I have renzetti's lasor guide tool and it's really not the answer. It never shows past the set up guide and perhaps one or two more even with a perfectly straight rail set up. The stand over and view method works but is frustrating and time consuming and certainly not perfect. This aspect of rod building has been the one area that i dispised for 25 years. Anyone have any ideas? Would seem there would be some sort of invention perhaps a jig of some kind? How do the mass production companies do it? Am I the only one that finds this a royal pain?

last time i did it on accident...i put the line through the guides and the line got hung on something and pulled it and all the guides lined up pretty good haha

I dunno, it's a 2 minute procedure if you secure teh guides straight to begin with. THen it's a touch up here and there and you're done.Sight down from teh top & the bottom of the rod. Double foot wrap one foot for all teh guides,makes adjustment easier, then go back and finish the wraps on te other foot.

Drink enough PBR, they all look straight to me!

I do like Billy V above pretty much. Trick is to look away after you think you have them straight. Give it a minute or two, then look at it again. Works pretty well for me.

Putter
Williston, ND

I too find this time consuming. I admire guys who apparently can align them quickly. I fudge an move them quite a bit before they get really really straight. Would welcome any other ideas too.

Mo

WSe line the up during the layup, and then as we wrap. We use a couple techniques:

1) We use a laser set up above the rod, which is on a table, to get the redline right on TDC for each guide through the tip.
2) We "gunsite" each guide as it's wrapped, to make sure we get the "tunnel" effect, with each next-smallest guide in the progression centered in the ring of the beiiger guidce in front of it (looking from the butt, or from the tip).

It takes a little time but not much.

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods

maybe you could try getting a wooden dowel that fits nicely in the guides and put it through the guides that are all the same size (like the tip through the first couple of guides) and you will be able to line up a few guides fast and easy that way....then you would have half the guides lined up exact with each other and you would just need to figure a way to get the others lined up

just throwing out suggestions as i think of them

Until you can hold the rod at arms length and gunsight it, nothing is really going to help. There is no shortcut to it. This is one of the areas where the term "craftsmanship" comes into play. Sometimes you actually have to do some work for the cash. Lasers can work as long as the blank is as straight as a laser... which I've never seen.

If "close enough" is good enough for you, there are tricks that will get the job done. If you want perfection though, you are gonna have to do a bit of tweaking. Sometimes a lot of it.

I do guide set-up like Billy and Russ as I am wrapping Guide to guide

I lock the rod into the lathe with the guides down, then standing directly overhead I get the same amount of the ring showing on both sides of the blank - the neat thing is that it is easy to do this way, I have both hands free and can work the guidefoot appropriately. After I do that I hold it up and sight down it, 99.9% of the time it is so straight it is scary.

If you have an old spinning reel that you no longer use, strip it down to the bare body, then cut (hacksaw) away the rear half of the gear housing leaving the front of the frame attached to the reel foot. This will leave the front spindle bearing hole exposed and visible when sighting from the butt of the rod. Install in the rods reel seat and use like a gunsight. It can be used to align guides for both spinning and casting rods.

I too gunsight them as I put them on just to get them close. After they are all wrapped I put an old reel base ie tiburon, then go outside with the guides down put it on a level surface and look down the rod and split the rings with the rod. Try to find a congrasting backround. It also works in the house with the rod on a table pointing toward a light.

Billy,
I agree with you that aligning guides can be a pain. But I think that you first have to decide what you want to achieve. Do you want the guides to be straight relative to each other or do you want them to be straight relative to the blank. Because no blank is perfectly straight there is a difference.
Approaches like sighting through all of the guides or using a laser will result in the guides being straight relative to each other but will not result in the guides being straight relative to the blank.
Approaches like sighting through each guide and positioning the guide to show an equal amount of light on either side of the blank or turning the blank over and positioning the guides so that an equal amount of the guides shows on either side of the blank will result in the guides being straight relative to the blank but they will not then be straight relative to each other.
You have to first decide which you want to achieve. I think that a lot of the problems that many builders have with guide positioning is that they are attempting to achieve both which is often not possible. How much difference there is between the two approaches depends on how much curve there is in the blank.

Never really had much of a problem with this myself but on the odd accasion I've needed to I've threaded some brightly coloured fishing line through the guides then attached each end of the line to some fixed points thus suspending the rod section horizontally on the line. Not that difficult then to identify which guides need a bit of adjustment. Its quick ond no outlay required for equipment as I assume most will have some fishing line lying around. Hope this helps.

I try to build on the straitest axis. I rotate the blank to where the tip points upward to its highest point, that will be the top side, mark it. That will be where the guides go if it is a casting rod, on the bottom if a spinning rod. When I mount the guides they will usually level the rod tip out.
I then don't have a problem lining up the guides side to side just eye balling them. Still got to tweak them as you wrap. I have found If I don't do that I will fight them for a long time trying to line them up. I will sight down it and see one guide out, I move it then the two on either side of it are out. Got to put the bends vertical. As Emory said, there are very few perfectly straight blanks.

Build only spirals and the problem is cut in half!

Emory's point is very well taken. Billy good idea with the two foots. I always feel that two foot's though are much faster then single foots. So far it seems besides that and the wooden spindle trick which i may try some day there arn't any better ways then what we are doing. As far as the craftmenship goes Mick close enough is not good enough for me. Tyhats part of the problem its not at all exacting and there in lyes the problem. Putters point of looking away and looking back and be done,makes sense. The perfectionist in me is part of my problem. I did notice no one answered my questions of how the big boys do it. Has anyone ever seen a factory such as st. croix or sage and how they do it? I know the don,t stair down the blank or any of our methods!

Billy,
I have watched the guides being aligned at Loomis, Lamiglas numerous times and they do it just like we do by sighting down the blank. However, just like wrapping they are a lot faster at it than I am.

Do you guys gunsight the rods with both eyes or just a single eye. I do my left eye first with the rod off to my left side, then vice versa, then hold the butt to my chest and with both eyes open sight it. Usually if I adjusted them with my right eye, I will find other defects in alignment with my left, and still very SLIGHT misalignment with both eyes. I think our eyes were designed to see directly in front of us, which is why I do it this way. Does anyone have any other way they do it that makes this quicker. I do it rather quickly, but I am thinking I may be putting too much effort into it.