of the crankin stick

almost forgot - here's a shot of the replacement butts - the one on the right has fender washers on it as balance weight.

well now i have a project for tomorrow!  ;D

i think i'll split the grips on my ugly stik spinning rod (no biggie if i mess up ;D) and then my berkley lightning casting rod.

did you have a rod turner (i guess thats what its called) to rotate the rod when you were curing the epoxy/marbling? i dont have a rotator and that could be a problem.

yes - i have a cheapie motorized dryer like what you can find on ebay...

if you are the tinkering type, i'm told you can make one for under 10$ using a rotisserie motor like these:

 

i use a 6rpm though... bought it off a guy locally for 15$

ok thanks.

i split the grips on my ugly stik this morning.

since i dont have a rod turner, covering the middle section of the grip with thread was going to be way to difficult and time consuming, and it wouldnt even turn out even. so i primed it with black spray primer and then im going to put on a few coats of gloss black spray paint. i dont know what im going to do as a clear coat. maybe some polyeurathane?

i've read that using automotive style spray paints and clear coats is the best way to go because they have more plasticizers in them that makes them less brittle and not as prone to cracking... i would assume the automotive clear coat would work also.

ok. well the spray paint i had was being retarded, and it wouldnt spray evenly, it would only spray in a few bursts, i think it was almost empty. so i just sanded  off all the spray paint and then painted it with a paintbrush and black acrylic paint. then i coated it in outdoor polyurethane. its tough stuff, that polyurethane. at 8:00 tonight im gonna put a second coat of polyurethane on them.

What did you do with the old winding check?  Did you use a winding check in front of the reel seat threads on the casting rods?

yessir - just slid it right down in front of the reel seat threads after i got the foregrip off. Take some sand paper and sand down the lip off finish where it was originally and after wrapping it you can hardly tell its where new and old finish meet up.