I have a heavy Shimano spinning rod that I got at Sports Authority for $20 a while ago. I wanted to cut off the guides and make it a casting rod to pair up with a Jigmaster that I've added magnets to for braking. I realized that since it's a 2 piece rod, maybe I could just make it a spiral wrap and only have to cut and re-wrap one guide?

So my question is, with spiral wraps, is the guide placement usually 1 @ 0 degrees, 1 @ 90 degrees, and the rest @ 180 degrees? Or should I put one @ 45 and one @ 135 on either side of the 90??

I hope this makes sense. And thanks for any help with this.

Either of those combinations will work, although depending on your spacing one may work better than the other.

...........

Tom is right. Either may work.
You may want to try some guides taped to the blank in both configurations to see which works best.

The other thing that I have found with most spiral wrapped rods and depending on the reel being used, that it often works better if the first stripper guides is offset from dead center on the top of the blank at 0 degrees to about 5 degrees to the side of the spiral wraps. If you are spiraling to the right - offset to the right. If you are spiraling to the left, offset to the left.

I found this by using a few spiral wrapped rods with the first guide set at 0 degrees and finding that t he line on the reel was tending to stack up a bit on one side of the reel. However, experimenting with different angles revealed that if I offset the first guide about 5 degrees to the direction of the spiral, that all of the line wound evenly on the reel.

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To reverify that this problem was not being caused by the reel, I tried several brands and types of casting reels on the 0 degree first guide rod. I found the evidence compelling in that the line always tended to stack on one side of the reels.
HOwever, when trying all of these reels on the rod having the slightly offset first guide- all of the line piling disappeared.

So, again, tape the guides in place, do some test casting and line recovery tests and verify that all is well with the guide placement. If it is not, change the guide placement until it is.

Take care
REW

Thanks for the help.

I'll try what you said about taping the guides on to see how it works, and offseting the first guide sounds like a good idea since my jigmaster doesn't have a levelwind. Should be a fun project, I'l post up some pics when I'm done with it.

- Tim
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