Brian is much more the rod expert than I am. I don't wrap anything myself :) For a super heavy rod, I do like the 800L, but the blank is about $90 usually. Rainshadow has an 8'10" blank, the SW1088 that Brian is itching to do and they are a little more reasonably priced. I haven't seen it yet though. Shikari is supposed to be a good brand, but I have not really fished any custom Shikaris.

I don't know where you live at, but if you want to pull on blanks, there is this shop The Rod Rack in Hayward that has a ton of 8' stuff. http://rodrack.net/ I think the Bay fisherman use a lot of the same kind of 8' blanks that work well as big bait rods.

PS - It looks like Rainshadow blank prices are going up. I think they may have been holding down prices while they got established in the market. They always seemed way under priced to me.