SINCE they first arrived in Australia around seven years ago, I’ve had the opportunity to build hundreds of Samurai blanks into various fishing rods. Their light weight, resilient construction offers many benefits and the blanks are not overly expensive for the quality of the product.
The blanks are made of Mitsubishi high-grade Pyrofil graphite which enables them to have thin walls, a good action and offer the durability they have become known for. Most of the range of blanks have recently been up-graded, featuring slight improvement in action and a smooth, gloss finish grey colour.
There are currently nine blanks, ranging from a tiny 2kg, 4’10” blank to a 4-6kg, 7' spin blank which can also be trimmed into a nice baitcaster blank.
We have the full range of blanks and currently have been experimenting with build options different from our standard range.
On today's market there are some beautiful spin and baitcast reels for the light gear enthusiast, many of which are four and five hundred dollars a pop.
With such fine reels around, I thought we’d make a first class little spin stick for chasing bass around the freshwater traps or throwing little lures at bream and whiting in the estuaries.
We’ve well and truly lashed out with this project and have put a set of Fuji gold Cermet guides on the rod. If you have never seen or held a set of these guides then you have never held perfection in your hands.
These guides feature a high tensile titanium alloy frame that is some 40% lighter than stainless steel frames. Titanium is corrosion free, even in contact with salt-water. The use of titanium in spacecraft speaks for the strength and light weight of the material. It has some three times the strength of stainless steel yet retains flexibility in order to deliver the ultimate in a guide frame.
On a few occasions, I’ve placed a couple of these guides into the hands of a companion and had them close their eyes. The general consensus has been that you can sense there is something in your hand but cannot feel the weight of it.
When the holder opens their eyes it is always a surprise when they see the number and size of the guides they hold in their hands.
The ring of the guide is gold Cermet. This gold ceramic material is the world's first solid gold ceramic. Its construction involves the most advanced technology known in this field today.
The gold ceramic ring is diamond polished and has twice the strength of high-grade silicon rings. The ring also boasts superb heat dissipating properties. Combine the titanium frame and the gold Cermet ring and you have the most advance guide in the world today.
The blank chosen for this article is the Samurai 006. Rated at 2-4kg, this seven-foot blank, from which we cut six inches off the butt, makes into a beautiful two- or three-kilo threadline outfit. The six-foot six-inch cut-down version is suitable for a wide variety of uses and balances well with many of the smaller threadlines about the place.
With such light weight guides on this blank, we wanted to keep the whole outfit as light as possible so it was only natural to use cork on the grips. Cork is light weight and offers improved sensitivity over conventional EVA and Duralon grips.
The length of the butt grip is up to you but we shaped an eight-inch length of cork to fit nicely into the palm of your hand and used a small four-inch fore grip.
Cork is very easy to sand with light sand paper and, even without a lathe, it doesn’t take long to shape the cork to your desired finish.
Fuji’s graphite reel seat is also light and is the most suitable for this outfit. To continue the overall cosmetics of the rod we used one of their reel seats with the gold-plated hoods - the DPSG 17.
For something a little different in the reel seat department, Fuji now offer what is called a SKD reel seat. This comes in four pieces - a hood, a threaded tube, a lock nut and hood that screws onto this section and a centre section made from rosewood.
Glue these sections up and you have the standard Fuji reel seat with a rather smart rosewood centre.
The blanks are quite narrow, with a butt diameter of 10.50mm and a tip diameter of 2.1mm. The tip is quite light, although the blank has an overall parabolic action while retaining a crisp action.
As the blank is quite fine in diameter and we are only casting light lines and generally not after any great casting distance, a Fuji TISVGG 20 guide is all that is required for the stripping guide. It performs well and profiles nicely with the rod.
From here up to the tip of the rod we utilised the single-foot Fuji TILVGG gold Cermet guides. They are slightly lighter than the double-foot version we used as the stripper guide and are more than adequate for the strength we need for the line classes this rod will be used for.
The guides have been stepped down gradually, starting with a No 7/2.0mm TILGT at the tip and moving down to the single-foot guides, Nos 7,8,10,12 and 16, the spacing of which we have listed in the specifications below.
Overall, we have used six guides and a tip. You could use another No 7 or 8 guide in the tip section if you wanted to and the weight or changes to the action would be negligible. The line runs nicely through the rod with the six guides we have used and it cast beautifully without the extra guide.
When it comes to the bindings on the rod, it is hard to go past the strong colours in Gudebrod's regular range of threads. The strong blues, reds and even the green would all look good as an underbind, with black overbinds and a few fine gold trims.
Keep the bindings as small as possible and make sure you use a couple of coats of water-based thread-filler on the regular thread as this will retain consistency in colour, reduce fading over time and help out with your final coats of epoxy over the rod.
The finished rod is a delight to behold and you will be hard-pressed to find too many other rods that will feel as light and comfortable while offering the performance characteristics of this rod.
The blanks are readily available as are the guides. Even if your preferred tackle shop does not have the items in stock, it should only take a matter of days for them to get the blank and components from their supplier.
The range of Samurai blanks and Fuji's gold Cermet guides offers rod builders the opportunity to build up some exciting, first-class rods. We will have a look at a few more recipes down the track as we build and test them out on the water.
Happy Binding!
SPECIFICATION:
Blank - Samurai 006 (2-4kg, 7') cut 6” off butt of rod
Butt - 8” x 9mm cork (needs to be reamed out slightly to fit blank)
Winch - Fuji SKD - 17 with rosewood centre
Foregrip - 4” X 7mm cork
Cap - Fuji BRC19 or customise the end of your cork butt right to the end of blank.
Tip - TI LGT 7/2.2mm
Guides:TI LVGG 7- 115mm
8 - 130
10 - 150
12 - 190
16 - 210
TI SVGG 20 - 285
