Rod Building & Repairs In Manchester

Much like buses, don't see one for a while then 2 come at once 😋.
Another set of XTB's, just cleaner and looked after a bit better!
No issues with any of these beauties !

A set of original Ultegra XTB's from a week or so ago, lot of water/rust marks, lots of crud and crap, some of the side decals fell off and the last one was really bad, needing a whole bunch of internals hand cleaning with some help from Mr Dremel, and a new worm gear and pawl to replace the very well chewed one that was slowly grinding to death inside !

Follow up post from a couple of weeks back where I'd just started building another couple of swingtip rods - this is one of the finished Silverfish swingtip rods - a lovely light grey and metallic blue colour scheme - just about to list it on the website so give me a shout if you're interested ! Cheers. Dave

https://www.swingtip.fishing/swingtip-rods/

Start to - nearly finished - shots of two fly rods that I've put new handles on, as the original slim handles were getting a bit uncomfortable to use, due to the chap having arthritis in his hands, so gripping a chunkier cork handle, turned from 31.5mm diameter corks, down to about 29.5/30mm, is a lot more comfortable than the old handles which were about 25/26mm at most. Hopefully this makes life a little easier and he can carry on chucking that fluff into his 80's and 90's ! 🥳😁👍🍻

One of my customers that had two of my intermediate swing tip rods built, to colour match his Daiwa reels, recently sent me a really nice message, letting me know how pleased he was with the rods, and a few pics to show me his set up.
Very nice looking set up if I don't mind saying myself! 🥳🍻👍

Conversion on a Daiwa 123m closed face reel from plastic bushes to 2 stainless steel ball bearings. The 125m can also have the same conversion done, but not the original Daiwa 120m .

The start of the strip down to put new handles on a set of Horizon X5's. This is why a lot of rod builders don't want to do mods and repairs, all the stripping down, and then cleaning up, to get you to the point where you can actually start !

Mystery solved! Pete Hodgkinson is alive and well, on holiday, and apparently not receiving calls or texts ! Thanks to all that asked about for me, he's been in touch this morning ! 🥳🍻👍

It was a long slog on this very gritty TS5000T with several screws and parts seized up, but I got there in the end !