I am not much on the old school stuff but.... I have seen quite a few threads over the last few months on these Harnell rods so thought I would post here. A good friend of mine had some old stuff sitting around that was handed to him from dead relitives and so forth since he was the only person in his family they though might use the stuff. Well in his collection I came accross a Harnell 566 60lb rod. Logo still clear but guides look like crap. Wood handle is not bad and white rubber foregrip can be cleaned up I believe. What I really want to know is....Should I rebulid this rod with turbo style guides and keep the origional colors, use a set of brand new guides from the same period of the rod that was also with the stuff he had, leave the rod alone and tell him to hold onto it? What I am hoping to do is maintain the old school clasic style, not kill the value, and bring this relic out of retirement. My biggest fear is to jump into this project only to ruin the value if there is any. Can I please get some opinions from the guys who have experience with this sort of situation. Thank you very much.

Also have a Abu Mitchel with 4 spare spools all dated 63, a ssqudder with te "new" plastic spool with air break fins, and two other conventionals that I am going to clean up for him. THe two other I am not sure the manufacturer but neither have any breaking system at all!

Steve, does he want to fish it, or hang it on the wall? If he wants to fish it, I'd build it like I build any rod: use the best components you can get your hands on. I don't think using Alconite or hardloy guides would ruin this rod, and it would fish better with them. Because Harnells are heavier than broken hearts, I don't think you need to use SiC or titanium, but I would still use a decent ceramic material for the guides. Harnells are great old-school rods, but we're not talking about a gem from Tutenkamen's tomb here: they're not terribly valuable, and using good materials to make it fish better isn't going to be like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

If he wants to hang it on his wall, then performance doesn't matter, and I'd try, as much as I could, to make it look like a vintage surf rod from the 1940s or 1950s. With the wooden handle, you're already halfway there, but a set of stainless guides would make it something that would make Frank Woolner proud.

Steve: There are a number of Harnells on @#$%&. There's a 580 (130 lb class) currently up for @#$%&, and you can watch it to see what it fetches. These Harnells sold on @#$%& are all over the place in selling price, but the key value point seems to be the qualtiy of the Harnell decal. I love old fiberglass rods and recently completely restored a 9.5 foot fast action Harnell 626 for surf fishing for spkld trout. I wasn't interested in preserving value. I removed all guides, smoothed down the blank, and had my auto body shop paint it with gloss black flex paint - the kind they use for flexible bumpers on cars. Wrapped single foot fuji guides in traditional red over gold thread with two coats of, hi-build flex coat epoxy. Rod looks great. A little "whippy", but it catches fish. Good luck.

Just , checked the message I sent you. Appears it wouldn't let me identify the @#$%& site for the Harnell rods, but its the popular site that starts with the letter "e" and ends with the letter "y".

Thanks guys. I didn't expect it to be something to retire on but a decent rod and some value. Saw the 130 class ones going for a decent penny on the bay. I just didnt want to ruin the rod foor the guy. I think I will strip it and leave the decal alone and rebuild with a roller top and amtack turbos.