The Boy Mechanic, Book 2: 1000 Things for Boys to Do

by Unknown

When a good layout of the work is thus made, the next step is to carefully plane the stick so that it will be evenly tapered in the square. Plane with the grain and from the butt toward the tip end, and make frequent tests with caliper and gauge, noting the diameter every 6 in. Mark all the thick spots with a pencil, and plane lightly to reduce the wood to the proper diameter. Reduce the stick in this manner until all sides have an even taper from the butt to the tip. The stick should now be perfectly square with a nice, even taper. Test it by resting the tip end on the floor and bending it from the butt end. Note the arch it takes and see if it resumes its original shape when the pressure is released. If it does, the elasticity of the material is as it should be, but if it remains bent or takes "set," the wood is very likely to be imperfectly seasoned and the rod should be hung up in a warm closet, or near the kitchen stove, for a few weeks, to season.

To facilitate the work of planing the stick to shape, a length of pine board with a groove in one edge will be found handy. A 5-ft. length of the ordinary tongue-and-groove board, about 1 in. thick, will be just the thing. As the tip of the rod is smaller than the butt, plane the groove in the board to make it gradually shallower to correspond to the taper of the rod. Nail this board, with the groove uppermost, to the edge of the workbench, and place the rod in the groove with one of the square corners up, which can be easily taken off with the finely set plane. Plane off the other three corners in a like manner, transforming the square stick into one of octagon form. This part of the work should be carefully done, and the stick frequently calipered at each 6-in. mark, to obtain the proper taper. It is important to make each of the eight sides as nearly uniform as the caliper and eye can do it. Set the cutter of the small plane very fine, lay the strip in the groove and plane off the corner the full length of the stick, then turn another corner uppermost and plane it off, and so on, until the stick is almost round and tapering gradually from the mark of the hand grasp to the tip.

To make the rod perfectly round, use the steel scraper in which the grooves were filed and scrape the whole rod to remove any flat or uneven spots, and finish up by sandpapering it down smooth.

The action of the rod differs with the material used, and in trying out the action, it is well to tie on the tip and guides and affix the reel by a string in order to try a few casts. If the action seems about right, give the rod a final smoothing down with No. 0 sandpaper.

The Four Different Types of Hand Grasps Are a Wood Sleeve Bored to Fit the Butt of the Rod; the Built-Up Cork over a Wood Sleeve; a Cane-Wound Grasp, and the Double Cord-Wound Grasps with a Reel Seat between Them (Fig. 7)

For the hand grasp nothing is so good as solid cork, and while hand grasps may be purchased assembled, it is a simple matter to make them. In Fig. 7 are shown four kinds of handles, namely, a wood sleeve, or core, A, bored to fit the butt of the rod and shaped for winding the fishing cord; a built-up cork grasp, B, made by cementing cork washers over a wood sleeve, or directly to the butt of the rod; a cane-wound grip, C, mostly used for salt-water fishing, and the double-wound grip, D, made in one piece, then sawed apart in the center, the forward grip being glued in place after the reel seat is in position.

To make a grip, select a number of cork washers, which may be obtained from dealers in the wholesale drug trade, or from any large fishing-tackle dealer. Make a tool for cutting a hole in their centers from a piece of tubing, or an old ferrule of the required diameter, by filing one edge sharp, then covering the other end with several thicknesses of cloth. Turn this tube around in the cork like a wad cutter. If the cutter is sharp, a nice clean cut will result, but the opposite will likely occur if an attempt is made to hammer the tube through the cork.

Having cut the butt end of the rod off square, about 1 in. from the end, or enough to remove the holes, smear a little hot glue on the end, drop a cork washer over the tip of the rod and work it down to the butt. Cut another cork, give the first one a coat of glue, slip the former over the tip and press the two together, and so on, until about 10 corks have been glued together in position. This will give a hand grasp a trifle over 5 in. long.