Greetings from Merritt Island, Florida. This is my first post and I thought I would introduce myself and ask a few questions.

I have been wrapping rods for some time and like others I have been reading about, things are starting to pick up a little with rod inquiries and orders. Everything I have been doing has either been replace eyes, adding new eyes (Airwave) or fixing handles and such. I made my own hand wrapper and never bought a power wrapper but the girls I live with bought me an American Tackle Power Wrapper for Christmas.

I was looking at the ALPS wrapper, and always read good things on this forum about them but the girls found the AT wrapper on @#$%&, and talked to people at Mudhole and decided upon this one and it will arrive next week.

That being said, What should I know about this wrapper that I don't know about? What upgrades should I know about? And info will be greatly appreciated and I look forward to contributing to this forum.

Tony Boschi
Banana River Rods
Merritt Island, Florida
321~525~1063

* Rapid Prototyping Services
* Custom Beach Rods
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[bananariverrods.com]

Welcome Tony, you are going to absolutely love this place. It is without a doubt the best rod building forum on the planet.

As far as the wrapper the girls got you, I think you will like it. I have virtually the same wrapper, except mine comes from Pac Bay. The only upgrade that I would look into, would be the chuck. I upgraded my wrapper by replacing the stock chuck (black nylon) with the Alps chuck. Get Bit (a board sponsor) offers it for a great price. And while Utmost Enterprises doesn't list it on their web site, I have no doubts that Utmost can get it. Just drop Carol at Utmost an e mail and she will take awesome care of you.

Even if you don't ever plan on turning grips with your power wrapper, the Alps chuck is worth the money out of pure beauty and quality. Getting it was some of the best money I have ever spent on fishing related equipment.

David,

Thank you for the advice. I have been reading a few reports about upgrading the chuck, and I am assuming this is the chuck you are speaking of? I found this at Get Bit. I have been reading where people have been using rubber bands and such around the shaft to keep it in place, I am assuming this takes care of those issues.

[www.getbitoutdoors.com]

Right now, I plan on stripping down some rods I have to straight blanks and make those into rods on the new wrapper as "test subjects" before I use a new blank. I'm looking forward to the wrappers arrival!

Tony, yes that is the chuck I was talking about.. You will love it.

As far as needing to wrap rubber bands around the chuck, the black nylon one, that came with my wrapper. I never had to do that. It has basically what amounts to a big wing nut that you tighten against the back of the chucks jaw adjusting wheel, and that device worked quite well. Maybe I was lucky? I will say I never ran it faster than say .... 100 RPM with a rod in it. Maybe the rubber bands were a high speed safe guard?

As far as the Alps chuck. There is no need for rubber bands. It is a high quality product, It does have a set screw that runs through the jaw's adjustment wheel that can be tightened against the wheel that actually has the jaws in it, to stop them from opening. But I haven't had to use it yet. And I have turned grips on it at pretty high speeds. It's rock solid,

You'll love it!

And good idea about stripping down the old rods. I caught the building bug by replacing the guides on some of my factory rods. Now I'm hooked !!! lol

David,

Thank you for your input! I am probably a couple weeks from pulling the trigger on the new chuck. I figure I'll get to know this wrapper a little and then buy it.

By the way, my wrapper showed up today in the mail 3 days ahead of schedule, but it is missing the hardware to connect the bases! My life sometimes...!

Tony, if you're going to be attaching the base to something, which isn't a bad idea considering that the connecting hardware won't make the entire bed rigid, you can do what I did and not even use the hardware to connect the pieces together.

Initially I used the accompanying hardware to connect the pieces together, a somewhat frustrating and certainly not easy task, then as I didn't have a dedicated rod room set up at the time, I connected the base to a 3/4" x 8" piece of melamine. I just drilled holes in the base and ran pan head wood screws through them. Doing that allowed me to pick the whole unit up when I needed to store it. I've since changed what I have the bases screwed to because the melamine made it heavy, and also because I set up a dedicated rod building room with an 8' table to put the wrapper on.

My point .... if you screw it to something, you don't need the connecting hardware. And I found it much easier to get the pieces perfectly aligned when screwing it down to something, than when using the connecting hardware. And you want it aligned perfectly so the thread carriage and the rod stands will easily slide past where the pieces butt together.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2017 09:08PM by David Baylor.

David,

My thought exactly as far as putting this thing together. Even without the hardware in my possession, I found a video showing the procedure and thought it flawed, but understand the 32" inch sections are easier, and cheaper to send than 4 foot or an 8 foot section but still, a few better ideas come to mind.

The holes in the sections are unfinished and heavily burred and would seem to need extra work just to make them usable because the "plates" for connecting the sections won't sit flat on the sections. Also, if they put holes in those locations, why didn't they put holes in the sections to mount them flat as you did? Things that make you go, "hmmmmm"...!

I am fortunate enough to have my own "play room" in my house so I plan on doing exactly as you did to lock this unit in place and then start stripping some rods and learning this unit.

Hello, everyone! Newbie here as well. I'm glad to have found this great online rod building community. I'm hoping to learn more from the other members here. Cheers! :)