Milwards Swimversa

[Nobby]

Is this really your first effort??????

[Greentura]

Yes Nobby, first full strip and rebuild. I have only done the odd guide and reel seat changes on carbon rods until now, I have however sat beside Mike Harris for several (dozen) hours watching him like a hawk and he has suggested that i take on some restoration work as well. Sorely tempted to learn more and set up a workshop. I have watched Brian Norman working and quite like the idea of making a rod from tonkin to tackled up but there are only a few that can make a living at it, a certain Mr Barder springs to mind, and where building carbon rods would pay their way i would not have the passion for it day in day out as i would with traditional rods.

[Greentura]

Well here goes, varnish time. Ronseal Yacht varnish, gloss, 70/30 with white spirit for the first couple of coats then I'll see how it goes. I have just finished the first coat on an improvised stand made of a wine box cut in half, two bricks and two lengths of laminate flooring, I couldn't wait until the bits come to make a turning rig but it looks ok so far as the coat is very thin but well worked into the whippings and under the guides.

[PondLife]

Whops i've done it again. Just extracted my "Swimversa" from the abyss that is know as my garage and guess what i've stripped it down and i've misplaced the rings. Luckily i've found the butt and tip ring butt not the high bells. So i'm going to be needing to order some new ones. So i'd be grateful if someone could tell what sizes i need and how many of each. Thanks in advance, Pondlife.

[Greentura]

Unfortunately they are of odd sizes compared to what's available now and I 'rummaged' through a rod building friends vast assortment to find near matched so i don't know the actual sizes, just that there are 2 big ones 3 medium and 3 small ones between the tip and butt guides. I an visiting Mike tomorrow, hopefully to black the ferules as i don't have the chemical, and I will ask what ones I have fitted to mine, they are slightly smaller in the leg spacing and needed a bit more whipping to cover the original area down to the leg but i think it looks OK and seems to work with the original butt guide and new tip guide, an original and unused one, so I'll post the sizes when i have them.

Nobby may have more and better information though :thumb:

Here's mine now, all varnished (just the ferrule blacking to do as said before) and ready for the river, plenty of rain coming down to hopefully wash through where the EA in their infinite ' WISDOM ' :think: have cut all the weed growth. a choice of reels depending how i feel and a first outing for the 'Swimmaster' since i bought it a few months ago

[Weyfarer]

These are the ODs of an original set of fine wire bronzed intermediate rings as on my Swimversa:
Top section - three of 6mm and one of 7mm
Mid section - two of 7mm, one of 9mm and lastly one of 10mm
The butt has just the single large butt ring.

[PondLife]

Thank you gentlemen for the info. Just what i need . Hopefully i can make some progress and actually get a rod finished.

[Lucky Strike]

I love the colour of the red/black jasper you used for your swimversa Haydn, where did you get it?
I've emailed Barney Gallop on ebay but not heard back yet.
I'm cursing myself as I gave a few spools of it away a few months ago to a friend and now I need some!
Regards LS

[Greentura]

It's coming to the finish of my Swimversa restoration and i have stripped, cleaned, sourced new guides, salvaged old guides, re-whipped, varnished, worked the ferrule to remove the knock and this evening blacked the ferrules after getting a couple of small bottles of the necessary chemicals and oils from Mike when returning his spool of red and black jasper. Mixed the Tourmaline with water, ten parts to one, masked the whippings and plugged the end of the ferrule then cleaned the ferrules thoroughly and dipped them for about a minute and hung them on the cupboard door to dry. not sure if i will use the jade oil of some varnish yet, if i use the oil and i need to touch them up i can easily but with varnish it's protected more, mind you, the only rod i have with varnished ferrules is my Barder restored FJT,

so I'll use it oiled and make up my mind later, and hopefully, the next picture i post will be with a fish it landed :thumb:

[Greentura]

Well I'm very pleased with the rod, meaning it's not going on eBay but becoming part of my armory. I had a few things to do in the morning so I only had a couple of hours on the Royal Military Canal, the West Hythe stretch at the bottom of Lympne hill. Several other anglers were there and for the first time I had to walk past several swims to find an empty one, I usually fish mid week, and found one just past a large tree with reeds in front and too the left, not too much near bank weed and with a level area cut in the bank, a promising looking swim. I set up the rod and mounted a Mitchell 330 loaded with 3.2 Drennan floatfish, an old Denton float and size 18 hook to 2lb hook-link, plumbed up and added shotted with bulk around the float and 3 no.8's spread out near the hook which i baited with a single white maggot. It cast the 2BB (nearer 3 in reality) Denton antennae float well and was far more accurate than i had expected, and within a few seconds i was reeling in a small roach. A mixture of roach small skimmer bream and perch followed and I managed to land a fish from around 1 in 3 of the bites, that was the case for the next couple of hours until the canoes came through and the bites died, tea and cake time

On the whole the rod did everything it should, and felt lovely, but i would like something bigger pulling back to have given it a more thorough test. Next time I'll take it to the lake and bait for the bream a few days before, take a couple of ledger rods too and see how it does.