Here are some photos of my home construction of a hexbeam using cheap 6m fishing rods ( € 12,50 ) These fishing rods are not as solid as I hoped. They split very easily. I did not use top sections and bottom section because the top was not strong enough and the bottom part didn’t bend enough. It was necessary to reinforce the ends of the joints and ends of the fibreglass rods. In the ends I glued a piece of would long enough to cover the clamps of the baseplate. I used the heat shrink filled with glue inside to reinforce the end and transitions from one piece to another. This is very strong and very difficult to remove.
I used the central coaxial section as made by HB9MCZ see this page:
http://lema.epfl.ch/hexbeam/
I machined teflon insulators for it.
I made some changes later to this design:
- The use of hose clamps was not successful. The hose clamps I used were closing elliptically. This caused the thin fibreglass rod to split in the end. There are some better hose clamps available but I couldn’t get them locally.
- Instead of these hose clamps I bought a bag with UV resistant tie-raps. These were specified for lasting 10 years in the Mediterranean sun. Must be a 100 years in Dutch weather 🙂
- Use hard wood for the wooden dowel. Or better try to find some aluminium tubing that fits inside the fibreglass rods.
