Billy 40

Bob from Grumpy's builds a lot of XC 732 and 733's for snag and drop. Either of those 2 blanks will cover everything that you want to do. THe 734 is good as well, the tip is stiffer than the 733 but they both have almost identical power sections

When Dick left GUSA he went to CTS and did just that. Stephen Pratt is the Engineer handing production now, at least that is my understanding. He's a great guy, he comes to the ICRBE in NC every year with his wife Gaileen to support the industry and show off their products.

I didnt' take the bait on that one. I assumed I Was being set up since he doe a lot of research and he spelled it both ways, he probably seen the other posts hammering people on this topic. lol. If not then this applies again

This is Gold!! Did you think you were going to be special? lmao. Why would you expect anything other than what you got?

Maybe he purchased the mandrels and patterns while CTS was making the blanks, and they shipped them to him when they stopped doing business with him. It's not difficult for a blank designer to reverse engineer a blank to get the taper of the mandrel, and a few tries to get the flags right to closely match the original blank.

I figured someone would post this. So far you've been wrong, and will continue to be wrong on this, and will point this out when I make my monthly visit into the Tavern to bump the post back up. Kids are not media puppets the way so many of their parents are.

How am I doing now?

So far 3 replies, 3 kids are normal. Should be interesting to hear from the rest of the guys who posted

Out of curiousity, how are everyone's kids doing?

Believe me the last person I'm standing up for is Rich. I really dont' have any stupid customers, I choose who I build for. If someone starts telling me my guide spacing is off or blah blah, I dont' deal with them. Learn a lesson - if your'e gogin to spend a lot of money on anything custom, and you cant' even have a conversation with the person you are paying top dollar to, you have nobody to complain to when things go wrong. All the stuff you posted....there's a pretty good chance since it's a 2 piece with the guide there that you use the guide to tighten/loosen the 2 pieces. There's a good chance that you damaged the blank and didn't know. Of course I'm the bad guy because I have a nasty tone, but the only difference is I smeared crap on your face with a scowl, and you did it with a smile.

My rods for $2000 don't have a unconditional lifetime waranteee. Neither does your car, or any other product other than fishing rods. Fishermen are a bunch of dicks thinking the way they do, and have singehandedly made the price of rods as high as they are because they pay for this type of warantee with every rod they purchase. OP - the person you purchased from has a well documented history of not communicating with his customers. I don't know what else you would expect. YOu'r enot going to get teh answer you are looking for, nobody can answer unless we see teh rod in person, and know everyhting ever done to teh rod. Questioning the builder and his guide placement and some of the other stuff you wrote makes you look silly, you obviously don't know wtf you are talking about. If one of my customers would say to me the stuff you've posted about I'd be making a new post about how stupid customers are.

Don did a great job on his NERBs Checkerboard Challenge grip. What a unique idea that was perfectly executed!!

There are several hundred on my website, as well as posted in this grip in the Decorative Grip Inlay post.

Anthony Palidora never used a bandsaw, and never made a grip with inlays before he signed up for The NERBs Checkerboard Challenge. These are his "practice" pieces, every one is perfect.

This challenge has an on line tutorial which contains 45 minutes of videos explaining each step in detail. There are 95 builders who signed up, including several international (Canada (2), Australia (2), Ireland)