Well...I pulled the wood fly rod blank from the Varathane several weeks ago and put it back into the drying jig to give it plenty of time to cure before winter. But as I was inspecting my handy-work over the weekend I noticed a very fine split half way up the blank.
This has never happened before.
I suspect that the split was there all along (likely from the initial drying process) but was not noticeable until the wood was stained (much like when the wood grain comes out more when it is varnished). I have decided that I do not want to risk putting $100 in components on the blank only to have it break at the split. This blank will be scrapped and I will search for a new one over the winter. A little disappointing - but that's all part of the charm of building wood fly rods.
This of course means that it will be over a year before I resume this project (it will take that long to fully dry another blank). For those of you wanting to build your own, this would be a good time to search out and dry your own rod blank - once I resume work, you can follow along with your own.
In the mean time I can still fish with my other two functional wood fly rods.
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