Another diversion

Someplace just to show that reel collectors do have a life
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Paul M
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Another diversion

Post by Paul M »

Something for after that old reel catches a fish.



A few friends from a local fisherman's club and myself attended Canadian Cane (a bamboo fly rod makers convention) last spring. There was a seminar on landing net building. We liked what we saw and decided to organize a net handle crafting activity at our fisherman's club, to expand upon our bamboo fly rod building. These are my first two completed. They come out like presentation nets.
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Harry Verdurchi
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Re: Another diversion

Post by Harry Verdurchi »

Terrific Twain of Twine there. :)
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Re: Another diversion

Post by RAM »

Nice work Harry. Problem is, how can you do better when you start off like that?

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Re: Another diversion

Post by RAM »

Excuse me Paul. Transposed names. I’m good at that sort of thing!
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Re: Another diversion

Post by Paul M »

Thanks for the kind remarks. A friend told me they look too nice to use. Ironically, I would rather take my 30-40 year old Browning net that is lighter, has a deeper net and requires no delicate handling. I'd even play whack-a-mole with my old net if I had to. Anyway, I know I can do better next time even if it is purely for personal satisfaction.
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Mike N
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Re: Another diversion

Post by Mike N »

Paul M wrote:Something for after that old reel catches a fish.



A few friends from a local fisherman's club and myself attended Canadian Cane (a bamboo fly rod makers convention) last spring. There was a seminar on landing net building. We liked what we saw and decided to organize a net handle crafting activity at our fisherman's club, to expand upon our bamboo fly rod building. These are my first two completed. They come out like presentation nets.
Paul- great post and super landing nets. Which species of wood was used? Do you have any photos of the shaping process?

I have seen several instances of vintage wooden tennis rackets being lined with nets also. They are nearly the perfect size and of course already have wrapped leather handles.

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Re: Another diversion

Post by john elder »

Fantastic work, Paul! You are becoming a real talent with your woodworking skills... thanks for sharing!
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Specializing in saltwater reels...and fly reels...and oh, yeah, kentucky style reels.....and those tiny little RP reels.....oh, heck...i collect fishing reels!...and fly rods....and lures
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Re: Another diversion

Post by Paul M »

Thanks for the interest and comments. The longer net handle is walnut and the hoop is comprised of strips of basswood and cedar. The shorter and more shapely handle is maple with "curly smoke" figuring. That net hoop is comprised of strips of eastern red cedar, basswood and bamboo (tonkin cane).


These strips can be bent if you use a steam box or more simply, soak the strips in water for a few days and then carefully bind them around the form. I bought a 6' long PVC tube and a sealable end cap and filled it with water to soak my strips. My wife would not have appreciated it if I had used the bathtub.

The shaping of the hoops is a low tech approach so just about anyone can do it without any significant investment. We make a form and strap the strips to that using lengths of rubber cut from truck tire inner-tubes as shown. The trick is to get the rubber torqued down tightly and evenly with all the strips lined up well enough so that after you glue, cut, (plane) and sand they will look like they started out as a single piece. We simply use a woodworkers vice to hold the form when we are stretching the rubber to bind the strips into place. This avoids the cost and effort of making and storing a full size jig with clamps. Of course, it is a bit more risky than with a proper jig and clamps but this is just for fun, not a business.

To make the form, copy the shape of a favourite net or take a sheet of folded paper and cut out half a hoop to form a symmetrical loop shape to your liking, as shown in the first pic of this set. Keep doing that until you get the shape you want. Cut a thick piece of plywood based on that shape and cut out the centre so that your shape is hollow. My jig (not shown) was a hollow teardrop shape.

Strap the soaked strips to the form, slowly bending them a few inches at a time from the top centre down then going back to the top and wrapping the other side top to bottom. If you hear a crack, start again! Once the strips have dried after a few days, remove them from the form, then glue the strips to each other and re-strap to the form. The strips dry out after a day or two and keep their shape.
Next make a handle from a single piece of wood or multiple components and adorn it to suit yourself BUT the neck of the handle that terminates the bottom end of the hoop (the throat of the net) has to be shaped and positioned with several factors in mind. If you are buying a net like I did, the net perimeter dimension needs to be taken into account as it isn't adjustable by much. Also, the hoop shape at the base will assemble easier to the handle if the curves and dimensions are similar and sized accordingly. (You can easily bend soaked strips to form a hoop shape but once the strips are glued into a multi-layer hoop shape they are less flexible. So I traced the outline of the glued strips onto the wood I was going to use for the handle so that the top of the handle forming the throat of the net was shaped in a way that I could glue it all together easily and the final position allows the net to fit reasonably well (unless you are making a custom net). I suppose you could create a handle shape and then form the hoop accordingly. My crafting group is sharing hoop forms to limit cost and effort so I had to live with the shape of the jig that I borrowed. The hoop assembly is then glued to the handle and re-strapped to the form for a day or two until it sets. I used Unibond 800 resin and powder hardener for glue, the same stuff I have been using to glue bamboo fly rods.

Final shaping is done with various sanders. Santa brought me an oscillating belt sander that helped a great deal. For one of my hoops I borrowed a router system to carve a slot for the rope holding the net. That was used on the hoop with bamboo perimeter and there were serious complications due to the brutality of the router and the delicacy of the bamboo in that plane of the grain but it came out OK. The net rope groove on the other hoop was formed by hand and smoothed with a dremel.

Before they were sealed in epoxy resin, the hoop/handle assemblies were treated with different finishes. To bring out the curly maple figuring, several coats of tung oil was worked into the grain using 0000 steel wool. I used wipe-on poly on the other. The epoxy resin that I used self-levels which is fine for counter tops but is really unmanageable on a 3-D landing net skeleton. I MacGyver'd a solution using my Bar-B-Q rotisserie motor and that worked great... but you have to get the epoxy finish just right the first time. It is not easy to fix drips, bare spots, sags, scuffs, glue spills etc. Ask me, I know. You have to live with what you get and leave it alone or get stuck in a loop of one step forward, two steps back. HaHa.
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Re: Another diversion

Post by kyreels »

You are a hard act to follow...
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Re: Another diversion

Post by Mike N »

Very interesting. Thanks, Paul.

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Re: Another diversion

Post by Paul M »

Added a few more while I had time to kill.






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Re: Another diversion

Post by RonG »

Wow Paul, that's impressive!
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Re: Another diversion

Post by arley »

Very very nice.works of art, actually. Exactly how many nets have you finished?
you can tune a piano,but you can't tuna fish.
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Re: Another diversion

Post by Paul M »

The six shown.
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Re: Another diversion

Post by Mike N »

Paul, not sure how I missed this thread earlier, but those nets are finely crafted. I have scavenged a few wooden antique landing nets over the years, but nothing like those. They are heirloom quality, but I’d love to see one landing a nice trout.

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