I am going to be replacing some guides on a few rods. I am using a different style guide so there will be some areas that the location of the old wrap will not be covered by the new one. What is the best way to remove the old finish without hurting the blank finish?

Thanks in advance.

Your thumb nail or a plastic knife should do the trick.

Paul,
As much as you would like to have a good method, if the guide has been on for much time, it is likely that it won't happen.
i.e. it is quite likely that you won't be able to remove the guide, and finish without affecting the original blank finish in some way.

You may have to resign yourself to the fact that you either refinish the rod in the areas of the former guide, if a thumbnail, plastic knife, or popcicle stick doesn't remove the finish.
If any of the afore mentioned methods don't work, you may have to resort to gentle heat and a straight edged razor blade scrapped at 90 degrees to the blank to remove all of the old finish.
If you do use a razor blade, it will most likely remove some or all of the original finish.

Sometimes, depending on where and how the guide is removed, you may be able to extend a guide wrap to cover the finish removal. Or, you may find it possible to put a decorative wrap in the area of finish removal.
Other times, if it is a dramatic change in the guide/s location/s, you may find it in the best interest and of your customer to remove all of the blank finish and go either with a matte finish on the blank or refinish the entire blank.

Good luck
Roger

RE="you may have to resort to gentle heat and a straight edged razor blade scrapped at 90 degrees to the blank to remove all of the old finish.
If you do use a razor blade, it will most likely remove some or all of the original finish"

i had an old rod that needed one eye replaced and i did do it but had a bad mix on the epoxy and never dried so i said well heck, lets just redo all eyes, so after reading every thing i could find i followed Roger's suggestion.

not only did i remove the eyes but all of the old mottley green finish and discovered a neat looking bare blank and i believe i'll do a bit of sanding and just clear the blank and add the eyes back to it.

it only took an hr to scrape it clean.

well here is the bare glass finish i wound up with ,next is the eyes going back on and whats funny is a few guys have seen it and thought it was a small snake skin wrapped on it.
but it this picture one cant tell this close.

[www.terry-g.net]

Check the rod refinishing article in the library-it has very good instructions. I just did just what you are proposing and got most of the old finish off OK, but it took a lot of care and time. If you end up taking too much of the old finish off and have spots where it is going to show up poorly when finished, I suggest just puttijng a thin coat of similar color finish on and top it off with Permagloss. A tip on Permagloss, make sure you get some of the cleanup stuff when you buy the Permagloss and carefully clean up the cap and threads before putting the cap back on to prevent the cap from bonding to the bottle.

Another caution, according to Ralph O'Quinn, who wrote the article in the library, you shouldn't sand the blank down to the graphite. So it would be better to not take a chance on that even if it means repainting the rod. I expect that spraying a rod would be pretty easy, and I know that using Permagloss is easy. Keep the film thickness to a minimum to prevent affecting the action of the rod.