in all my years of building i am sorry to say i have never built a fly rod.my question is other than the stripper guide are all the guides the same size and if so does the line weight determine the guide size.thanks joe

The size of the connections you need to pass pretty much dictate what the minimum guide size should be.

No, the rest of the guides aren't all the same size, but they probably should be. Generally, and unlike what I see on most fly rods, I use a stripping guide, followed by a guide one size smaller and then drop to my smallest guide size and continue the rest of the way out with that size.

For all intents and purposes, the practice of using or dropping through every avaiable size is done for the fisherman, not for the line. It just isn't necessary.

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The need for several transition guides are important for a spin rod, because of the pig tails that are caused by the line coming off the reel. Fly rods and cast rods don't have the pig tails, line is straight off the reel, so the need for controll of line is less.

I agree 100% with Tom. A stripper guide has three primary purposes: it allows the fisher to strip line in manually, generally at a slight angle; it gathers the line for shooting, hopefully at not too great an angle; it handles powerful runs from hooked fish, hopefully at a very slight angle. It's a lot more like baitcasting than spinning. I generally go with a size 12 stripper on trout rods and a size 16 stripper on heavier fly rods, then drop right down to a size 4 guide and the rest size 2 for trout rods. On heavier rods, after the size 16 stripper, I go to a size 8, then size 3 for the running guides. Make sure that the tip top has about the same size opening as the top guide. There would be no problem dropping right down to the running guide size as far as performance goes, in fact it would probably be better, but the aesthetics aren't there.

I agree 100% with Tom. A stripper guide has three primary purposes: it allows the fisher to strip line in manually, generally at a slight angle; it gathers the line for shooting, hopefully at not too great an angle; it handles powerful runs from hooked fish, hopefully at a very slight angle. It's a lot more like baitcasting than spinning. I generally go with a size 12 stripper on trout rods and a size 16 stripper on heavier fly rods, then drop right down to a size 4 guide and the rest size 2 for trout rods. On heavier rods, after the size 16 stripper, I go to a size 8, then size 3 for the running guides. Make sure that the tip top has about the same size opening as the top guide. There would be no problem dropping right down to the running guide size as far as performance goes, in fact it would probably be better, but the aesthetics aren't there.

Another trick is that some people go for the stripper in a " V " double foot. These are the higher frame cast guides.
Some also tweek the stripper to the side of the stripping hand just a little.
Don't know if this really works but some thing to think on and maybe try out ??