I'm repairing an old graphite 9' 9wt. two piece fly rod for a friend. He has used the rod surf fishing for many, many years. The salt finally damaged the second stripping guide so much---about a size 16 I think--it simply fell apart. But in removing existing epoxy, thread and guide feet, I had to use quite a bit of heat. So I'm concerned about having weakened the rod, although it appears o.k. I'm thinking of using a base wrap to further strengthen the repair, then replacing the guide and finish wrapping it over the base. I have a couple questions; 1) will a base wrap under the usual guide wrap strengthen the repair? 2) if so, should I epoxy the base wrap before replacing and wrapping the guide; or should I just mount the guide and finish epoxy over both wraps at once? I've never done a base wrap, but I've seen it done, although I don't remember seeing it done on a fly rod. My friend simply doesn't want to give up on the rod, so weight is not a consideration at this point in the rod's life.

Please advise. Thanks, Jack

Hi Jack,
What did you use for a heat source ? I build only fly rods an have replaced many fly rod guides using heat to soften the old finish coat. Just wrap on the new guide as it was you'll be fine.
Dave

Dave is right. I will add that if you have damaged the blank, any wrap options will not strengthen it, or save it if it were damage enough to fail. To strengthen a blank would take something like a sleeve used in repairing a broken rod, but I'd take a chance on just wrapping it. If it fails you can go with the sleeve repair.

Jack,
If you really think that you have damaged the blank - there is one repair that can be done and will make it right.

Is the guide that you want to replace on the lower section or the upper section.

If it is in the upper section and relatively close to the joint but not too close, you can take a snug fiting piece of blank material and once you have made sure that it will get to the troubled area and span it by 1/2 inch or so -- and if it is away from the joint so that the splice does not interfere with the joint, cut the piece of repair blank to size, coat it well with epoxy and shove it from the larger section into the area to be repaired.

Then, quickly use DNA and a paper towel to clean out all of the still wet epoxy that is on the inside of the blank, so you do not have any epoxy on the inside of the joint area. I am assuming that the tip section fits over the butt section of the rod.

However, if the 2nd guide is on the butt section of the rod, but you will have to shove the repair section nearly up the full length of the rod blank for the repair to be effective. You may or may not be able to get epoxy into the area, except if the 2nd guide is in the butt section, I would expect it to be very close to the joint. If that is the case, you will still push the repair section up the butt of the rod to the area needing repair, but you will be able to coat the inside of the bland from the top joint section of the butt section of the rod.

Good luck

Thanks guys. I suspected the usual wrap might be as good as two. I used a heat gun on low, and tried to keep it to a minimum. I had a bad experience once with an old rod and heat, but it was using an alcohol burner, before I got the heat gun; which was one of my best additions to my rod building hobby.

Unless you got the blank up well over 200 degrees, there should be no damage.

What makes you think you had heat damage..did you see smoke?

When replacing a guide I use a blade along the top of the guide foot and just peel the wrap off. It's easy. On the remaining windings rods with a thin coat of epoxy finish a slow, stead pull of the thread will often "pop" the epoxy off the rod shaft. Carefully scoring a line down the remaining epoxy with a double-edged razor blade will often weaken the epoxy enough that a slow, steady pull of the winding thread at a right angle to the rod will "pop" the epoxy coating. Long, ornate windings with heavy, multiple coats of epoxy are difficult to remove, but they do give the rod a slow action.

Phil Ewanicki Wrote:
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> When replacing a guide I use a blade along the top
> of the guide foot and just peel the wrap off. It's
> easy. On the remaining windings rods with a thin
> coat of epoxy finish a slow, stead pull of the
> thread will often "pop" the epoxy off the rod
> shaft. Carefully scoring a line down the remaining
> epoxy with a double-edged razor blade will often
> weaken the epoxy enough that a slow, steady pull
> of the winding thread at a right angle to the rod
> will "pop" the epoxy coating. Long, ornate
> windings with heavy, multiple coats of epoxy are
> difficult to remove, but they do give the rod a
> slow action.

X2. No heat needed most of the time. You can use something non-metallic like a Popsicle stick or plastic burnishing tool to rub off the old epoxy that is stuck better, without damaging the blank.

Thanks to all for the advice. A couple answers to your questions: I don't believe I got the blank up to 200 degrees. I used the low setting and was as brief as possible. I didn't see smoke but there was a slight odor which I would compare to melting plastic. I assumed the odor was from the finish epoxy getting warm and soft: was I right or could that have been the blank burning? I have cleaned up the blank with a burnishing tool and razor blade, as I said earlier, except for a little finish epoxy residue, the blank looks o.k. a little ugly but o.k.

I've decided, based on the sum of all your responses, to replace the guide with a normal wrap, maybe slightly wider over each guide foot, than the previous wrap. It will look very nice so I sure hope it doesn't fail!

Jack