Ideas and thoughts about fishing, fly tying, and rod building. DIY rod grips using 3D printing. Many say you can't make a rod grip with 3D printing. I suppose they imagine it's just plastic — hard and brittle. It would be, if you printed the grip with
The blank is an Aventik 9ft 6wt. I'm making a basic handle for this and a small printed extension below the reel seat. Many reel seats come with that threaded "cap" or similar piece for the butt end, but they don't survive my use.
A little groundwork needs to be done before heading to the design table. You need to measure the blank butt — the thickest part of the blank. That tells us how big to make the hole through the handle for the blank. On the blank I'm working with, the
Now that we have the necessary STL files ready, we can move on to the slicer software, which tells the 3D printer what to do. I use OrcaSlicer. There are endless print settings — I'm not going to go through them all. My settings probably won't work
So we've reached the point where it's time to find the blank's spine. YouTube is full of videos on this — just search for "find blank spine." And if you watch several different builders, some bend the thin tip against the table, others
When it comes to wrapping, I'm no expert. At this point I've got close to 30 rods under my belt, and they've all worked more or less. If the cast doesn't flow, I blame the blank. Guides haven't come loose