I am in process of updating several of my older bass rods and really find the clean up of the old glue/rod finish to be the worst part. ON my current project I have tried a new trick that seems to help make clean up much easier. I am guessing there are more tricks out there so any comment or suggestions? I remove the guides as usual by cutting the thread from the top of the guides and peeling off as much as possible. My new (I am sure this is not really new) trick was to apply a little heat and scrape with a popcicle stick edge. The wood sticks do not appear to damage the blank and only takes a few minutes. After a good rub with an paper towel soaked in denatured al. I can not tell where the old guide was! Previously I wound up with a much scraped up blank my new "tool" does not seem to hurt anything and the price is right!

Thats how I started building rods, retieing most of my production rods, and your lucky the older blanks used to have epoxy that would blemish from the guide foot so under wraps were amost manditory. One other consideration is that the rods your tearing down had color preserver on the threads so the only place the blank can be mared is where the epoxy spills off the threads onto the blank to seal it from weather. This spillage often will come up in one clear semi circle as it breaks free

I have a buddy out here that goes to garage sales and picks up the uglies rods he can to rebuild. He doesnt sell them. Just makes them beautiful and gives them away to his friends. Totally for fun. It is amazing what he ends up with.

I use a plastic picnic butter knife. Sharp enough to remove softened epoxy but not sharp enough to scratch.

That's how many of the guys here got started, me included. I think at this stage I've rebuilt as many rods as I've built from the ground up, and repairs come through all the time mate.

I didn't get into building through the rod-repair route -- I started because I couldn't find the rod I wanted commercially -- but I nevertheless love finding old sticks and rebuilding them. The same goes for reels -- I love going to flea markets and yard sales and picking up lovely old Penn Reels.

It's amazing what a little work can do to an old rod and/or reel. It's a good way to put those rod-building skills to use.