What is the rule of thumb on how long the guide wraps should extend on the blank before hitting the guide foot?

Thanks!
Domenic

No rule of thumb. In later years I've made them shorter and shorter. Sometimes just a milimeter or perhaps two or three winds before hitting the guide foot. You want to keep weight of the rod particularly near the tip, so those wraps shouldn't be very long at all.

Knowing the propensity for rod builders to want to add a little flair to their wraps, which can be hard to do on very short wraps, you might consider making the extension past the foot end about 1 mm or 2mm at the tip-most guide. Then, as you move back towards the butt, add 2mm to the extension for each guide. This creates a very progressive look where all wraps are proportionate to the blank diameter. You can vary how much you add at each guide based on the overall diameter of the blank. You could even come up with a ratio of length-per-diameter at that point. Just some ideas.

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Domenic,
I do not think that there really can be any rule of thumb that will cover all situations and types of rods. A rod that is going to be used to cast with, particularly lighter weight, higher modulus rods, I think that the shorter the better so as to minumize the added weight. However, on very heavy boat rods where the weight of the blank, reel seat, guides etc. are a couple of orders of magnitude heavier than the wraps, the length of the wraps is not going to make a lot of difference in the performance of the rod.

Tom, we were typing at the same time again.