Are there any blank manufacturers that make a dark brown 8wt blank? My searches have all come up empty so far. I’m thinking about building a redfish rod inspired by my grandfather’s old favorite trout rod - a 5wt herters rod that was dark brown with yellow thread
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Haven’t seen one personally, but you could always paint one yourself.
Rodgeeks use to do custom colors, but they only offer a handful of colors now. You might could call em and see if they would make an exception.
Someone posted a company that does custom colors recently as well. I’m not familiar with them and can’t recall the name.
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I think Northfork Composites has glass blanks in brown. St. Croix has a lot of colors and as stated Rodgeeks has colors.
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Just about every graphite fly rod blank I’ve worked with (or repaired, etc.) is actually a gray blank that’s been colored at the end of the manufacturing process. Since I go back aways (understatement) I’ve actually restored more than a few different manufacturer’s rods and in the process turned a blue, brown, or other color rod back into a lovely gray rod in the process. There was a time, some years ago, when every blank Sage offered - was brown… But if scratched, would show the gray underneath. If it were me, I’d simply build on whatever blank provided the best action and strength for it’s given purpose and disregard the color entirely. If you must have a brown blank it’s simple enough to take any brand new graphite blank, carefully remove the finish (and color if any) by scraping using the un-sharpened sides of single edge razor blades before water sanding them out with fine wet or dry sandpaper -then re-finish the blank with clear rod finish that you’ve tinted - before building the rod. The great difficulty comes when you try to duplicate the factory finish… that’s tough to do and most that I’ve worked with ended up with more finish on them than would be desirable in a fly rod blank.. Tints used to be available for epoxy finishes at rodcrafter’s supply houses - but I haven’t looked for them in some years now. When I strip and re-finish any light rod these days I actually leave the blank, once it’s been stripped and water sanded… bare with no finish at all - then thoroughly wax it after the rod is completed and the wraps finished with FlexCoat… and dried completely first.
By the way, none of this applies to standard fiberglass blanks since they can come with a variety of colors that are actually from the cloth that was used to make them. I’ve built many rods over many years that started out as black, white, honey, brown, or other color blanks. Some manufacturer’s years ago would take whatever color blanks they were working with and color them with paint - before starting the rodbuilding process…. Once again, making it tough for anyone doing repairs to work with, years later… Ask me how I know…
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CTS is the one I mentioned in another thread. My brother built me an 8wt Affinity X and it is sweet!
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