Hello all, several years ago I purchased a handful of All Star closeout blanks from Bingham Enterprises. The models are BAT 844 and GS/GC 784. All of these blanks are a matte dark blue in color. These rods all seem to be heavy action and my experience with conventional rods is very limited so I am not sure what would be good uses for them. As I am a flyfisherman pretty much exclusively I bought these blanks as more a chance to play around with different style builds.

My questions to everyone, what would be good uses for these rods?

Will they make good spinning rods or are would I be better served making them into casting rods?

Ultimately, I will either build them out slowly and give them away to family and friends or keep them and give them to my kids as they get older. I still would like to build them out to make the best use of the blanks just not sure what the best use is. I live in Kansas so they would basically be for pond bass fishing.

Thanks you,
Jamie

When you say heavy action, I think you mean heavy power, and even then it's a tough call because that sort of thing is subjective. They are likely to make good rods either spinning or casting. My guess would be that younger persons are better suited to spinning outfits off the bat so I'd go that way if I planned to build them out for family and/or friends.

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I think the matt blue blanks were IM10X blanks if I remember right, don't remember many 4 power blanks in the All Star catalog though, seemed to go from 3 to 5 power on most categories. Popping blanks being to exception, but they weren't heavy powered that I remember.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2015 09:21PM by Spencer Phipps.

Tom, you are correct, I meant power not action.

Spencer, if I recall correctly, and I no longer have the receipt, they were popping blanks. Probably meant for saltwater which there is an extreme shortage of where I live.

I'll try making one in each a spinning and casting setup and see how I like them and go from there. Maybe they can make good catfish rods for the kids.

You see threads about guys who have built rods for a long time and are trying their first flyrod and are lost, well I am the opposite. If you tell me 6 wt or 3 wt, skagit or scandi, full wells or reverse half wells I am all over it but the power ratings for conventional tackle mean nothing to me as I don't have the required experience with them. I tried perusing the CCS database but with the site change I did not notice any conventional rod data, only fly rods.

I have built one spinning rod for my dad several years ago on an old stock Shikari blank. Neat little rod and he caught his largest smallmouth ever with it.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Jamie

Popping blanks generally make good rods for light to medium freshwater fishing with plugs/lures/jigs etc., so there's an opportunity to use them for those type applications as well. And... a 4-power popping blank won't be nearly as powerful as say, a 4-power mag bass blank.

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Spencer, you are correct, they are the IM10X blanks! I still have a few of those laying around, I believe mine are the 726's. I will extend them once I can get some aluminum tubing.. I just haven't figured out where to get it.

They would be good for catfishing, but even better for power bass fishing! They would do great as a spinnerbait, crankbait, Zara spook, frogs etc.

Miles, even better. I was hoping that the action would be conducive to bass fishing. I have six of these blanks so I figure that I will make 3 into spinning rods for the kids and the other three into casting rods. The 3 kids rods will be probably be pretty standard builds with full cork grips so they can two hand them. The 3 casting rods I will probably play around with and use split grips and possibly a spiral or revolver style guide layout.

Thanks everyone for the help, it gives me some direction.