While getting my boat ready for this weekends musky float which involved removing 10 inches of snow and about 6" of ice because I was too stupid to cover my boat before the last big storm we had, I realized water had got into the shaft of my oars and when the water froze broke the end of the blade off of both oars. A new pair will be purchased but this obviously left me no time to have functioning oars for this Sunday. You are probably asking yourself "What the hell does this have to do with flytying secrets?". Well here it is. Superglue and borax. For those of you that don't know when superglue and borax are mixed it instantly has a chemical reaction that hardens on contact. Not only does it harden on contact but it is as hard as concrete. I learned this from a friend of mine that is a taxidermist. I have been using this trick for various flytying activities. I use it to mount custom carved taxidermy foam heads onto hooks for topwater predator flies but it has numerous uses both in flytying and around the house. I am putting this fix to the test this weekend by fixing my Sawyers. Now that I have fixed them I have beat these things off of the floor and even twisted them as hard as I could and couldn't get them to break again. Hopefully this will do the trick. Hell I might not even need new blades now.
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| Borax and Superglue |
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| I sprinkled Borax on the end of broken blade |
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Put some super glue on the other end and stick together.
I then added some more externally on the blades to reinforce |
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| Color it with black Sharpie |
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| Finished product good as new |
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| Topwater fly using same process |
Wow, thanks for sharing this secret! And it looks professionally done, even if it turned out to be simple to do! I'd like to caution about leaving your boat unattended on weather emergencies, though. Even meteorlogists don't exactly know what a storm would ultimately bring, so making sure your boat is secured and protected before the storm arrives is a good way to keep repair costs down. Take care!
ReplyDeleteKent Garner @ White's Marine Center