Custom Rodbuilder New To Leatherworking Wondering What's Possible

[John E Powell]

Hello everyone,

I’m so glad I discovered this forum; I hope some of you may be able to help me. I am a fairly accomplished custom fishing rod builder and have quite a bit of decorative thread weaving experience. I am also pretty comfortable creating geometric and inlaid wood blanks for turning decorative wooden grips for fishing rods. I’ve always felt though that I’d like to incorporate leather work in my rodbuilding.

From the rodbuilding people, it seems that a small number of people work with snakeskins to create decorative patches of skin adhered directly to the fishing rod blank and then finished with two-part epoxy such as this Fewer people spiral a band of leather over rod grips like this Even fewer rodbuilders attempt simple braids like this I am not aware of anyone creating small scaled embossed fishing images for application over grips.

There just doesn’t seem to be much crossover of leatherworking skills into rodbuilding. When I chanced upon your forum, I thought I would pick the brains of the experts here. What kinds of leatherworking do you feel could be creatively adapted to embellish fishing rods? Could simplified tooled or embossed images similar to the engravings on fine shotguns be done in leather in a small enough scale to retain sufficient definition and clarity? I’d love to learn what you think is possible for a highly skilled or master leatherworker, not an absolute beginner like me.

[Andrew Chee]

I make fishing rods as a hobby on the side. The problem with using leather on the grips and such is durability. For the wet conditions that the rods go through, a lot of leathers would not be appropriate since they are not water proof. You can't do embossed images on leather for rods because only vegetable tanned leathers work for embossing and tooling and veg tan leathers are not waterproof. You could add a waterproof coating but I don't think that would hold up to the wet conditions over time. I guess that's why people don't use much leather on rods.

Andrew

[benlilly1]

Beautiful work!

[TwinOaks]

I agree with Andrew....but...there's always pyrography on chrome tan.

[otaypanky]

I used to enjoy rod building as well. I kind of miss having sold my lathe a few years back. I have to agree with Andrew, I just don't see leather and rods coming together in a way that makes sense. Wet leather might just be one of the most slippery things on the planet. And the water would be the undoing of any tooling or carving.

What came to mind for me when thinking about how to combine leather and a fishing rod is not using it in the rod but a decorative rod storage rack. Maybe something made of wood with leather trim, a carved vignette of a bass coming through some milfoil?

When I did rods I used to enjoy using rosewood or walnut for the reel seats and to and make wood spacers to inlay in the cork handles. I bordered the wood with thin black/white/black spacers I cut from plastic sheet and laminated together. The thread work was a lot of fun too ~

[Tree Reaper]

You might look at braiding.