Woodworking fishing and Spinny thread you choose

Rob Keeble

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GTA Ontario Canada
Ok so some time back i got caught up in the idea of a wooden fly fishing handle.

For those of you that dont flyfish, most handles are cork or at least lined with cork "fat cork washers" and sanded down.

Seeing those beauty of a peppermills in segment form here i though mmh let me ask the question of the greater brain trust here.

See what i mean by wooden handle by looking at the article (pdf) that i have linked to below.
http://www.kcwoodworkersguild.org/Education/Articles/Wooden Handles for Flyrods.pdf


So what say the jury and fly fisherman out there. Do you think this is a viable idea or is it only cosmetic.

My concern is the weight being added but i can also see where that could be a good thing.

Flyfisherman are huge tradditionalists so i dunno i am thinking of this for me not anything else.

Would you convert your rod to a wooden handle??

If so what wood? and finish?

Rob
 
Looks like it could be a fun and relatively easy project. My brother-in-law is a fly fisherman. I should check and see if he wants to do a collaboration build. ;)

Rob, re: your question about what wood and what finish...

Personally, I think I'd go with something like cocobolo, manzanita, or desert ironwood. Something hard, dense, and able to be polished to a shine with no finish. It's a kind of poor photo, but this cocobolo skew handle has no finish on it at all:

attachment.php


The wood polished up to be as shiny as the brass ferrule, and has stayed that way so far. If it ever dulls, about 2 minutes on the buffer will get the gloss back.
 

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