float making materials

[hermes]

First of all thanks for letting me join, so much fishing stuff here I don't know where to start!

 

I'm after some float making materials, I've been making them for decades now but wanted to try and get hold of some nice ready madish Balsa or Cork bodies for avon style floats, yes I know I could just buy balsa dowel and turn them myself but they never ever turn out any good, anyone know of a good source I could try out please?

 

cheers

[Dick Dastardly]

Hermes have a look at the thread re Agate rings.I recently brought a rake of pre formed bodies,reed and peacock quill from the shop I mention there.Even had a few of the old Denton kits there to,if you remember them.

 

One thing I some times struggle to find is good quality float rings so often make my own from stainless wire.

[hermes]

Thanks Budgie, I assume you mean the Rod Rings for Hardy Wallace Avon post, I will try and give them a ring.

 

cheers

[SteveH]

When turning cork and balsa 'dowel' for float bodies I tend not to use a blade of any sort but different grades of sand paper, the results I get compare well with anything I have ever bought ready made.

 

Steve

[Dick Dastardly]

Steve I do ( or rather used to do) the same.I mount the dowel in the chuck of an electric dril by inserting a length of brass rod through it.

 

Got all the pre formed bodies cheaper than buying balsa dowel so dont need to bother now!

[Paul Boote]

Now, I can't guarantee that I'll be back (it might REALLY worry the JCBs of this world if I did), but, beside balsa and the usual suspects, get out NOW, to the hedgerows (they needn't be rural or even particularly scenic) for ELDER PITH - the dead wood growing from the base of elder bushes / trees (where berries were found towards the end of last summer...?).

 

Stick your fingernail into the hard, but brittle outer skin of the unprepossessing stick you've got to reveal pith ( I take it not). Shape it next with a scalpel-blade, then sandpaper to final shape, finely. Seal it with Sanding Sealer from a 'Model Shop' (back again, now, to balsa, not to anything associated with modern 'models', as THEIR best efforts tend to be synthetic and really get in the way...). Reflect, next, on what a clever boy you have been when the fluorescent / black / white Humbrol Enamel painted tip halts / twitches, then sinks / dives / below the gunmetal / glittering / whatever you care to make it then or probably later / surface...

 

Floats? Yeah, I've done some. But to what purpose, now, if they end fishing summat that hardly deserves 'em...?

 

[ 31. January 2005, 10:30 PM: Message edited by: Paul Boote ]

[chesters1]

pith

[Ian FG]

Paul,

 

Are you drunk?

[Paul Boote]

Seldom, then or now, Gob' (others in my family, in the past, might have had the monopoly etc...).

 

Sharp, uncomfortably close to the truth on occasion, though...

 

Just possible.

[Ian FG]

...er, OK Paul.