Homemade Ice Fishing Stuff

Sounds like a meaningful ice carver to me.   

About 25 years ago I made an ice spud with a 4140 steel blade that I heat treated myself to an r/c of about 45.    This means nothing to most folks but I can shear nails with it.   It’s cut 100s of holes and never needed sharpening.      Actually I made 3 of them but gave 1 each to my sons.    

Good tip Polski ! Long time... Hey All. 

A few more pics

Here are some pics of my homemade tip down.

Loggers, that gives me a great idea on what to do with one of the small antlers I got this year!

I built a homemade tipdown a couple of years ago with PVC pipe but I had troubles getting it to tip just right.  A minor adjustment, I changed from two pipes in the are with two elbows to one pipe that goes up with a tee.  I cut a hole in the tee large enough to get the rod in there so it tips up and down and notched from side to side a spot to fit a coat hanger rod across it to hold the rod in place.  My initial tests in my house have it working really well! Looking forward to trying it sometime soon on some perch or crappie! I'll try and get some pictures one of these days.

Ok thanks Logger, I'm sure I can find all the parts that's needed and I'll go out and do some antler hunting when I'm out in a month or so when I go picking morels.

I hope them kids appreciate what you made for them and get a lot of use from them.

Thanks again.

I drill a hole slightly bigger than the rod dia. About an inch and a half into the antler. I use a good two part epoxy to glue the two together. I don't make to sell these. Would hate to make a fun little winter hobby into a stress filled job. 

Logger's hooked up - those are great looking rod's, by chance do you also sell them or can someone send you the rod blanks that they would like used? 

If not can you tell me how far you had to drill into the antlers to set the blanks into them?

Very cool.

Couple whitetail antler handle jig poles. I make one or two a year. "Depends if I can get my hands on the right size antler" And have given them to Kids I know for Xmas.

Polski those look WAY lighter than the ones I make out of PVC pipe!  By the time I have six rods in my rod bag with six pieces of PVC pipe it gets quite heavy!  But the good thing about the pvc ones is I can drop that rod bag from a 10 story building and they'll probably survive :-) 

My wife sewed this for me. Slips over a five gallon bucket. Holds six rods with two pockets for lure boxes. Rod butt fits in a loop at the bottom and is secured at the top with a Velcro strap. 

thats a pretty good idea Polski

I know they sell a lot of ice rod protection like the fllexable nylon tubes, rod bags and even hard cases.

 I just want to keep them from getting tangled up in my sled when I'm pulling it behind the 4 wheeler. Well this foam pipe insulation works perfect. It's really cheap, just cut it to whatever rod length you need. I used the 3/4" size and it worked good.