I have ordered a new tip which i should get in the Autumn so it's gonna have 2 tips but it will never be original, so nylon got the vote .
the wraps were red and black when i got my hands on it ---errr no they weren't. archeology showed the wraps were originally Fuchsia and Royal Blue . having bought some Fuchsia that was wrong as well . Ruby and Royal Blue is what it was ---and will be again , but in grade "A".
Aspindales never seemed to worry much about handle shape . the top few corks were a bit crumbly and were never gonna look well, so i got rid of them and replaced them with a very sedate trumpet which feels great in the hand . the button is serviceable (and original) , but brown and a bit perished , so a new red one was ordered and looks much better . i will keep the old one . the ferrules are all good.
got rid of the old varnish which resembled something from Tate and Lyle . took out the small set in the tip , found a nice hi bell butt ring , took away as much old varnish from the script as i dared and gave that a light flat off with some spit and 1000 grit .
i then measured the ring spacings and the same for the inters . the rings were all good apart from the butt ring so that was a bonus.plus the correct pink agate tip - an even bigger bonus . that will be kept for the new tip, and a screw tip fitted to the existing slightly short tip.
the wrapping is coming on pretty well, the butt and the middle are ready for varnish , i use CP followed by a single Humbrol QD varnish , which unusually has darkened the blue a tad . no worries , that is probably how it looked when it left Redditch. rings and inters all back in their original places
varnish the butt tomorrow and furnish the top while the butt is drying . finish by the weekend? well maybe . here is how i received it .pics of the finished job will follow
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a couple of
pics of the semi completed rod with the short tip - i will put a few more on the gallery page later -