Guide alignment has alway's been a time consuming affair for me. Even when done I was alway's second guessing myself. I have a master lathe and a couple of years ago I got the laser tool for it thinking my problems were solved. Well if it's not perfectly leval and perfectly straight by the second or third guide your attaching some where in the middle of the room. And between every build I was always bumping it out of alignment. Now I have a "Dedicated Alignment Station". I have no digital camara so I will do my best to describe it here,it's simple really. First off I got the idea from a Harbor Freight catolog. They sell a straight line lazor for circular saws. It's only 4 or 5 dollars I think. I use two one at each end. Then I cut four book matched 18x6 inch boards and one board 9 ft x6 inch. Two have v grooves and the two ends I used a whole saw. Now all three oenings have to align and due to the shape of the v groove they are a inch or so lower. Assemble with the v groove spaced evenly in the middle and the holed boards at the ends and attach the two lazors at each end and align. With both on and aligned to each other its a snap. Then after i get my guides wraped and before my finish I cradle the rod and tweek till the lazor splits every guide and booom. Ready to finish perfect every time. Meybe sombody could use it.

Billy ---Like you, alignment is the only part of rod building I don't enjoy. I usually get my son to eyeball the last adjustment to guides. I would like to get a picture because I could sure use such a tool
Ken

I got a marvelous alignment tip here about a year ago. It's worked great for me every time I've tried it since, and has turned something that was a chore into a piece of cake.

Take a thick piece of bright string or rope (an old fly line works great, especially in a high-visibility color like yellow) and run it through your guides. Put a slight bend in the rod and hold it (you can either tie the rod off somewhere or have a friend hold it). Align the guides so that the line falls absolutely in the center of each of the guides when the rod is under a slight load. Then you go to wrapping -- it's that simple. It takes less than five minutes.

The reason I like this is because A) it's easy, B) it works, and C) it aligns the guides correctly. You want the guides to be aligned when the rod is under a load - it is not as important that they're perfectly aligned when straight (though almost all of the time, when they're set up properly, they'll be in line in both situations). This is something that I'd never thought about before I tried this method, but think about it for a minute, and it should make sense.

I've been thinking about Occam's Razor a lot lately (don't ask me why); it says that the simplest solution is most likely to be the correct one. So it is with guides: this method is so easy, and works so well, that when you try it, you'll likely never align your guides any other way.

I have the Flex Coat SW-1 wrapper which has a rail down the center for the supports & thread carriage. I eyeball the guide alignment to tape & wrap, then, after wrapping the guides I line up the rod and my good eye with the shiny spot on the wall where the ceiling light is reflected. Now I adjust each guide so it lines up with the tip and butt guides. Holding the rod at a slight angle to see the individual guides against the blank I put the same amount of guide on each side of the blank one after the other until I've gotten the alignment as near perfect as I can get it. I will try the bright string idea. It might be easier on these old eyes. I tryed the laser and after aligning with a laser sight I still could improve the alignment by eye. Twenty five rods went through laser alignment and three needed no further agjustment and not the last three, but scattered through the twenty five.

If at first you don't succeed, go fishing, then try, try again.

Billy,
That sound like a good idea.
Thanks for sharing your idea and information with everyone.

Lynn

Because we build on-spine, we use a laser to mark the spine about every 12" along the length of the rod once we establish the spine with aq spining tool (we use the Renzetti thingy, but any of the tools will do). Then we install the reel seat and tip-top using a piece of brightly-colored line (spot-on, Chris) and then we do our layups. Marking the rod at the start saves us a bunch of time for everything after that

After the guides are wrapped, but before the wraps are CP'd or finished, we do an alignment check using Chris's trick. Since we already know what dead-center is (from the reel seat through the tip) the rest is pretty easy too. We tweak the guides that need it, making sure that the guide feet also stay in-line with the TDC of the rod itself.

We also sometimes a use a laser to check the guide alignment, making sure the beam hits the dead-center of each guide ring in relation to the TDC of the rod. We'll do this to check the bright-line layout if we're not absolutely sure.

When most of our customers take delivery of a rod, one of the first things they do is gunsight the guides. They all remark at how perfectly straight the linup is and that they can see the tip through the stripper. To them, it's a mark of custom quality.

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods

ok Russ in escense we do the same thing. Heres my problem, with the ronzetti as ralph said the renzetti is just not always right. Seems like you spend more time tweeking the tweeker then the guides as its always out of adjustment. Heres my problem with the way you do it russ. The method too me doesnt take into account the bend in the rod. Most middle price blanks i find are not perfectly straight. My "jig" straightens out the blank by it sitting in the v grooves. Now granted it will bounce back when out of the jig but under load it straitens again, right? That was more a question then a statement. Now the way chris described the load he puts in the blank before he does the string makes sense. But that will not make the guides all line up when you sight down a finished rod like you described. Provided you have the cone of circles like Tom K. describes when he talkes about his way of doing the new guide concept it doesn't matter I would think? Hope this makes sense

Simple - After the seat and handle are on, then the tip top on and aligned correctly, I start from the top and go down the rod wrapping each guide after wrapping check guides up and guides down ????