Milwards Swimversa

[Nobby]

I use Birchwood Casey for the ferrules but it's not very strong and often fails to take...it seems better on a slightly coarse surface, such as after you've used steel wool. It still rubs off though, and I've been experimenting with varnishing it afterwards. I got a nice finish on a Sealey using gloss varnish and then flatting it with lint-free cloth two hours later. it sulked and took two days to dry after that but it's a jet-black 100% matt finish that looks quite good.


I bought some pens that write in gold, silver and white for touching up transfers, as well as black of course. Rather like a gel pen they work pretty well. I also bought a cheap set of felt-tipped pens which have proved useful.

[Greentura]

I will probably raid the kids drawing stuff to find suitable things to touch it up, I'm sure there are all colors needed there and a set of metallic jell pens too i think :thumb:

[Greentura]

A bit more work done and some pictures taken of the work so far

The repair to the transfer may need a bit darker gold and black around the edge but the red looks OK

Used a dremel with a grinding wheel to sharpen the feet of the guides ready to whip on, saves hours with a file

Cleaned up the female ferule on the butt section to be re blacked, still got to do the other one

The butt guide and butt section whippings went on well as did the mid section guides and whippings. I made the whippings over the nodes a bit longer than original for cosmetic reason and added an intermediate band where the varnish over the transfer ends to 'pretty it up'. All the whippings have had a coat of cellulose dope and been smoothed down while it dried to even out any hairy bits

Tip section to do tomorrow after work maybe

[Mark]

It's coming on Greentura, very nice indeed. :thumb:

[Greentura]

Thank you Mark, it's the first full strip and re-build I've done. usually just replacement guides or fitting reel seats on carbon rods. I hope to have it ready for a roach session end of the month, a friend of mine has just had a 2lb2oz red fin where i hope to be. still got to build my rod turner for the varnish drying. does anyone thin the first couple of coats, using Ronseal yacht varnish and was thinking about 6 coats, 2 thinned down, 3 normal, knocked back between coats with fine wire wool and a final coat. Your thought gentlemen?

[Nobby]

I don't find a need to flat varnish back, if following on with the next coat as soon as the preceeding one is dry...they chemically bond together anyway. I've proved this by driving over a float that fell from my pocket and the resulting mess was like a plastic case on a Pliquatic bait, if anyone remembers them?

The float was a goner, though.


I hope the threads come out alright as red/black twist usually goes so dark as to appear almost black except in bright, bright sunlight. Whilst this is authentic, many people are disappointed with all their hard work being so hidden.

I've recently found that slightly diluted Banana Oil works much better than cellulose dope on these darker silks., leaving them looking much 'brighter' and quite lovely under a half dozen coats of varnish.


On the subject of varnish, Ronseal, whilst cheap, very weather resistant and freely available, is rather dark in tint....a half dozen coats making anything quite subdued and rather antique looking. It can be quite useful for 'ageing' something, but will only add to the the loss of colour of those whippings, I fear.

I like to protect and show-off the whippings but am not clever enough to do a whole rod like Paul or Haydn, so I do 6 or 7 coats on the whips and just two on the cane itself.
The end result is somewhat remeniscent of a carbon rod with epoxy coating on the whips. As I use a fast drying polyeurethane it only takes a couple of days too.

[Pentonhook]

Andy, I find several coats of thinned down dope (50%) keeps the colour
of the threads and it doesn't go off too quickly when applying.
John Chapman and Edward Barder (have spoken to them both)
recommend Rustin's yacht varnish. Thinned by 20 to 25%. Edward will not
tell you what he uses though.

[Nobby]

I think EB uses a mixture of Epithanes and something else.

http://www.epifanes.com/home.htm

[Greentura]

I have given it a couple of coats of dope and it looks ok, maybe if I two coat the lot then see how the colour looks. 20% thinned down sounds about right from my decoratind work and a coat every 8 hours at the weekend is the plan :thumb:

[Greentura]

All the guides and whippings done and I have re-whipped the butt guide as i wasn't 100 percent happy with the filing on the front foot so re-did it. after putting it together again to make sure nothing felt wrong i decided I will need to deal with the slight knock in the tip- mid ferule sometime, hope to make one of the modified pipe cutters i read about on another thread as i have a couple of rods that could do with tightening up, but it'll be usable until i do that, just me being picky