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3. Help unsticking my fly rod, Page 2

a refinement of this method: if you try it and it doesn't work, find someone larger and stronger than yourself to apply this method. football is not my forte, but one of the guides at the lodge was a phys ed teacher in the winter, and he made it work.

oh, and by the way, when you fish for a few hours, and then leave your rod in the sun while you eat or nap, the joints will loosen. beware of this, and also beware of tightening it up too much while it is warm. the next morning, it will be very hard to unstick.

The idea of putting cold on any part of it confuses me. Don't we learn at a very early age that cold expands and heat contracts?

Maybe the person who said that is speaking from experience, in which case I should just shut my inexperienced mouth, but I would think that with the rules of how hot and cold work on the contraction and expansion of things, I would simply try to heat the inner section and leave the outer section alone. You wouldn't want to put cold on that, because then it would expand thus tightening on the inner portion.

So if you were to simply try to warm the inner section, in theory, it would contract down, thus allowing it possibly slide out. Just as the last poster suggested the idea of warming it in the sun. Warming it would contract and somewhat soften, while cooling would expand and harden.

Granted I see that it's already been broke, so this thought is a little late... but I can't help but wonder if it would've worked ;)

H/F-



Hmmmm. Well, that isn't exactly what I learned. Are you sure you stated that the way you intended?

Is there something I'm missing? Put water in an ice cube tray. Mark the level of the water. Freeze that water. See where the level of the ice is. It will be higher.

I know that heat can have a little different effect on different materials, but generally speaking... if you put the two pieces together, then they cooled becoming stuck, wouldn't it make sense to warm them to get them apart. I believe that heating would have the opposite effect as cooling. But even if that's wrong, at the very least it would make the material more malleable, therefore allowing it to slide out more easily, I would believe.

I wish I had a old rod that I could test this theory on.

okay, here's the deal:

water is different.

if you freeze water, it forms a crystalline structure, which lines all the water molecules up in little cubes. the actual space occupied by the water expands. therefore, ice in road cracks causes bigger road cracks. ice in garden hoses bursts the hoses. ice in rocks cracks the rocks and eventually reduces mountains into mole hills. ice in the ice tray mounds up and fills the tray hole.

when you melt the ice, the structure breaks down and the water occupies less space.

everything else on this green earth works the other way: heat expands it and cold contracts it. heat makes the molecules run around and occupy more space, and cold makes the molecules sit down. all those people running around the airport occupy a lot of space. when they get into the airplane and sit down, they occupy less space.

so when i left my rod in the sun, the female ferules expanded ever so slightly, and the male part expanded a little less; this made the joints wobbly. the next morning, the parts had contracted because they cooled off overnight outdoors, and they got stuck.

so next time the top to the jam jar is stuck, put it under the hot water tap. maybe i could try the same thing next time the rod sticks.

I guess that shows how long it's been since I've been in school :)

Whoever gave the answer to unsticking ferrules Thank you thank you It took about 1 minute and they came apart PatL

The person who suggested the WD 40

That has happened to me a number of times. Usually when I tighten the ferrules down in the heat of the day, and in the evening when I'm finished fishing, they have locked down like a beast! This is all excellent advice on preventative methods.

I have heard of the "waxing the ferrules" trick for quite a while, but I really like the graphite pencil/powder idea also.

Huh, try it if anyone wants ta. Just keep them clean, cotton swabs & plain old rubbing alcohol. That swab will be black at first cleaning of female end. Keep it up till swab is clean in & out. And yes, DW-40, but I use,PB blaster penetrating catalyst, but does have a high flashpoint but works on host of things. Even rods.....P.S. and don't do the nose oil trick, worst thing ta do,but that's what I think. Nose oil ta me is how alot of guys get rods froze-up.
Milt...
P.S. Yes, everything else on Gods green earth works the other way. I have done many joints for expand in building, or the buckle effect would be,Bad.....

Well Casey...On a similar note...During the last week of May I was floating the upper Manistee. My guide was watching his cell phone weather app and was watching a large gnarly storm heading our way.

We quickly ate our lunch and high tailed it to the access. It had started to rain before we got there and we were rushing around. I stuck my "wet" rod into its sock and tube and off we went...

I forgot about this situation and would have never put a rod away wet, but did anyway...I didn't touch the rod for a couple weeks until last Saturday when I was heading back out and when I pulled the rod out the cork and reel seat looked wet and funky.

I brought it home and with the help of Eric and Tony's advice I cleaned it up and it doesn't look so bad. But. The ring that goes over the reel on the lower end of the rod has slipped up to just below the ring under the cork handle. It is really stuck there...I mean really! It won't move, even after putting a rag around it to protect it and using pliers!

Eric has a friend who builds rods and they feel that the wood has expanded...Wet, fungi, heat in the back of the truck as it sat in there a couple days...It's stuck.

The advice I've got so far is that I will have to sit it out in the sun and hope for the best. Hopefully I haven't ruined the blank!

Matt...You have a great deal of experience building rods...What do you think?

Spence

oh look, it's back. the thread, i mean.
now i have some bamboo rods built by a fellow who believes in tight ferules. one of them i hold the female under my chin until it will fit the male.
one winter day i could not get the rod apart at the end of the afternoon, in spite of my grippy pads and pulling my elbows with my knees and putting it under my chin, and all.
took it home, and put a hand warmer pack around the ferule and left it for an hour. seemed like it would be easier than standing at the kitchen sink, and drier. yup, came apart nicely.
so, score one for gentle heat. hard to find in the winter! i'll have to make sure to take some extra hand warmers next winter! they're good for more than your fingers and toes.

Spence.



Hmm, send me a check for $500 - $600 and your address and I'll build you a new rod.

:) Funny guy...I'm still holding out that it will be ok. A friend of Eric's has me drying it out on a windowsill in the sun and I can already spin the ring, but it won't go back to sliding up and down the reel seat as it should.

I was told to leave it sit and "quit playing with it!".

The rod was wet in a warm car for a couple days, but that was it...I'm crossing my fingers. It is one of my "Montana" rods and is over 20 years old. It's a Sage RPL 9' for 5wt.

Thanks anyway...:)

Spence

I just sold a Sage Flight 9' #4 4 pc for $150. The RPL is really "old school", an oldie but goodie, like my two Light Line rods.

Matt...I have 2 RPL's and one LL...All put together years back by an old friend.

This one has my name on it, but you can't see it unless you hold it up in the right light...I asked him why he did that and he joked, "So you won't sell it." My first rod he built I still own. It's a Loomis IMX...

Ok...So...Is my rod going to be ok?

Spencce

I guess a picture would help me understand the situation better. Is your reelseat just a cap and sliding band or is it a up lock threaded barrel with a ring? That is one of the reasons why I like to build rods with stabilized wood spacers. If they get wet the wood is sealed and they can't swell.

Have you tried just putting the rod out in the direct sunlight for a few hours? If you have just the cap and ring reelseat you could always knock off the rear cap, remove the wood spacer and stuck ring, and have someone install a new reelseat. I just did that for a guy who had a Sage RP 7' 6" #3. He didn't like the all cork reelseat so I put on a REC nickel silver cap and sliding band with a stabilized black ash burl wood insert. Now it looks gorgeous.

Does your reelseat look like this?


Or this?

No. It looks like the rod in the lower pic with the fish. It is an up-lock threaded barrow, save that the ring is stuck right up against the ring just behind the cork handle. I think the wood reel seat is swollen and the ring won't slide back and forth along the wood like it should.At least it's spinning freely now but still won't slide freely like its suppose to.

The butt-end of the rod has threads that push the ring over the back of the reel foot to snug it. Its black nickle I think, the very end of the butt section has threads on it and a "nut"? slides up the threads and holds the back ring against the reel tight.

It is sitting on windowsill in the sunlight.

Spence

Prevention: Orvis ferrule wax.. they give it away around here...
Sorry about the lost rod...

My rod issue wasn't a stuck ferule...My rod was placed in case wet unfortunately...

I have been able to finally get the ring to go back where it belongs, unstuck, in other words. Eric has a rod building friend who had me lay the rod in a sunny windowsill for a couple weeks. The reel seat shrunk back to where it was supposed to be, or close anyway.

The reel seat has some war wounds on it, but I'm crossing my fingers the rod will be ok, and hope I never forget a wet rod again.

I was in a rush. That's always when you get hit and do something stupid. I had left it in the warm car a few days.

Thanks Eric! Thank your friend for me.

Spence