I thought that I was being meticulous on placing the guides on my first rod, checking their placement on every single step. But the finished rod has serious alignment problems, the main one being the stripping guide. I have absolutely no idea what I did wrong and I am looking for any suggestions or tips.

Hey Justin,

How far off is the alignment? How tight did you do your wraps. My preference is to not wrap the guides too tight so it allows me to make minor alignments before the finish goes on, but then again you don't want to wrap them too loose either, its a delecate balance that takes practice.

Scott

Justin,

Guides always seem to move from unknowingly bumping, touching, moving etc. The guides should be wrapped firmly but still movable for minor adjustments. I am constantly checking and rechecking the alignment because there is nothing worse than holding up a finished rod and finding a guide off place.

Also be aware that how you check and line up your guides makes a difference. At certain angles guides may look off but not. Be sure to sight them from the backside and be consistent on how and where you sight.

calvin

Justin,

Sometimes it's easy to misread the stripper guide placement unless you have a reel, or an old reel foot in the seat to ensure you get good butt/stripper guide alignment. Most of us have an old reel foot or an alignment fixture to sight the first guide with the reel seat. I had some that were off a bit until I started doing this as well.

As others have said, it's easy to bump a guide and move off alignment so that last check before finishing is always a good habit to get into.

Hope this helps.

Terry

Terry has a great idea he's given you with the old reel's foot. Get a junker reel and cut the reel foot off from it. Use it in the reel seat to "sight" off from to get the stripper guide or 1st guide set in place. It makes a big difference and helps us all quite a bit.

Putter
Williston, ND

Thanks for the tips. I will track down an old reel so that I can hack it up and use it. When I was building the rod, I tried to use a reel skeleton but the weight would cause the rod to rotate in the lathe. I also tried running a string down the middle of the blank to aid in guide placement, which also did not work.

As long as you've not yet applied finish you can fix it. Another good method is to hold the rod so that the guides are on the bottom and the blank is on top. You can then sight down the blank and eyeball how much of each frame is sticking out of either side. Many times you can get better alignment this way. Good luck.

Jay

Like Jay, After wrapping all of the guides,I always put the rod in the wrapper with the guides facing down and make sure that all of the guides have the same amount showing on each side of the blank and then make any final adjustments before applying finish. Are you putting the tip on before you wrap the guides. That makes lining the guides up a lot easier as you have two reference points - the seat and the tip

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

Unfortunately I did "finish" the rod. At this point I think that I have to remove the stripping guide and replace it.

Hi Justin,

Also, Just an FYI, make sure you get a reel foot that is from a larger size reel. I made the mistake a using an old Abu reel foot to align some guides on a tuna rod and the reel foot was so small in the large tuna rod reel seat that is was slightly offset to one side. Fortunately I hadn't put any finish on before I figured it out and used a reel foot from a larger Penn and got them all fixed.

Just my 2 cents. Jeff