Mid 60’s Fishing Rod Rehab

[vafatboy]

When my grandfather passed in 72, my grandmother gave me Pop’s rod and reel. It’s a 6’-6” Eagle Claw “Wright & McGill Sweetheart”

The handle had a drop in it that made it cumbersome for me to use. I’ve tried a few times to use it for different types of fishing, jigging, casting, flipping etc. The drop behind the reel seat was ok for fighting fish, but not great for everything else.

It was two piece, one being the handle section where the rod section slipped into a ferrule at the front of the fore grip. Did some digging on the net and came across some tech on adding handle extensions so I could lose the drop and make a straight handle section.

Using that as a guide I removed the ferrule from the rod section. Tip, when heat doesn’t work, shock it in ice water after heating. It popped off like a champagne cork.

There were a couple of choices for the extension material, aluminum or carbon fiber. I used carbon fiber. Sourcing that in an OD and ID I needed was painless. It’s sold everywhere on the net. Most applications in the size I was looking at was for RC helicopter rotor arms in some way or another.

Mating up OD of rod parts to ID of other parts is done by using strips of fiberglass drywall tape to make arbors. Just wrap the blank until the mating part slips on and stays centered. Once cork is reamed to fit and arbors wrapped for the reel seat everything is lathered up with epoxy. Parts are put on as you slowly twist to fill voids. The epoxy I used is thixotropic (non-sag)

I really like how it turned out and I will use it now. I hope Pop would like it too.