I recently stripped all the guides off one of the first rods I build years ago. once i removed the guides i tried to get the rest of the epoxy that was left on the blank off, I did some searching on here and found about using heat (hair dryer) this worked but started to remove some of the original finish. So i decided to completely remove the entire finish and start from scratch. tried the hair drier again and this did not work very well, so i did some more researching and heard of using "Goo Gone" with a pad. I let the "Goo Gone" sit for about 10 minutes the srubbed with a Scotch Brite No-Scratch pad, this did not work well either. Any ideas or suggestion on what I am doing wrong or another method that I have yet to hear about would be helpful. thanks in advance for your time. eric

You aren't going to remove the blank finish with a hair dryer nor Goo Gone (it's just a mild citrus solvent for removing adhesive gum).

If you want to strip your blank finish, you will either have to scrape it off (don't slice into the blank) or use a paint stripper to soften and loosen the finish. There are some water based and/or citrus strippers that do pretty well and shouldn't hurt the blank if you don't leave them on there too long.

Do not use sandpaper on your rod blank. Scotchbrite is okay for small stubborn areas, but you don't want anything that will cut into the blanks outer fibers.

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The best stripper I have used is Citristrip. You can get it at any box store, walmart, etc. It is cheap and removes epoxy well with out harming anything below.

Matt White

Eric,
If done correctly, you can easily strip a standard rod of all of its finish in about 15 minutes.
Just use a heat gun and or hair dryer and several straight edged razor blades.

Work on about a 3 -4 inch section of the blank at a time.
First slowly rotate the blank, while heating the blank - *gently* with the heat gun. Then, using the razor blade - held at 90 degrees to the blank scrape off the finish. It is preferable to scrape from the butt to the tip.
There are more graphite fibers at the tip, compared to the tip. So, if you scrape from the blank to the tip, you won't catch the end of a graphite fibre and break it off. By scraping from the butt of the rod torward the tip, as you hit the end of a graphite fibre, you will simply drop off and not catch a fibre on the blank.

After scraping all of the finish from the blank, I then use finer grades of steel wool and or sand paper to give a nice matt finish to the rod. I then, generally just buff the blank before rewinding the guides and leave a nice finish on it similar to the Loomis IMX blanks.

The key thing is to have a box of straight edged razor blades and throw a blade away as soon as it begans to dull. By doing that, the finish removal goes very quick indeed.

Take care
Roger