We didn't get out last year due to time constraint and me working out of town for the majority of the year. But the year before that my son decided that he loved fly fishing. With the help of a few GREAT members on these forums, we got him set up with the reel and he used one of my rods. At that time I started talking with my dad who has been assembling rods about 40 years. It has never been professional, he has not once taken a dime for it but he has build a little over 30 of them. He doesn't know the exact count as he has never kept track but has built over a dozen different one for his uncle
A little over a year ago I meet up with my dad at the fly fishing shop and we start going through the building supplies they have. We get all the eyelets, the reel seat, the thread, and the cork. He already had a rod blank. Picking out the cork turned out to be the hardest decision of the whole process.
It's a little tough to tell but there is natural, green, and blue cork in there.
The thing that got my dad building his own rods was always the cork grips. They are to skinny from the factory. My dad is a tradesman, a carpenter to be exact. He had been holding a hammer as early as he could remember, helping my grandfather around the house at an early age. Re-roofing, decks, patios, basements, etc, just whatever needed to be done. Trying to go from a hammer to a skinny fly rod gave him cramps so he did his own thing with them. That's why this grip has such an odd, but very comfortable grip on it.
This is the kind of thing that gives me goosebumps. My son has a rod built for him by my father, and I don't even have one!
I'm not sure what brand the blank is but it's a 5 weight. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get out to the field to practice a bit.
New Rod for my son
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