Finished!: Steelheader.net- Steelhead, Salmon and trout fishing

Finally after a month of dabbling with it for a few minutes here and there between helping my daughter get married and moved into thier new apartment, repainting and recarpeting her old bedroom and moving our youngest daughter into that room along with work, church, masonic and shriner functions I have a nice shiney replacement for the XST1143 that I broke last year. Soon I will have a man cave. A tackle/rod making laboratory if you will in which to build spinners, dodgers, jigs, flies, leaders rods and all manner of custom tackle and accessories. Its been a long time waiting for the space but soon I will no longer have to dig all my equipment out and put it all back away. When I'm done with a certain phase of a project it can just stay out till I'm ready to work on the next phase....oh yeah, its gonna be sweet.

Anyway, back to the rod project. I learned a great deal doing this one. Namely how to do a 3 thread trim band and single thread inlay. I also learned that if I apply too much epoxy to the label area during the second coat then come back after 45 minutes to find that the chuck on my dryer motor to unscrewed itself then it is almost impossible to level the epoxy back out. I solved the problem with my dryer but too late for this project. Here is the label with the wavy epoxy:

I made the label on holographic paper designed for inkjet printers. This one is on a "bubble" pattern but I also have stardust and regular holo. After printing I let the ink dry then sprayed 3 coats of Krylon crystal clear gloss acrylic to set the ink so that the epoxy wouldnt goof it up. Turns out that ink jet printers dont print white so anything that you set up to print white is actually blank which allows the holographic pattern to show through making it look electric in the light. Adjustments to the luminosity and color saturation can give cool effects also like on the rest of the printing that is in blue. I set it up to match the thread color and be somewhat translucent so that the holographic pattern still catches the light but reflects it in color.

I already posted the foregrip/reelseat/handle and fighting butt assembly but here it is again completed with the hookeeper.

I was going for a Seahawk theme with the thread colors. I think its close:

Here are a couple closeups of some finished thread wraps. Not perfect due to my dryer motor crashing and low light in the room I applied epoxy in. Next time they will be flawless:

The lessons learned on this one will translate to quicker and bettter builds from now on. Looking forward more experimentation--off angle trim bands, carbon fiber handles, spiral wraps, exposed blank reel seats, etc...

Aside from being frustrated by not having time to get it done I enjoyed the heck out of building it. Cant wait to feel the bottom of the clearwater with it followed by the satisfying thump of a B-run headshake!

Thanks to everyone who offered advice and shared their knowledge. Especially to Karry for getting me interested in starting in the first place.

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Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwile. -Wilfred T. Grenfell
Keep fishin and keep smilin -Tooter