So I have guides wrapped up - the two butt sections are on the dryer right now. Tomorrow I'll do the two tip sections.
I am deeming this rod my "Fugly Stick" because well, I did some experiments and they didn't turn out as nice as I wanted. I used a different, new to me marine epoxy to bond rod to cork - and it squooshed out between some of the rings. I cleaned it up as best as I could - and the handles look fine, but the dark composite cork reel seat looks like ass, if I am honest. My attempts to sand it down left it not so round. Kind of pissed, but it's fishable, and it's a fishing tool not a work of art.
I also decided since my grip & reelseat look like ass, I would experiment in another way too - why not? So I used rayon floss for my trim wraps, in red, with wine colored primary wraps on the guides. I did a a cross style decorative wrap on the butt below the signature series, in wine, red, and gold. It looked okay till I varnished it (did that before I epoxied the guides) and well - it darkened up a LOT more than I thought it would and you can hardly see the wrap. So I have a bumpy butt section.
And so I have deemed it my Fugly Stick. It will put a hurtin' on the fish no doubt, and the poor fish will have hurt feelings because it got caught by such an ugly rod. Double whammy.
The thing that turned out the best was the signature section. Instead of my usual silver paint with wood stylus I said WTF, the rest of the rod is ugly, lets try one more new thing! I used a metallic sharpy - worried that maybe the epoxy would lift the ink. I tried different type of inks before on my first rods and they failed, hence why I've stuck with Testor's enamel on my last 4 or 5 builds. The metallic fine point sharpy kicked ass though - easy to write neatly with, AND the epoxy did NOT lift it. Hooray there's one decent looking thing about this rod now!
If this does fish I think I'm going to wind up building a newer, nicer looking rod on the same blank, if I can find another deal on it. The American Tackle Matrix blanks look pretty sharp - I love the emerald color. Next time around though - I'd stick with thread only, no floss, and NCP type thread (no color preserver needed, thread doesn't change colors with epoxy) and may go with premade grips next time to save time and energy. Also - not using the particular marine epoxy again! I'll stick to the epoxy I used before in all my earlier builds.