I got an odd one in for repair today, its an 8' solid blank spin rod, done custom locally I'm told.
It's got a 24" molded rear EVA grip, Fuji seat and a 5" tapered fore grip. No butt wrap, only a winding check.
It's probably a med. hvy. blank with medium action.
I have to concerns with this rod, first, its build as a spin rod, and the spine if obviously backwards.
The guy raked off two guides and want all of them changed. He has a Penn 7500SS reel on it.
Did I mention this thing is HEAVY.
It also has some sort of epoxy on it which I cannot cut with a knife. I had to cut the guides off with a Dremel tool and cut down along the foot of each guide to get them off the blank. It's single wrapped, but it appears that the guides were put on atop of a layer of epoxy since they are not sitting on the blank directly. There's a good amount of this epoxy or what ever it is under the foot. I got the wraps to peel slightly but it took a while. The entire guide was encased in epoxy, only the ring itself was not coated. There's a mound of epoxy about 1/8" tall under the center of the guides.


My question is, first, what sort of epoxy is out there that's this tough? I've cut off all the common epoxies and never dealt with this stuff. It's sort of yellow in color and looks more like someone wax dipped the blank than coated it with rod finish. Even sandpaper does little to it. I had to split and cut the tip off, heat wasn't doing a thing and I didn't want to cook the blank.

What about the spine being reversed? I was thinking that it may have been a reworked casting rod but he's brought me other rods that were also done backwards. I really don't want to say anything and make whoever did this look bad, but to be honest, it's a mess in my opinion.
The bad part is, I've been seeing a lot of these coated like this. They look like the dipped the whole finished rod in a yellow looking epoxy several times and just hung it up to dry. The blank is nothing special from what I can see, and it looks like it would make a much better trolling blank than a spin blank. The butt end of the rod is about 5/8" with a #14 tip to give you an idea of what it feels like. If it wasn't spined wrong, I wouldn't have thought so hard about this one. I can' t see someone who's obviously done so many rods doing so many so wrong? Or am I missing something here?

The customer is dead set on fixing it since apparently he spent a lot of money on it. He wants a set of higher quality surf guide put on. I sort of hinted around that I could build something nicer for not much more money but no go. I tried to explain to him that I have to charge him for my time cleaning up the blank, which will take many more hours still.
I don't think I've ever seen a solid blank this long or heavy before. It's feels more like a length of water pipe weight wise than a rod.
The blank is satin black in color, and appears to be original color, but I can't be sure.

Joe-I'm guessing that rod is glass-it may have been stood in a corner for a significant length of time and taken a set that makes it appear to be spined backward. That stuff on the guides sounds like some of my work.

Chris What kind of finish did you use? Joe in any case I would use a little heat to remove the finish. Most epoxy finish can be removed with heat. What color is the rod?
Good Wraps Bob

It's not set or bent, its just strongly spined in the wrong direction.
It's indeed fiberglass, solid all the way through like a Daiwa Beefstick.
What do you call the epoxy and how do you get it off? I've used and dealt with
Flexcoat, Gudebrod, and most others. This stuff is more like plexiglass in hardness than epoxy.
It chips off instead of cutting or peeling away. Once you get a good size chunk loose, it pops off and flies
across the room.
The guy raked off two guides mid way and their older Fuji with a shock ring.
I'm pretty sure I know where this and a few others like it came from.
I've seen rods coated completely before but not with something this hard.
I had a run of freshwater rods last summer which were completely coated, they had the rod shop's
name on them.
It looks almost like it was dipped in wax, several times.
His buddy has him talked into a full set of SVSG SiC guides.
I think he's surf fishing with this thing or something. He'll get some good arm workouts with this thing.
I have a pair of Daiwa Beefstick 100lb class solid rods that were meant for Halibut, they don't weigh as much as this rod does.
I did check it for set, but the only deviation from straight is in the handle area. after looking closer, I think this may have been lengthened in the handle area, the blank is yellowish in color at the butt end and white or gray up top. I suppose it's pieced midway through the reel seat with a ferrule of some type.
I more think it's just a redone casting rod with spin guides and someone didn't know the spine was different.
I tried to sand the finish near the handle to smooth out some scratches which he wants covered with some sort of
butt wrap and sandpaper won't touch the black finish.
Maybe shot with some epoxy paint?

I was thinking maybe the guides were done in regular epoxy that was heated to thin it for application.

The guides were rusted beneath the coating, at least those that weren't broken were rusty, the ones that were ripped off were clean.

It sounds like epoxy finsih that they call Bar Finish, it is used on table tops. The stuff is hard and wont scratch. What color is the Blank?
Good Wraps Bob

It sounds like epoxy finsih that they call Bar Finish, it is used on table tops. The stuff is hard and wont scratch. What color is the Blank?
Good Wraps Bob

It sounds like epoxy finsih that they call Bar Finish, it is used on table tops. The stuff is hard and wont scratch. What color is the Blank?
Good Wraps Bob

It sounds like epoxy finsih that they call Bar Finish, it is used on table tops. The stuff is hard and wont scratch. What color is the Blank?
Good Wraps Bob

It sounds like epoxy finsih that they call Bar Finish, it is used on table tops. The stuff is hard and wont scratch. What color is the Blank?
Good Wraps Bob

Sorry about the tripple post
Good Wraps bob

The blank is satin black, heat don't do a thing. I had to cut the broken tip top off with a Dremel cut off tool buy splitting the tube lengthwise and peeling it off the blank.
The coating isn't very clear, it's more of a cloudy yellow but since its on a black blank with black only wraps it didn't look yellowed on the wraps.
It looks like it yellowed from UV exposure or something. The top surfaces are a bit rough and blistered looking in spots. The smaller guides are so coated that their filled in between the wraps. As hard as this stuff is, and as thick as flexible as the blank is, I was surprised that the coating wasn't cracked.
I first tried a razor blade to cut across the top of the guide feet, but it only broke the blade, next was an exacto and the same deal, I finally took a box cutter and that dug in a bit but killed the blade on one guide. I finally just cut the guides off and slit the wraps with the Dremel on top of each guide foot. I knocked down the bulk of the coating with a file, then once I got through it I could work enough of it loose to chip it away.
There was no way those guides would ever fall off, the frames would tear before the coating gave way.
At this point I don't even know why I'm bothering with this other than I'm committed now. I suppose the reel seat is bonded he same way so I'll most likely just tie on some new guides and let it go, it's just not worth the time and effort that it will take and I take it he's been using it like this for a while anyhow.

Try using a flame just on the guide foot till you can see a heat change. Watchout and don't burn the rod. Also heat the cutting tool.

There is no such thing as a backwards spine. You can locate the spine anywhere you wish - there is no wrong nor right way to orient it.

It's been coated with more of an epoxy adhesive than a finish. Some guys used regular 2-part epoxy for this and it's extremely hard, brown, and pops and flies apart when you try to remove it.

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

Joe,
You indicated that HEAT did nothing for the finish removal.
If you are going to get this rod fixed, I think that you likely need more heat.
I would not use a flame, since it it too difficult to control the heat from a flame.
However, the use of a good professional heat gun should take care of softening the finish for removal.
I suspect that it would make sense to heat up the overcoated finish, scrape it off, polish up the blank and possibly give it a coat of permagloss. Then, put the new guides back on the rod.

Take care
Roger

If he has the type coating that I suspect he has, heat is not going to do the job. The type heat needed to soften that stuff would destroy the rod blank.

You have to chip, crack and pop the finish off. Wear eye protection - it shatters like hard candy, only harder.

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

Sounds like they may have used 2 part fiberglass resin to coat the guides, this was a common practice 35 yrs ago before the new rod finishe were available. As for the spine , sounds like that is what the builder wanted, however as Tom says I don;t see any relevance in spine any more and build on the straight axis. This is what almost all commercial rod makers do.

Joe,
in your world of rod building the spine is backwards. If you use the spine to orient your rod setup then it would be incorrect.

Todd

Regards,
Todd Vivian
Mud Hole Custom Tackle

todd@mudhole.com

I have it stripped, I used the dremel tool to get the guides off and to cut into the finish, they chipped it away with a small screwdriver.
Tom pretty much described it correctly.
As far as the spine, what I mean by backwards is that this is wrapped as a spin rod, yet the back bone of the spine is on the same side as the guides. If I place this on the spine finder, the rod bends easiest to away from the guides. I have always built rods just the opposite. on a spin rod, the spine should be opposite the guides, and reversed on a casting rod.
To reverse this, the seat would have to be reversed, which I doubt would be worth the trouble on this rod.

A buddy was here earlier and saw all the bits and pieces of finish lying all about and asked me what I was fiberglassing, then it hit me, the finish on this rod looks just like poly resin that you would use on fiberglass, like to repair a boat. I bet that's what they used.

The only thing that don't explain is why sandpaper won't touch this stuff.

I took one of the larger pieces that I chipped off and put a butane torch to it, it don't soften, it just blisters up a bit then pops and flies all over.
I'm not a big fan of using heat on a blank, other than some light heat to maybe soften epoxy a bit or to pull off a tiptop, I stay away from heat.
I have a pretty decent heat gun with a thermostatic temp control on it that I use to warm wraps for removal, I usually only have it on about 125 degrees or so. That's usually plenty to soften normal rod finish enough to remove it. I pretty much feel that this blank would have melted long before this stuff softened or came off.

It's stripped now, I am waiting on the owner to tell me what he wants me to do with the finish and butt wraps.

Spinning rods can't twist and all casting rods will try to twist. And this is true no matter which way you orient the spine. So it doesn't really matter.

Just put the guides back on and don't worry about the spine.



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

There is a relatively new epoxy made by West System called GFlex. I've used it for some impossible jobs. It will cure underwater and dries to a yellowish color; is flexible; very hard and can't be sanded after curing. Maybe it's the stuff you see.