Black Hole Charter Special - Now 3 of a Kind

[Leprechaun]

It's supposed to rain this coming weekend, thus delaying my Spring boat repairs and prepping. So what to do? Looking through my "vast rod holdings," I found my prized BH Charter Special, sitting there minding its own business, just waiting for the fluke season to get going. Though I love this rod for the specific purpose of handling outsized weighted rigs whilst offshore fluking, I was never truly in love with the handle situation.

Not having an actual foregrip is no big deal when jigging with the typical 2-4 oz bucktails on lighter setups. But going up to 6, 8, even 10 sinkers on the B/S Rig when the conditions go South with this rod? Uggh. Yeah, I'd like to occasionally switch-up from cupping my reel to using a foregrip ahead of the reel seat, in order to periodically give my aching hand and wrist a chance to recover a bit. Except the Charter Special has at best a "ceremonial" foregrip. Well, we're gonna fix that.

Butt situation is fine - except its gonna have to go, in order to build the rod back up from the rear.

First order of business is to strip its handle area completely down to the nekid blank. Gotta get ugly before it gets pretty. Yep, you guessed right, its Ginsu time again.

Annnnd gonzo.

The 1-inch so-called "fore-grip" was next to be Ginzu-ed.

The proprietary blue "Black Hole" trim ring was next - and I can tell you one thing, it was no walk in the park to make this go away. I thought it would be a thin trim washer, over some inner filler, maybe like EVA grip material. Nope, it was solid aluminum, at least 3/8" thick and glued directly to the blank, requiring all kinds of care slicing thru it with two cuts 180-degrees apart for removal.

Not such an easy thing, as one slip with the Dremel, thus scoring the blank ahead of it, or going too deep, thereby hitting the blank - and it's game over. Luckily, no such thing happened, It came off cleanly, with a little help from two pairs of medium-sized Channel Locks.

End Part One

 

[Snapprhead27]

Agreed. One thing I don't like about my BH rod is the small foregrip

 

[Leprechaun]

The butt grip assembly was pretty, but again, it had to go in order to move forward with this makeover. A shame, as it's really nice. I had ZERO interest in more trim ring heavy cutting, and wanting to shorten the rod a bit anyway, as at the 6'8" factory length its just not ideal - for me. So I just cut the whole assembly off, blank and all. There, now it's 6'6".

Ahhhh, much easier to do it this way. What a difference "going samurai" on it makes. That reminds me - anybody watching Shogun on HULU these past few weeks? An awesome program. Like Game of Thrones, but set in feudal Japan. No dragons though, which is a bummer.

Back to the rod. The reel seat was next. Using one of my recently acquired diamond cut off wheels, I carefully cut thru the seat, both top and bottom with my Dremel. Put a flat screwdriver into the top groove - and pop goes the weasel.

And this was a bit of a surprise. Black Hole used a carboard tube as a shim. Think of a toilet paper inner tube, except 8 times as thick. They did use a ton of epoxy to glue it to the blank. And a fairly decent amount of it held the seat to the shim. But not as much as I would have used, had I been building this rod from scratch. In any case, I wouldn't have used a cardboard tube to begin with. Anyway, removing the cardboard shim was a bit of a PITA. I had to cut and "unwind" it, bit by bit. This took some time and made quite the mess, with cardboard flying all over the place.

After that, it was time to get the heat gun going, to heat up the remaining various epoxy wrap coatings, softening the finish, thereby allowing my razor knife to cut the wraps away. Some blank sanding followed, then a wipe-down with Denatured Alcohol (DNA), and now we sit around waiting for the needed parts to arrive from Mudhole.com.

Here's something to note - if you are interested in any type of work or hobby that requires precision cutting or grinding. For the price of just a VERY few genuine Dremel cutting wheels and burrs (believe me, I checked them out at Home Depot and almost plotzed when I started adding up the costs), I was able to order in these really excellent kits from AliExpress. I do not enjoy letting the PRC take any more of my money than necessary. But these carbide burrs, diamond impregnated grinding burrs, and diamond cutting wheels are truly good stuff. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Dremel isn't sourcing their parts same as me, and just relabeling them. These all look exactly like Dremel's versions, and I mean IDENTICAL. And they work exactly the same - so there's that.

The now naked rod looks kinda funny, like a plucked chicken - to my eye anyway.

Meh, maybe not, it was just a passing somewhat humorous thought. More to come once the rest of the components arrive. I mean work, not jokes.

 

[captmike28]

Agreed. One thing I don't like about my BH rod is the small foregrip

Although I love my BH Charter special for the heavy weight kinds of days, I too never liked the almost non existent foregrip. If not for the overall "light as a feather" construction and superb action of this rod for its application I would never have bought one.

The funny part about this story is that Lep and I have had this ongoing conversation about foregrips for years. Personally, I like more beef ahead of the reel when I need to get more leverage on a sizeable fish. However, he typically works his tackle a bit differently than I do. To each his own, hence the active market that exists for custom built rods.

So, you can imagine how I almost fell off my chair when he called me the other day saying he was going to take on this project and lengthen the foregrip on his BH rod. Knowing what a classy job Lep does with all of his tackle mods I am very fearful that as soon as he is done, I will be knocking on his door begging him to do the same for my rod!!!

 

[Leprechaun]

Hmmm. If you just about fell off your chair when I mentioned this mod, you better get a seat belt installed before I tell you what my labor cost is!

"Hang in there Mikie, help is on the way."

 

[captmike28]

Hmmm. If you just about fell off your chair when I mentioned this mod, you better get a seat belt installed before I tell you what my labor cost is!

View attachment 77322

"Hang in there Mikie, help is on the way."

Darn, I just finished paying off my boat. Now I will have to take out a second mortgage!!!

 

[Leprechaun]

While I await the arrival of the remaining components (tomorrow, probably), I spent a little time earlier this morning using my uber-custom "Leprechaun-brand rod grip lathe" and some 220/600-grit paper to shape and trial-fit the 3-piece butt grip. Came out nice!

Only the very best in rod-building shop tools for a former Snap-on Tools dealer! Hey, you know the old saying: "It ain't the arrow, it's the Indian."

Anyway, I think I'm gettin' the hang of this work.

 

[captmike28]

While I await the arrival of the remaining components (tomorrow, probably), I spent a little time earlier this morning using my uber-custom "Leprechaun-brand rod grip lathe" and some 220/600-grit paper to shape and trial-fit the 3-piece butt grip. Came out nice!

View attachment 77492

View attachment 77493

Only the very best in rod-building shop tools for a former Snap-on Tools dealer! Hey, you know the old saying: "It ain't the arrow, it's the Indian."

Anyway, I think I'm gettin' the hang of this work.

The rod butt looks terrific, nicer than most factory pieces.
I assume you will be engraving your initials in the trim ring!

I applaud your ingenuity when it comes to making your variable speed drill act like a lathe. One question though. If it's a typical trigger actuated sped device, how do you set it up to get a slow and constant speed?

 

[Leprechaun]

One hand on the trigger, one hand on the production paper. Works for me.

Slow speed is not what you want, mid to high-speed is best. Gotta get the EVA turning fairly fast to make the process work. Once again, trial and error learning comes through.

 

[Leprechaun]

Moving RIght Along

My parts finally arrived from Mudhole and so it's time to "Make Black Hole Great Again." Hmmm, I really wanted to write that in red, but I didn't want to further irritate any terminal TDS sufferers. That's right, I know you're out there.

Anyway, I do like the handle area dimensions that I used for both of my earlier rebuilds, and so time to measure and mark up the blank. 17 inches from the back of the reel seat to the bottom of the butt cap seems to work for me.

I really do have to get myself a white or silver marking pen, as the black marking on a black blank is not working at all.

Here we have the foregrip already glued up and installed and I've created the masking tape "bushings" for the reel seat. Use the beige masking tape for this, not the blue, because the beige version will take to the epoxy better. One tip - DO NOT use the 5-minute epoxy that I used for this fore grip. It's too watery and makes a mess, including getting under the tape I used to protect the grip itself. Once that happens, the remediation of the hardened overage is a VERY tedious sanding process. It has to come off the EVA, but you don't want to do too much sanding, or you will flat-spot the rounded grip. Stick with the slow-hardening Rod Paste. A really great, if somewhat expensive product.

Rod builder's epoxy paste mixed and applied. A very messy job, ESPECIALLY when sliding the seat up on its bushings. Be prepared for a major squishing out of the paste. Have lots of cut up paper towels and a good supply of denatured alcohol (DNA) ready to go towards the cleaning up of the adhesive overage.

And up goes the reel seat. Note the careful taping protection. You do not want any of the epoxy paste to get into the lock nut threads, or even worse, onto the painted surface of the seat. The blue tape is good for this, as it seals to a fine line, precluding the epoxy paste from working its way under it. Unlike the water-like 5-minute Devcon stuff.

The epoxy has rested for a few hours thus it's fairly safe to remove the seat's tape protection, so to inspect for installation imperfections (a.k.a.: eff-ups), and to better check the alignment of the seat to the first guide. Get this wrong and you'll have to decide if you can live with the misalignment, or need to cut off the seat and redo that part of the job. That would blow. I must have sighted down the rod, (with and without a reel in the seat), at least 15 times. Came out perfecto!

Rear grip bushed, fitted, and about to be installed.

Edit: it’s a day later and the epoxy paste has cured, and so all the "hard stuff" is now complete. I'll get a progress pic or vid up later today.

 

[Leprechaun]

Here's a quick vid of the completed upgrade, as it is now. Best to "full screen" it.

Still to come is the wrapping of the naked blank with a product called "Lizard Skin" baseball bat tape, which my friend Kevin/Longcast turned me onto. After that a trip to Causeway B&T for the installation of a
modest butt wrap ahead of the foregrip. And eventually after that, its off to the fluke grounds for some early-season fish slaying.

 

[Fisherman-never-dies]

Here's a quick vid of the completed upgrade, as it is now. Best to "full screen" it.

View attachment 77655

Still to come is the wrapping of the naked blank with a product called "Lizard Skin" baseball bat tape, which my friend Kevin/Longcast turned me onto. After that a trip to Causeway B&T for the installation of a
modest butt wrap ahead of the foregrip. And after that, eventually off to the fluke grounds for some early-season fish slaying.

Wow! This looks amazing. The only problem now is I am going to wish something I can't ever get when I am using mine . I totally agree with you on: "..love this rod for the specific purpose of handling outsized weighted rigs whilst offshore..". I used it in NC offshore bottom fishing over 200' deep as Kilsong did in his testing report and it handled flawlessly in catching groupers, snappers ( released all as it was out of season) and even a double header of giant triggerfish over 10lb each, (but I didn't like it as much in inshore togging). Having the foregrip like this most definitely will help pulling those big fish from the deep!

 

[Leprechaun]

Thank you! I am all about catching a double-header of 10lb trigger fish. We do get them up here (Grey Triggers) starting in July, but they NEVER get anywhere close to that size. Geez, I can't imagine how one of those pull, let alone two at once!

 

[captmike28]

Here's a quick vid of the completed upgrade, as it is now. Best to "full screen" it.

View attachment 77655

Still to come is the wrapping of the naked blank with a product called "Lizard Skin" baseball bat tape, which my friend Kevin/Longcast turned me onto. After that a trip to Causeway B&T for the installation of a
modest butt wrap ahead of the foregrip. And after that, eventually off to the fluke grounds for some early-season fish slaying.

Very sexy and I am sure it will be more functional than any off the rack BH Charter Special. IMHO it doesn't really need an additional foregrip wrap. Then again, it wouldn't be a one of a kind Lep Custom without it!

 

[Fisherman-never-dies]

Thank you! I am all about catching a double-header of 10lb trigger fish. We do get them up here (Grey Triggers) starting in July, but they NEVER get anywhere close to that size. Geez, I can't imagine how one of those pull, let alone two at once!

Yeah, it was an amazing experience. I never knew triggerfish (gray as well) grow that big, either. Our charter caught them about 40 miles offshore out of Beaufort NC, just north of the SC border. It was like jumbo offshore BSB fishing up here, as some spots had those big ones and some nearby didn't. Nevertheless, catching limits (10 per person as a part of 20 aggregate complex species per person) of >5lb wasn't difficult. And it was indeed hard to pull those - not because of weight or hard fighting, but because of water resistance those wide bodies created. It felt and looked as though pulling two kites spinning around from the deep.

 

[Matts]

Darn, I just finished paying off my boat. Now I will have to take out a second mortgage!!!

Maybe all that labor is worth one 8#+ Orient Point blackfish?

I really liked the feel of the Shimano Game, but with no real fore grip, I opted for the Grappler for bouncing 6oz+ sinkers all day for fluke. Too bad they don't sell the blanks.

 

[Leprechaun]

Give Palmarius blanks a look. You will probably like what you see. Then you can build it any way you like.

 

[Leprechaun]

. . . And Mission Completed

Got it back from Causeway this morning. Mike the rod-wrapper did a real nice job. Simple and clean:

 

[longcast]

. . . And Mission Completed

Got it back from Causeway this morning. Mike the rod-wrapper did a real nice job. Simple and clean:

View attachment 78497

Looks fantastic! Really great project!

 

[Leprechaun]

No more time-occupying small jobs. Gotta get the big toy ready for the coming season. Can't paddle her out to where we fish, so this weekend we get some proper engine maintenance matters done.