Sorry if this sounds like a trivial question, but I always find contouring the guide feet in general to be a pain in the neck. On most small guides, I have always used sand paper for the most part...sand paper in one hand and guide in the other. This was usually for fly rod guides. It was still a pain in the neck, but at least the guides had some length to them so you could have some meat to hold on to on the opposite side.

I am about to wrap my first set of concept guides on a spinning blank, and the guides now range from a substantial 20H to pretty tiny (in my book) runners. The meat on the foot of the 20 looks like it's going to take some work. The feet of the 5.5Ms, both KB and KTs, while perhaps not needing so much work, are going to be tough to hold on to. For larger guide feet, I have usually used a small file for the job, and finished with some sand paper. On those tiny guides, I'm not sure what the best method is going to be. I was thinking for these I might set down a small smooth-ish knife sharpening stone, and hone and hope for the best.

Any better ideas would be gladly accepted, and any critiques to what I am already doing would also be gladly accepted! :-)

A sanding disc, in perhaps 100 to 120 grit spun in a lathe or stationary drill is the quickest and easiest way to perform this task.

..........

Check out a Work Sharpe Ken Onion Edition knife sharpener. Tapering guide feet is still a pain, but the knife sharpener makes for quick work of pocket knives, kitchen knives, and those pesky guide feet.

I inspect and/or taper all the guide feet I use. There is a tool that helps hold the guides for contouring

[www.mudhole.com]

If the tool can't handle the smaller guides you can make a scaled down version.

I use a Dremel with a fine stone or emory paper disc and finish up by using fine emory (400grit) sheet with adhesive back on a flat plate and rub the guide foot back and forth on the emory.

I also give the bottom of the foot a dressing by wrapping the emory around a dowel and work the guide back and forth.

It takes effort but worth it..


Have fun

I have never found Fuji's KB and KT guides to need additional grinding/shaping, their foot is tiny and very thin as it is but all the suggestions above work very well if an individual does feel the need .

I never taper the foot on Fuji KR guides, for one they don’t need it, and for two you are removing the protective Corrosion Control layer, and in my opinion you are asking for trouble. But then again it is your rod so do as you wish.
Norm

This is an interesting subject.

One would think if the manufacturers of guides thought they needed to be ground down they would do it as part of the manufacturing process. Isn't this reasonable?

I would suggest that the only reason many rod builders do it is because they choose to wrap thread around a rod blank beyond the end of the guide foot where such thread wrapping does absolutely nothing of value, but adds extra weight and extra vibration dampening materials to the blank. And you hear a lot from those who like lots of thread wraps all over the place coated in epoxy as to how pretty they look.

I am a minimalist. I don't do pretty. I am purely technical and have been my entire adult life especially when I worked under contracts for NASA, military, Air Force, Navy, Disney, Universal Studios and many more in my former career in electronics and communications and engineering. I had to pay attention to every detail that makes something work, not look pretty.

And I apply the same purely technical thinking to my rod making. Pretty is useless. And as such, I do NOT extend any thread wraps beyond the guide feet off into lala land of uselessness. I use only enough thread wraps to hold the guide in place and stop before the end of the guide foot. Why people insist on covering it and then some is beyond me but it sure looks great even if it does NOTHING to improve anything, and actually does something to degrade performance. Never mind all that! Pretty rules! Grind those feet down so it all looks so pretty!

I build bass fishing rods and light saltwater fishing rods. I am not concerned about heavy loading for extended periods of time. My guides never fall off or get pulled out and work just fine. And I now use the shortest foot guides I can find because to me less is more- more of what I want performance squeezing from my fishing rods. I don't load them down with pretty.

So in this sense grinding down guide feet is to my way of thinking absolutely a useless thing to do and is done not for holding a guide on a rod, but so it looks prettier and looks better according to some as they insist on covering every part of the guide foot in a nice ramped down clean look.

I like the response above... grinding them all is removing the corrosion protection layer opening the guide foot metal up to rust and corrosion! Like I said above... to me it seems logical and reasonable if guide manufacturers thought or believed this was necessary and should be done then it should be done as a part of the manufacturing process- but from what I can tell it isn't. This is yet another case of pretty over ruling sound physics. Ba humbug! My 02 cents.

Got a pic of those wraps, Kent. I'd like to see it as it may be something I might like to do.

Me too, I would like to see a pic.

Ernie,
Over the years, I have a system that works very well for me.
[www.rodbuilding.org]


I use a 30 inch belt sander for this sort of tapering work. I will generally use about 150 grit sand paper for this job. I always hold the guide foot perpendicular to the running sanding belt. This leaves micro scratches across the face of the guide foot that does an excellent job to help hold the thread in place on the guide foot.

This is the belt sander that I use for my guide work. One can go on line and pick up an assortment of sanding belts. I like to keep belts on hand with grits ranging from 80 grit to 1200 grit. That way, one can use the sander for a myriad of things.
[www.harborfreight.com]

For many years, I have used this sander to take care of all of my knife sharpening chores as well as rod building work for guide sanding, cork shaping, garden tool sharpening, etc. etc.

----
To hold the guides, I have made a series of guide holding tools. I use various sizes of rod blanks from broken rods. I determine the size machine screw that will fit on the inside of the guide ring and then select a piece of rod blank to nicely accommodate the machine screw. i.e. large screws for large guides and small screws for small guide rings.
Then, I will cut the piece of rod blank to a convenient length that will match the length of the machine screw that one uses.

Then, using the belt sander, I will remove most of the head of the machine screw so that there is not a screw head in the way, when shaping the guide foot.
I will then, take the guide in question, insert the machine screw into the guide ring and then into the piece of rod blank and finally put a machine screw wing nut on the back of the rod stock.

After checking things out, I will either adjust the length of the piece of rod blank - or trim the machine screw to allow one to only need about two turns of the wing nut to make the guide ring secure in the holder. It is worth it to make a set of these holders for your guide foot prepping, because once you have a set of holders, you can quickly shape a bunch of guides without wasting time to insert and remove the guide from the guide holder.

Note:
I will shape and clean up the guide foot to leave a thin end to allow the thread to easily climb up onto the guide foot.

Then, for the final touch - I keep a fine grit Arkansas sharpening stone next to the sander so one can take a couple of passes of the bottom of the guide foot across the stone, to insure that there are no sharp edges left on the underside of the guide foot that could cause an issue with the guide foot and the top side of the rod blank.

p.s.
To chop rod blank pieces to take care of supply blank pieces for the afore mentioned project, I either use a dermal tool with an abrasive cut off wheel on the end, or I use a mini chop saw - with a 3 inch thin cutting disk attached to the chop saw.
This is the one that I use, which is a modified saw from Harbor Freight.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

------------------------
Best wishes.

they can build them perfect but the cost would be out of this world , to get the guide in an acceptable condition it cost you money, or TIME TO FIX THEM
like snake brand snake guides or touch up the feet , that is your choice , no free lunch as I see it could be wrong

William Sidney
AK

Ernie,
Ultimately, it is best to not perform any "dressing" of a guide foot which does remove the surface "coating", be it paint, powder-coating, plating or passivated. If you do not have difficulty getting your wrapping thread to start and climb the ramp of the guide foot, leave the guide alone. Jim Ising of Anglers Resource (Fuji) and Norman Miller are quite insistent of this and no one can really argue with them. That being said, I slightly dress the tip of the foot to ease the thread starting to climb the ramp which also produces a less noticeable bump or hump in the thread. I have not experienced any corrosion issues, even on my saltwater builds but, admittedly, have only been building for 6 years.
I look at the manufacturing process of guides differently than Kent; rather than suggesting manufacturers do not shape their guide feet better because they do not think it is required, I suggest they do not simply because it takes less time = productivity. Mine is equally possible and "reasonable" as Kent's.
It is safe to say over 95% of rod builders start their wraps ahead of the end of the guide foot; in fact, Kent is the first builder I have heard of who leaves the tip of the foot exposed, if I understand him correctly. If so, he certainly does not need to concern himself with dressing the feet of his guides. None the less, I am interested in seeing photos as well.

Mark Talmo
FISHING IS NOT AN ESCAPE FROM LIFE BUT RATHER A DEEPER IMMERSION INTO IT!!! BUILDING YOUR OWN SIMPLY ENHANCES THE EXPERIENCE.

Tapering has usually be done in order to allow an easier transition of the thread onto the guide foot during the wrapping process. For many years, manufacturers offered "pre-ground" guides which was much appreciated by the OEM rod makers, although such guides cost just a tad bit more. However, most of the pre-ground guides I've seen, and they'd be into the tens of thousands, were simply held against a grinding wheel for a few seconds with a result that was not at all pretty. But it did speed up the wrapping process for the commercial rod producers.

...................

Ernie
I use needle files of varying shapes and sizes, an a nice tool called a "flex-i-file" from Micro Mark. I also the guide holding tool from Mudhole. I also file / round the underside of the guide feet with different chainsaw blade files. Yes - it's a giant pain, but it's necessary (in my opinion) no matter the manufacturer of the guides!
Rog

Kent Griffith Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is an interesting subject.
>
> One would think if the manufacturers of guides
> thought they needed to be ground down they would
> do it as part of the manufacturing process. Isn't
> this reasonable?
>
> I would suggest that the only reason many rod
> builders do it is because they choose to wrap
> thread around a rod blank beyond the end of the
> guide foot where such thread wrapping does
> absolutely nothing of value, but adds extra weight
> and extra vibration dampening materials to the
> blank. And you hear a lot from those who like lots
> of thread wraps all over the place coated in epoxy
> as to how pretty they look.
>
> I am a minimalist. I don't do pretty. I am purely
> technical and have been my entire adult life
> especially when I worked under contracts for NASA,
> military, Air Force, Navy, Disney, Universal
> Studios and many more in my former career in
> electronics and communications and engineering. I
> had to pay attention to every detail that makes
> something work, not look pretty.
>
> And I apply the same purely technical thinking to
> my rod making. Pretty is useless. And as such, I
> do NOT extend any thread wraps beyond the guide
> feet off into lala land of uselessness. I use only
> enough thread wraps to hold the guide in place and
> stop before the end of the guide foot. Why people
> insist on covering it and then some is beyond me
> but it sure looks great even if it does NOTHING to
> improve anything, and actually does something to
> degrade performance. Never mind all that! Pretty
> rules! Grind those feet down so it all looks so
> pretty!
>
> I build bass fishing rods and light saltwater
> fishing rods. I am not concerned about heavy
> loading for extended periods of time. My guides
> never fall off or get pulled out and work just
> fine. And I now use the shortest foot guides I can
> find because to me less is more- more of what I
> want performance squeezing from my fishing rods. I
> don't load them down with pretty.
>
> So in this sense grinding down guide feet is to my
> way of thinking absolutely a useless thing to do
> and is done not for holding a guide on a rod, but
> so it looks prettier and looks better according to
> some as they insist on covering every part of the
> guide foot in a nice ramped down clean look.
>
> I like the response above... grinding them all is
> removing the corrosion protection layer opening
> the guide foot metal up to rust and corrosion!
> Like I said above... to me it seems logical and
> reasonable if guide manufacturers thought or
> believed this was necessary and should be done
> then it should be done as a part of the
> manufacturing process- but from what I can tell it
> isn't. This is yet another case of pretty over
> ruling sound physics. Ba humbug! My 02 cents.



Ken, I too worked in electrical engineering, and repair, for the U.S. Navy, General Dynamics, Lockheed Missiles and space, Tauber Electronics, and others. You said that pretty is not as important as utility. I beg to differ. Pretty, in a solder joint is expected. A good joint is clean, with a concave fillet that blends into both the component lead, or tab, or wire, and eyelet on the PCB. A cold solder joint is ugly, and dirt will foul up the performance over time. The same is true of my wraps. I too am a minimalist. However, the wraps used must be pretty, and laid down uniformly over the guide foot . The coating needs to be uniform, and structurally sound. A good wrap can be beautiful, and becomes a structural part of the rod; It should affect the blanks performance as little as possible, but at the same time, secure the guide to the blank. A purely functional wrap can add to the beauty of a finely crafted rod,

Tight lines & frisky fish
RJF

Robert Flowers Wrote:

> You said that pretty is not as
> important as utility. I beg to differ. Pretty, in
> a solder joint is expected. A good joint is
> clean, with a concave fillet that blends into both
> the component lead, or tab, or wire, and eyelet on
> the PCB. A cold solder joint is ugly, and dirt
> will foul up the performance over time.

Robert, thanks for the laugh! I really enjoyed reading that! I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder! And as such I NEVER considered a solder joint as pretty! But now that you mention it, I do try and make my solder connections look um uniform I guess is a word I can reach for, but pretty? Heck, even the solder splatter on the floor looks cool!

I agree thread wraps should be uniform and neat and tidy and all that, and the epoxy as well, but pretty? Not in this beholder's eyes! Its just a tool to me. A hammer, screwdriver, pliers, fishing rod, soldering iron. All tools to me. But I get what you're saying...

I'll post some rod photos when I can as I don't have any right now.



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2021 06:45PM by Kent Griffith.

I'm also an extreme minimalist and refuse to add anything to a blank if it doesn't help in the performance department and added weight of any kind is detrimental to performance , I don't even use winding checks . That having been said , I don't like bland and ugly either and make my wraps as colorful and eye catching as possible BUT they are exceedingly short and end immediately at the end of the foot . Any trim rings etc... must be a part of the very short wrap . That's just the way I like to do things but if you spend some time in the photos section I seem to be in the extreme minority because the overwhelming majority of wraps exceed the end of the guide foot by a lot with many wraps after the foot exceeding the entire length of the guide foot by two to three inches .

Don't get me wrong many are stunningly beautiful and if that's what builders were going for they have succeeded , I don't disagree that short compact wraps don't have that same appeal as the much longer wraps . Custom rod building offers the individual to make whatever his/her heart desires . Beauty is in the eye of the beholder & my eyes aren't very good anymore maybe that has something to do with it.

I will make this very simple. There is no need to sand the feet of of a 5.5 Fuji KB or KT guide. It is already small enough not to cause a problem.

I use a Dremel with one of the sanding attachments, at least on the bigger guides. On the smaller guides, I use a small file to contour the top and to make the sides straight