I have a surf rod butt section that I am changing/replacing the grips on. During this process, I have decided that I want to shorten the foregrip length. The "problem" is that I made a decorative butt wrap at the top of the original foregrip. Before I made the butt wrap, I scuffed up the area under the butt wrap with a scotchbrite to get good results with finish "adhesion". This is one of the first rods that I made and the butt wrap it not too pretty. Now that I am shortening the foregrip, I am considering removing the butt wrap if the blank under it can be "refinished" relatively easily. I imagine that when I remove the butt wrap and clean up the blank that the section where the butt wrap was will be cloudy/scuffed up. Because I am reducing the length of the foregrip, I would like for the area where the butt wrap used to be to match the original/unwrapped blank. Theroetically, I would only "need" to refinish the butt section above the top of the foregrip where the butt wrap used to be, but realize I may need to finish more to match the blank. The blank is an Outcast and has a very smooth glossy black finish. Thanks in advance for your help/advice!

I just went thru something similar with the 1st rod I built, except I was removing a football size clump of the worst marbled epoxy job you could imagine (they did come out better after that...but the 1st was the worst!). The problem was similar in that after removing the marble, the blank finish in that area didnt match the rest of the rod. It wasnt a simple matter of "sanding" or smoothing down and refinishing. It still came out "lighter". I figure I'll try a single layer of black thread and finish, or even glossy black pigment in the epoxy, but I'm not counting on matching the original blank without some luck at this time. Will probably even trim it out to look intentional, but I'm now trying to minimize the deco-n-bling on this one.

A friend brought be a two piece spinning rod he used for saltwater casting and asked me to refurbish it. The butt section was horrible as it had numerous dings and scrapes. The upper section surprisingly had almost no dings. I thought about it for a while and finally stripped off everything on the butt blank section. I then sanded lightly on all the places that resisted in getting glue and gunk off. Then I spray painted the whole section with gloss black paint. It matched exactly with the upper section and looked like new. I then rebuilt the rod and gave it back without touching the upper section. The owner said it looked exactly like when it was new. You could try this and see what happens.

Thanks for the suggestions....I don't have will have any problem with chips or scratches on the blank where the black color in missing or damaged, just the "dulled" area where I purposefully roughed up the original shiny surface of the blank where the butt wrap was going to go. I guess I was hoping there was some type of clear finish that I could use as a thin coat that would make the scuffs go away, . This works great when I use typical (thread) finish/epoxies over sanded sections of blank or over epoxy finished guides where I sand the finish or slice off thread tag ends, but I understand that those type finishes are not intended to be used for what I am looking to do. I don't want to mess up the rest of the butt section where the original blank finish is in great shape and I guess I could just keep the foregrip lenght as is and either keep the butt wrap or redo a butt on the old butt wrap "footprint". Any suggestions??

Permagloss will bring back the shine.

Freddwhy (Rapt-Ryte)

Unfortunately I found once cleaning off the old stuff on a blank that there are nice rich blacks where the blank was previously covered, and more faded blacks where it was not.