United Comp Shoreline GT rods

[Nathan Tsao]

I copied this thread post from our own "Hawaii Fishing Forums" website, thought some of you guys around the globe might be interested in seeing a couple of my latest custom work for fishing from the lava rocks.

Custom #5 for Kumala808 over on Kauai. Closed wrap simple style with one pattern per outer box outlined with a little gold. Inner box has three color 20 outside-point "medallions" with many inside points being made around the center dark blue. My camera screen is busted and is taking garbage photos, cant really see this one very well, will try and get some better ones later on.


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Here are the rest of the pics of the UC100XH for Kumala and the 100XXH for Max1975.
Max has full length straight handles with X-flock over braided cord
Kumala has split grips with X-flock over sanded down EVA with a slightly shorter reelseat placement than Max's
Both guide trains are exactly the same with MNSG stripper guides followed by Ti Lowriders for runners and Ti SiC tip tops

The 100XH is an excellent "All Around" plugging rod capable of throwing both stickbaits and medium cupped poppers from 90g-150g. A perfect PE6-PE8 rod with lots of power in the back, and a tip that is just enough to work a pencil popper too.
The 100XXH is more of a heavy chugging rod that will handle the biggest poppers out there. Max wanted a rod to blast the big Lunchbox poppers, and this is one of the only 10'4" blanks out on the market that can do it effectively. A true shoreline PE10 rod, works best from 150g-230g for when you need a massive plug. If any rod can turn a huge ulua on crazy tight drag, this is it!

Kumala wanted his to be called GT Whiplash and Max1975 wanted his to be called the GT Hammer


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Underside of the rod names
 

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Custom color matching reelseat locks. These little things really work well to prevent any loosening of the hood threads!


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MNSG 40, 30, 20 Stripper guides, all reversed


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Titanium Lowriders size 16 for the top 4 running guides


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I hope you guys like em, they are so much sweeter in person than in these junk pictures (its frikken hard to take a digital camera photo when the camera screen doesnt work).
If anyone else would like to see these and some other plugging rods; Kumala and Max have been kind enough to allow me to display these at the Hawaii Fish and Dive Expo on Sunday March 10th. Anyone who wants to get a feel for them is welcome to come check them out. Just watch out for Max1975, because he will be there keeping a wickedly sharp eye out over his new rod!
Looking forward to meeting you guys in person. See you next weekend!

[Ross Smith]

Nice work Nathan,

The rods look to be ferruled just above the top grip.
What length is the top section of these rods (UC100XH blank, 10ft 4 in) for transporting purposes, have you built on any 2 piece, 7ft 10in United Composites Sidewinder popping blanks.

Cheers Ross

[Nathan Tsao]

Hi Ross,
The top sections for the 100 series come in at about 7'6"--7'10". They advertise them as 10' rods, but each batch i have ordered has come it between 10'4" and 10'8". And yes, the ferrules are just above the grip section, pretty much a butt joint rod. The bottoms are coming in at about 3'2" pretty consistently; plenty of room for a long reelseat placement.There is a little room to play with on the handle section though, if you built a shorter foregrip. Go with a size 22 seat for a standard grip and a size 24 for an extra long grip, since the handle is tapered not straight.

Here is a pic of another 100XH where I made a short foregrip (about 5") and did a wrap on the butt section of the ferrule:
 

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I am making another order to United Comp i the next couple weeks for a new batch of 100's and also the 7'10" series. I am planning on getting one 710XH(PE8-10) and one 710XXH(PE10-12). Once i get them built up and get a few sessions on them, i will post up a performance review of them on here. Hopefully they are a good blank, because it is so hard to find decent GT blanks out there. Very few of them have been produced so far, so we'll just have to get a few and put them through the motions before we know anything.

[George Relf]

Gorgeous rods mate ... love the colour schemes.

Would love to see a few pics of both rods with some bend in it, if possible?

Have had these blanks in the back of my mind for a while.

[Sam McKechnie]

I am making another order to United Comp i the next couple weeks for a new batch of 100's and also the 7'10" series. I am planning on getting one 710XH(PE8-10) and one 710XXH(PE10-12). Once i get them built up and get a few sessions on them, i will post up a performance review of them on here. Hopefully they are a good blank, because it is so hard to find decent GT blanks out there. Very few of them have been produced so far, so we'll just have to get a few and put them through the motions before we know anything.

Yep, will be really keen to hear how you find these as like you say there's very few options for the builder.

[Ross Smith]

Nice work again Nathan

Thankyou for your input on rod building, l look forward to seeing your 710's when you get them built.

Cheers Ross

[Andrew Colefax]

Late reply Nathan but great work! I have been waiting some time for the 7'10" popping blanks to become available, they were delayed a number of times as they were not happy with butt joint, how is it on these blanks?

Last time I was speaking to them they had gone back to the drawing board and completely redesigned the butt section mandrels to be smaller in dia.

When I have time to get back to the rod cave I can't wait to roll up a pe6-8 to test on the mid sized gt's where I am
Cheers
Andrew

[dante green]

Nathan,

I was curious about the 100xxh blank.  If I was to chop it down from the butt joint section and the top section and end up with a 9.6ft rod, what would the new specs be for the blank since the original was already a xxtra heavy rod to begin with.  Thanks mate!

cheers!

D.

[Nathan Tsao]

Hi Dante,

You could cut the butt section down about 8 inches with no problem. Any more off the tail then that, and you're going to have to settle for a very short foregrip section, which may be just fine for you. The butt section is tapered with the ferrule end being larger than the butt end. You will need a size 24 reelseat to fit the butt section if you cut it down; it takes a size 22 without cutting it.

Since the XXH tends to come in at about 10'4"--10'6", you'd still have to trim some off the tip to make it exactly 9'6". I don't know how stout of a rod your looking for, but i can tell you that cutting the XXH down from the tip by more than an inch will make it ridiculously stiff. With my stock XXH, the lightest lure i can load the rod properly with is 150g. The sweet spot is definitely around the 170g+ range. It throws a Bigfoot 230g easily, and has the tip stiffness to pop the biggest of chuggers. I built one for fellow forum member Vinh Ngyuen, who wanted it tightened up a bit, so i took just over 1/2" off the tip. He has had excellent performance with the rod so far.

If you need to get the rod down to 9'6" and nothing more, then you may want to get an XH and then be able to cut some inches off the tip while still keeping the rod useable. My best guess is that by cutting 2.5" off the tip and the remainder off the butt of the XH, you will achieve the feel of the XXH. Cutting the XXH down that much will essentially turn it into a telephone pole with guides on it (which may be just what you need?!?).

Hope this helps, and keep in mind that sometimes it takes MONTHS for UC to start building your blank!


@Andrew C,

I havent received the 7'10"s yet, i have a PE10 and a PE12 on order. UC had a similar issue with the joint fittings on the 100's also and redesigned them too. They have since all been perfect, and i expect the same nice fit on the 710's. I will let you know as soon as i get my hands on them. We will be taking them to Oahu and Molokai this summer and we will do our best to try and break them under proper use! Reports to follow, good or bad. 

[dante green]

Hi Nathan,

Very good point about getting the xh instead.  Thats exactly what I was trying to achieve.  So what's the most you would chop off the top section without ruining too much of the tip action when blasting those behemoth topwaters. 


cheers

D.

[Andrew Colefax]

Hi Nathan, the 10 footers made a brief appearance here in oz back in 09 or 10 but lack of consistency in the quality of the butt joint kept them from coming to market. I also saw some early protos of a 7'6" popping blank ( as a rod builder used to go to our annual trade show to help out the oz distributor and co owner of UC)

To make the butt section they used to lay up a section of larger mandrel and flip it around so the taper was reversed. It made sense from a rod building point of view as the grips could be pushed on from the bottom, but made for an odd looking and bulky joint as they would put extra material on the lower section of the rod to form the reverse taper required for the joint. I believe this was all hand done which resulted in the inconsistencies. I have yet to see the new versions, but at 3 years in the making I hope it's right

[Sam Walker]

Wow Nathan some quality work there....I build a rod or two for myself, but keep the wraps pretty plain. I have a CTS popper blank waiting to be built, and I'd like to know where you got the reel seat lock rings from, I've never seen them before.