Building your own fly rod

In the next few post I will share a excellent rod building tutorial with you. I have always admired some rods that a local guy here in South Africa makes and about two years ago I decided to also built my own. It didn’t come out quite as nice as I wanted but I was still pretty impressed and following this easy step by step it was not that difficult at all.


The blank that I chose was a Rainshadow 6”6 2 weight as I wanted a short stick for some of our local streams. It was quite a daunting task and when I first received all the parts I laid everything out on a table and dry fitted everything. For a few days this was all I did everyday as I was a little bit nervous to actually start.

I made myself a very simple rod wrapping stand from some scrap pieces of wood lying around and eventually I decided it was now or never. After finding the spine,  I glued on the cork handle, fitted the reel seat and was ready to start wrapping.


My first wraps were around the hook keeper and I can tell you that I lost count of the amount of times that I re did this section. After a few nights I was eventually happy with how it looked and I could finally move on.

I eventually got so confident in myself that I even added trim band

My first stripping guide done and dusted.








When all the wraps were finally on, the nerves once again kicked in as this was for me the critical step, so I sat and stared at my handiwork again for the next few days. At the end it was not so bad after all and the final coating did not come out to bad though there certainly was still some room for improvement.




I wish I can tell you that my new rod and myself had years  of enjoyment together, but sadly on its first outing I managed to break it through my own stupidity.  I keep on wanting to send it in for a replacement section but have just never got around to it. I guess now is as good a time as any.

My new rods first and only time out on a stream doing what it was meant to do….

….and the hike out that broke it. Can you spot the wooden ladder?

Keep an eye out in the next few days for the rod building step by step.