Last year I reguided my graphite 6 wt. 9 ft. rod. I also rewrapped the female ferule so it would match the new guide thread. What I am now noticing is that a small split has formed on the ferule.

So question is. Did I maybe not wrap the thread tight enough around the ferule and is there any way to repair this?

Hello Randy
Wrap ferrules to within a mm or 1/2 mm of the end using the same tension as guide wraps. Then coat with a finish. If the ferrule is split more that a 2 mm I would repair it. To repair: remove the wrap and clean it so that an sleeve of fiberglass can be fitted over the cracked ferrule. After fit checking- remove the oversleeve and taper it above the ferrule to feather it into the existing blank. , use a good adhesive such as U40 Rod Bond to fasten the oversleeve in place, After it is cured for 6 to 8 hours clean off any epoxy and smooth tapered portion so it is featered into the blank above the now oversleeved ferrule. Wrap the oversleeve and coat with a finish. The fiber glass over sleeve length should be at least 4 diameters of the to be repaired blank at the cracked ferrule. This will do the job. Check the library for some more information regarding rod repair. Ralph O'Quinn has a good article there.
Hope this helps
Joe Kassuba
HIS Rod Shop

Randy,

I would follow Joe's advise above for a badly split female ferrule. However if the split is even up to 5mm long providing that the male part of the joint engages a good way I would suggest you carfully trim back the female section to good carbon. Re-wrap to say within 1 mm from the end and re-finish. Be careful about the tension you use. You can close up the ID of a femaile ferrule. What I do is insert the male and mark the blank wher it buts up to the bottom of the female section. I leave the rod asembled and then wrap. You can tell if you have over cooked the tension as it will be very difficult to take the rod apart. When the rod is apart you will probably find espcially with light rods like fly rods that the male will not fit inside quite so far as before the wraps. That little mark will show you by how much.

If you leave just a 1mm split in that female ferrule and do not grind back to sound material I can almost guarantee that the split will continue over time and you will have a trashed rod. In the Aircraft industry if a plate is spotted with a crack a temp repair is done by drilling a hole at the end of the crack. This is to stop the split from getting bigger. Same principle applies here except we don't do any drilling. LOL