I am "sort of" refurbishing my mom's old bamboo rod, and wondered if there is anything simple I can do to shine up the guides, and make sure they don't have any burrs on them that might damage my line?

what kind of guides? are they silver? if they are silver(not painted) you can send them with a couple grits of sandpaper like 800 then 1000 then 1500 and 2000 and get a mirror finish on them...or if there arent any scratches to remove in them you can just do like 1200 1500 then 2000 and that will put a mirror finish on them

Another thing you can try that I do, I bought a dremeal knock off from harbor freight I think $8 bucks use the buffing wheel with a little compound and go at it, it doesn't have the real power of the dremeal and does not damage things like the dremeal, I use it on reel repairs and never worry about ruinning anything, you can use a dremeal but be careful it has to much power and you can ruin a part in a second. It works on guides and reel seats also. Happy Buffing

Why don't you use new snake guides and new stripper? Re-locate the guides for use with modern fly lines. Then your done... the snakes , if the rod was used much have grooves in them that are usually pretty deep.

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I am going to re-do the rod if I like it after I fish with it - just wanted to clean it of snags that might hurt my line in the meantime - what if I used a pipe cleaner with something on it and ran through the guides - what could I use on the pipe cleaner to smooth out a burr?

Maybe some 0000 steel wool, tear in a piece and twisted so that it will fit into the snake and run it back and forth to maybe get any sharp edges ??

Good luck.

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Run a Q-Tip thru the guides and it will show you any bad spots that you need to pay attention to.