I'm awaiting my first unferruled blank. It's a 4 wt 3/2, with size 10 and 14 ferrules. I'd like to crown the ferrules. Can someone tell me what tools I need? I assume emory cloth to feather them (if that's the right term), but do I feather then crown, or the other way around?

I was shopping ferrules, and was wondering about truncated ferrules for this blank. What are the plusses and minusses for them?

Most builders will use truncated ferrules on three piece rods. The smaller ferrules help keep the overall weight of the rod down. Regarding crowning ferrules: Some people use emory cloth and others small triangular files. I have used both and now I start with a file and finish with emory cloth.

I feather the tabs before crowning. Harry Boyd's series of articles on rodmaking are excellent and I follow his technique for feathering and crowning ferrules. You can find it here. It is very straightforward and easy to do.

http://www.canerods.com/Rodmaking7.html

Cool, thanks for that link. And thank you Harry, for the info!

You're welcome, of course. Glad the musings are helpful.

Harry

Basically I do what Wayne Cattanach does. I take a piece of wet and dry sand paper - 360 grit and crown the tabs. Then I feather the tips before installing. Once in place and before wrapping I take a very small flat file and taper the tips to ensure a good transition for the thread from the rod to the ferrule.

Something you can work at while you sit in front of the TV.

Cheers!

Arne

Is there any functional reason to crown the ferrules? My color scheme will be black on the ferrules, tipped antique gold; the opposite of the guide wraps I'm planning. In that case, the crowning will not be visible. If the ferrules are properly feathered, is there a performance difference?

dlester,

I have changed my thinking on crowning and these days don't think that crowning offers a great functional advantage. It does look cool and I still crown most of my ferrules, but that's just because it looks nice. On small ferrules (11/64ths and smaller) there might even be an advantage in having the extra glue surface of uncrowned ferrules.

On top of crowning, I always flatten the serrated tabs of ferrules to make sure there is as much contact with the bamboo as possible. Just tapping with a small ball peen hammer works well. Others gently squeeze the tabs with small pliers to accomplish something similar. Attempting the pliers thing left a crease in the ferrules when I tried it. And thinning edges down further with a needle file once installed sure makes the wrapping look better.

Harry

PS -- One of Ray Gould's books discusses a tiny diamond disk for a Dremel tool that will do about 80% of the work of crowning. It works, but is expensive and hard to find.

Thanks for the tips, Harry. I'll post my results, hopefully positive.

Dave