I am going to finally get around to replacing a guide on a fly rod that unfortunately got damaged as I rolled down a river last fall. I have watched countless videos and read articles concerning this job and I am still somewhat confused as to how you get the epoxy off safely. Can you safely use low heat from a hair dryer on graphite? Can you sand the affected area (1000 grit) without harming the integrity of the rod? Do you use a razor blade or dull knife? Everybody seems to have different answers to these questions, any suggestions would be greatly greatly appreciated

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Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2016 05:03PM by John E Powell.

Jim,
Heat will soften epoxy glue.

But, heat will also soften the cured epoxy in a fishing rod, if the heat is excessive.

If you do use heat, be sure to use only enough to get the epoxy soft enough to be able to get off of the rod.

Any time that I replace a guide, I first use a bit of heat on the guide side of the rod. The idea is to get just enough heat on the guide side of the rod, so that you can clip off the thread that is laying over the guide foot. Then you can use a razor blade or razor knife to shear the thread that is holding the thread to the blank cutting only on the guide foot side of the rod. The idea is that you want to do any cutting on the area where the guide foot is located. That way, the guide foot itself will insure that the blade does not contact the guide and will keep the blade from cutting into the blank.

Once the thread has mostly been removed from the guide foot, you can then typically peel off the rest of the thread with a dull knife or blade. But never during this work so you want to hold your blade in a cutting motion that might slice into the blank, and or shave off some of the graphite in the blank. If you do need to use the blade to get rid of more of the harder material, you can use a scraping motion, so that the blade or tool is held at 90 degrees to the blank and the tool is moved up and down the blank to scrape off any remaining material without slicing into the blank.

Again, during this time, a bit of gentle heat can be of use, but be very very cautious about using too much heat.

Generally speaking, the smaller the blank, the more susceptible the blank will be to damage from heat. So, if you are in the upper 3rd of nearly any blank, you want to be really careful with using any heat on the blank. Likely no heat is best of all.

One problem that you have if you use sand paper on a blank, is how to get the paper into the area that you need, without removing material from some part of the blank that has not been affected by the damage. Just use common sense, and take your time and remove the very minimum amount of material required for a good repair.

Be safe

Shave the epoxy and thread from the top of the guide foot/feet. Then just peel the thread off the blank which will take the epoxy with it.

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I do as others above have suggested, cut the thread, and peal off as much as l can, but then l do something different. Perhaps, because at my age my hand trembles a little bit, l don't trust myself with a sharp blade. Instead l use a heat gun, an old credit card, and alcohol on a cloth. After getting all of the thread off, l heat up the remaing epoxy, one section at a time, until it just turns soft, l then scrape of the softened epoxy as best l can, well actually it just smears along the blank, leaving a white streak. I do this all around the blank. Then l use an alcohol soaked cloth to rub the whitened smeared epoxy off. At some places it might need encouragement with a thumbnail, but it does all come off. A trained eye would be able to spot where the guide used to sit, but if l am just replacing the eye it is virtually invisible.