I am trying to refurbish an old St. Croix rod that belonged to my dad & give it back to him all spruced up for his retirement in May. The tip top appears to have been pinched or dimpled to keep it in place. Is there any way to remove these or must I cut the tip of the blank?

Thanks,
Chris

You can spiral cut the tiptop tube with a fine tooth saw and then peel it off. However, this requires some degree of care and you may find the blank is damaged regardless where the dimple is. I'm guessing this a sold glass rod.

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Yes sir, it is a solid glass rod. I will try the slice & peel and, when I screw that up, I will just cut the tip off. Thanks!

If you have tried getting it off with heat, try it first. Heat the tip top tube while pulling constantly to pull it off. Might work.

It may, but be very careful when using heat on a solid glass rod. Just tad too much and the blank will open up like a cigar with a blown out end.

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Christ,
My simple solution for your issue would be to simply cut the tip at the end of the tip top. Since the top has been dimpled to hold it on - it is likely that the tip is at least slightly crushed - even though it is a solid glass rod. But, on most rods, the loss of 3/8th of an inch of tip is a non issue.

Be safe

Use a dremel. Gently grind away the dimple until you go through, taking care not to get it too hot or gouging the blank. Do it a little bit at a time, cleaning it and checking frequently to make sure you can see when you start to go through the top. Worse case scenario you hit the blank and have to trim it there. On the other hand if it takes so much grinding that you hit the blank and gouge it before it broke through it was probably dimpled so deep that the glass was damaged and would have had to cut it anyway. Now at least the rest of the tip will slip off now and you have removed as little of the tip of the blank as necessary to get it off.