Thursday 22 November 2012

BUG-BOND "how to" on rod and line

Earlier this year Barry Ord Clarke wrote an article entitled "The Confessions of a Glue Addict" in which he gave a couple of top tips on using BUG-BOND. 

For regular followers of BUG-BOND you'll be aware that in order to prove the strength and flexibility of BUG-BOND I built a 9ft 9wt on a Harrison Advanced Rods Lohric blank with NO thread on the guides. The rod was built out in less than 2 hours and then fished. The rod was built in August 2010 and within a year of testing had caught 50 fish to 16lbs without any failure in the rod or "whippings". The rod was inspected at Harrison Advanced Rods for defects - there weren't any!

Barry has kindly allowed me to reproduce the photos from the article in which he uses BUG-BOND Lite... interestingly I used used BUG-BOND Original to build the rod.

 Locate the rod ring on the spine of the rod

 Tack the ring in place by curing with the UV light

 The ring is in place

 Now commence the whipping

Whilst rotating to get an even coat expose to the UV 

 The finished article

 Tools of the trade

Since BUG-BOND's inception its been used for braid connections on fly lines... the first real tests of this were done by Tom Gorman who used the system on his sailfish outfit in Costa Rica in early 2010. Then Barry came up with this method of welding a new loop on the end of the fly line... does it work? Well yes it does and my Scientific Anglers WF9 Pike fly line is testimony to this!

 Carefully cut the fly line at angle on one side

The stripped side

 Now place in a fly clip, coat and cure

The finished loop!

Thank you to Barry for allowing me to share these with you. Barry has a blog which you can find by clicking the link www.thefeatherbender.wordpress.com

Multiple award winning BUG-BOND providing Tack-Free cured performance since 2009

4 comments:

James O Durbin II said...

Dave-
Dont trust that line loop. I have had a few come apart under snagged flies. I add a nail knot of 30# flouro over the top of it.

David Edwards said...

James... I have a loop that was done that way on a pike fly line some 4 months ago... The Bug-Bond does when cured correctly re-welds the loop... Barry is vastly experienced and I wouldn't have put it up if I hadn't tested it... But I hear you... Best regards, David.

andrew parker said...

David, as a non-rod-builder, I'm interested in the rod-ringing usage.
I would have thought that one advantage of bonding rod-rings (rather then whipping and epoxying) would be to reduce weight and so reduce the effect on the moment of inertia of the blank ...
The photos seem to imply that sufficient Bug-Bond was used to give the visual effect of a see-through whipping. Are you aware of any subsequent rod-builds using the Bug-Bond method where the amount used is minimal?
Thanks, Andrew

David Edwards said...

Hi Andrew, reducing weight will be minimal and the reduction of inertia on the blank may be minimal... the big plus is a quick build and I do know of a number of rods that have been built using this method... probably quite small. The aim was to prove rod repairs and based on the trials I think I proved the point. It is used by one rod repairer in the US to keep folk on the river... The BUG-BOND rod was inspected by Dr Stephen Harrison of Harrison Advanced Rods in the year that I built it to check for faults, there weren't any. Hope that helps.