How does one go about bending the guide feet so they're moving the line closer to the blank without compromising the integrity of the part? The guides are double foot casting guides. The tip side of the guide won't be a problem since it's a single foot but the butt side of the guide has two arms that go up to the sides of the guide frame. They're also curved. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2014 04:56PM by Adam Lancia.

Not likely to work, will probably crack if bent enough. Better to buy the right guides.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2014 07:11PM by roger wilson.

It will indeed work, easily. We did an article on how to do this in RodMaker not too long ago.

I can't tell you in words what we showed in photos, so will simply try to make the point that as long as you don't upset the frame that encircles the ceramic ring, you're fine. You'll need two pairs of needle nosed pliers. Grip the guide frame so that the portion of the frame that holds the ring can't flex or bend. Do what is necessary to bend the feet/leg/legs.

Again, this is easy in photos, but hard to do in text. Hopefully you can eyeball the frame and figure out how to proceed.

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Thanks for the replies guys. I realize that since I'm new to custom rod work, bending guide feet might not excatly be a beginners task, however, my background is as a prosthetics and orthotics technician. Part of that work is metal bending for things like legs braces ala Forest Gump (for lack of a better visual) so I'm not stranger to metal bending. Not cracking a ceramic insert while bending metal is a new step for me though, luckily I have a few extra guides in case I do flubb one.

Tom, I assume I would hold the guide foot near the underside of the guide frame with one pair of needlenose pliers and then use the other needlenose to bend the foot, while keping the first pair as still as possible...?

On the double leg side, if you put a pair of fine needle-nose on the double leg just behind where it fastens to the guide ring frame (grasp both legs), that will isolate the guide ring frame from anything else you do on that leg/foot. From there you can bend the leg. To bend the foot, simply use one pair to isolate the leg just above the foot.

I think you can do this from your response above.

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Thanks for the clarification on the double leg side, I was wondering about that but forgot to ask. I hope to make some headway this week!

IF you let the section that is holding the ring move at all its toast! I know from experiance lol. The inserts crack so easily when messing with the frames.

You have to be careful, as stated above, and use the principal of not affecting the "ring frame," but I know it can be done, I've done it on many guides and never have broken a ring.

When I just started building rods, I did the bend the frame quite a bit to get the exact guide height that I wanted.

But after a bit, I realized that it was just so much simpler to simply purchase the guides that I needed for the given rod. i.e. right guide, right size and right height.

Be safe

I'll be sure to use my smart hands when I get around to bending the feet. I'll try to remember to take some before and after pictures too.

Roger: Most definitely! However, this is more an exercise to see if I can do it as well as seeing if the finished product is actually usable. Ideally, I would have thought far enough ahead and ordered the desired guides. But, you know how knee-jerk projects and ideas go...

Thanks for all the input guys, I'm really looking forward to this and I'm really enjoying the forum!

Here's a link that shows how the guide is designed, made and bent. The images may help in showing where to grasp the guide for bending:

[www.google.com]

BTW, this design was a paradigm shift for our craft.

There's a great bit of information there Ladd, thanks for that!

So I got around to bending a guide earlier this week. I was able to get it down about 3 mm from where it was originally. Overall, I'm happy with how it functionally turned out, however, I wish I was able to bend the side that has the two arms of the frame a little more cleanly. Good news is that I didn't crack the insert! This was a guide that I removed from a rod that I'm modifying into a bumper wrap. I'll be moving that guide (it was the first guide) a few inches closer to the reel and then adding in another guide. I still need to clean up the rod where the guide came off, there's some flex coat and a little bit of thread left on there. I figure my wifes hair dryer and a piece of plastic with a fairly square edge should do the trick. Then the real test comes... wrapping!

Thank you for all of the help and tolerance of my FNG questions!