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3. Help unsticking my fly rod, Page 3

Stumbled across this in desperation to unstick my rod, and found simply leaving it a cooler area of the house for 20 mins allowed me to pull apart by hand. It is 32 celsius, so figured the metal ferrules expanded in the heat!

In Montana two years ago the two middle sections of my 9' Beulah would not come apart. I assembled the four piece rod ten days before and never took it apart. I was going home the next day.

I looked on-line and tried this fix and it worked very well;

Crush some ice cubes and put them into a wash cloth and wrap it around the male ferrule, then get another wash cloth and pour boiling water onto it and wrap it around the female ferrule.

Leave the cold and hot compresses on the rod for about five minutes, Return and grasp the sections securely either by yourself or with a helper. Pull each section in the opposite direction and the sections come apart quite easily.

I've learned my lesson and now whenever I want to leave rods together I loosen the ferrules every night just a fraction and re-seat the next day.

How do you wrap the cloths around the ferrules if they are together?

Think about it a minute; wrap the cold compress around the male ferrule section just below the ferrule engagement, then wrap the warm compress over the actual female ferrule. The iciness of the cold compress migrates up to the male ferrule and it shrinks while the hot expands the female ferrule. Remember it only needs to expand/contract a mere thousandth of an inch to allow the tapers to loosen.

Glad to have this tip, Matt. I've only had a rod really stuck once, but two of us worked pretty hard to get it unstuck, and for a while I was thinking I was going to have a 3 piece rod instead of a 4 piece one.

I tried the all the suggested methods but none seemed to work until I wrapped the two pieces with a rubber exercise band and it twisted apart immediately with almost no effort.

sounds good, unless you have metal ferrules on a bamboo rod. twisting those is no bueno.

Do not twist rod sections. Pulls straight because twisting can easily damage the blank.