Prototype 6 wt Yuba Swing Boo

Since i've been catching some really nice fish on the Yuba river lately i though i should have a photographer take some nice photos of the 6 wt spey rod and the tube before i gets to banged up from fishing.
last week i caught several nice rainbows one 18 and a 19 incher on the swing with variants of north country soft hackles. At the end of the day i landed a super, riffle charging 22 inch spring run chrome that really made the bamboo yahoo!
The Spey rod I wrapped in Olive Gossamar silk and tipped in black Gossamar silk. The guides are all Snake and H&H that i gun blued. I made the ferrules all of Brass on my lathe then those were gun blued as well. The bamboo was impregnated and after the guide wrapping with 4 coats of satin spar.
The rod case i built as a prototype for the rod is fabricated out of a product called PlyBoo from Smith and Fong. Its a 1/4 inch plywood, i then built the hex tube and the leather straps i crafted to hold the tubes top. the small acorn top i made on the lathe to match the ferrule toppers as well gun blued brass and maple.
Here are some pictures.

Swing Boo with the 22 inch chrome on the other end.

First Prototype Reel Seat

This week i got to play around with the design of the reel seats for the bamboo spey rods as well as experimenting with ferrules.
using gun blue is really fun also but its a real chore to get them super clean so they wont resist the blueing agent.
I started off with just some scrap maple to turn into some prototypes. My target diameter for the finished insert needs to be 31/32 of and inch and then the mortise can be made.












The carriage for the insert took about ten minutes to make and then the setup with the shaper was pretty easy. In all it took about 1 hour to make the prototype including the Brass Hood, lock ring and base ring for the bottom handle.
all in all an easy and very user friendly design thanks to having a good working metal lathe.