On a double footed guide you wrap from the back on to the guide , but on the front of the guide do you start on the guide or off the guid and back onto it.. It seems that my wraps get messed up on the fron of the guide.

Walt, I find it easier to always start the wrap in the blank and work up onto the guide foot. If you start on the guide and work towards the blank, the thread wants to fall off of the toe of the foot and create a gap during the transition onto the blank. With practice, you will find it just as easy to wind left-to-right or right-to-left to do either side of the double footed guide. Good luck.

Walt- I took the easy way out. Put wrapper on island in center of room so I can get to either side and for the most part don't use dbl. ft guides. I do prefer to apply finish with guide ring to my left . Like Greg-I cant imagine wrapping from rod up the foot.


Chris

Do a good job prepping your guide foot ends - create a very shallow taper so that the thread easily climbs from the blank up and onto the guide foot end. You most certainly want to wrap from the blank towards the guide, not the other way around.

...................

We all have our natural L/R handed nature
and
on top of that preferences for winding left to right or right to left.
Control over both wrapping gaps ( the pitch of the wrap ) & compression of the guide foot onto the blank necessitates wrapping from the blank onto the guide foot & towards the guide ring.
Whatever your natural wrapping direction preferences.............wrapping in both directions is part of the skillset of a craftsman rodbuilder.

Just like tying knots right-side-up or upside-down is to a skilled rigger............or chiselling right to left, left to right for a skilled woodworker.

Good luck if you have the room to set the rod bench up as an island & work around uni-directional wrapping skills.
To each his own.
DenisB

Walt the wrapping of a guide can be quite challenging to ALL during the learning stage. The skill will develope quickly and you will certainly laugh when you figure out just how simple it is. Please check the Directory at the top of this page - see if there is a builder within driving distance - call him - make an appointment for a visit - you will be astounded at how fast you will pick up the skills after watching some one work - you will also make a friend for life!

Walt,
I was having a hard time with this just last night, until I lightened up the thread tension a bit. I agree with everyone who says to start at the blank, and work your way up, in almost all situations. However, I was wrapping a guide where the foot met a metal ferrule (cane rod), and found it more effective to start at the ring, work down the foot and up the ferrule. Definitely spend the time to learn how to wrap in both directions. Not only will it help you be a better rod builder, it will make many other tasks a lot easier if you can use your left (weaker ) hand (working on your car, fixing things around the house, etc).

If you can, you could do one foot on all the guides, then flip the rod over and do the rest ? Also check the search on this site, some one has a picture of a well prepped guide foot. Or try the photo section.

The guide foot will be tighter to the blank if you wrap from the blank up the foot to the ring , assuming you have prepped the foot correctly.
I think that's what Denis just said.

BillB has a good point about wrapping one foot of each guide, but for more reasons than being able to flip the blank to wrap the other foot.

Stripper carefully oriented to square & wrapped both feet then the rest of the guides wrapped one foot only atlows tweaking of the orientation of all of the guides to a nice straight line before wrapping the last foot on the intermediate guides.

DenisB

Walt....When first doing a guide wrap the wrap always seems the hardest but after awhile it becomes the easiest and like Bill Stevens says you will laugh at yourself....You more than likely will try every way possible to do this wrap but for me it was in the preping of the guide as Tom mentioned that seems to make it the easiest. Some will have a island where they can work from both sides...some will work with less tension...some will even wrap one side of all the guides and put a light finish coat on the other side after aligning the guides so that they can make the wrap from the upper foot to the lower where you have prepped....within a bit of time you will come up with the easiest for you to do....practice makes perfect and you will be perfect !!!!

Tight Lines
Tight Wraps
Fishin'Stix by Fred

Denis:
After wrapping the one foot. I always check the alienment before wrapping the other foot. They always come out streight.

Chris Davis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Walt- I took the easy way out. Put wrapper on
> island in center of room so I can get to either
> side and for the most part don't use dbl. ft
> guides. I do prefer to apply finish with guide
> ring to my left . Like Greg-I cant imagine
> wrapping from rod up the foot.
>
>
> Chris

Sorry Walt-I meant that to read "from foot down to the rod"

If you have good guide prep, it doesn't make a lot of difference in going from the blank to guide, or from the guide to the blank. However, if you are using an unprepped guide so you have a large transition at the guide foot, then it is always easier to go from blank to guide. The thread will help to get a good wrap at the beginning of the guide foot. Some folks can do trim bands better if they go in one direction, better than if going in the opposite direction as well.

One thing that helped me was going to a cantilevered steady rest for the rod:

[www.rodbuilding.org]

By using the extended steady rest, I can have my hand under the rod - even in the area of the steady rest. This is particularly useful when working on flexible parts of the blank - as near the tip.

Take care
Roger