Put on a decal and realized its a bit off angle. It’s bothering me and thinking about cutting the section off and re-wrapping it.

Better to do this after the epoxy fully sets?

Francis,

I would wait for the epoxy to set. It will make the process of removing the decal easier and less messy, IMO.

To clarify things, you are talking about removing the epoxy and decal and not cutting this part of the blank off, right? I would just remove the epoxy and decal and leave the blank intact. Is the decal area between split grips? If so, this is ideal.

Removing the epoxy and decal:
* If I had to remove a decal today that was covered with epoxy, there are two ways I would think about doing it:

Method 1:Carefully sand off the epoxy and decal with sandpaper backed with a sanding block. I'd start with 100 grit to get rid of the bulk of the material - then switch to a fine grit paper as I got close to the blank surface (like 400, 600, or 800). Sand and rotate the rod to take down the epoxy - no flat spots. The sanded epoxy will look 'whitish' in color and the dust will be like chalk powder. When the epoxy is gone, the blank will look black in color. Be careful, go slowly, and use a light touch. If you see black on the sandpaper, stop sanding in that area. The goal is to remove the epoxy and little to no blank material.

Method 2: Use a single edge razor blade, held at a 90-degree angle to the blank, and scrape it all off. Believe it or not, this will NOT cut into the blank and do a very good job of removing epoxy, and paint, from the surface.

Wipe off the dust on the blank with a clean, lint-free or tack-free cloth. I have washed with Dawn and dried with a clean (lint-free) cloth before and it worked great. Some discourage the use of alcohol or other solvents on a surface before applying epoxies, I suppose to avoid introducing contaminants.

That's what I would do if I were in your shoes. Hope it helps.

Thanks for the response Les.

So to answer your question yes i just want to remove the decal which is over a wrap with epoxy on top of it.

What I was considering was to heat the area, take a fresh razor down to the blank, peel back the epoxied thread (possibly sand with 600 or 800?), then rewrap epoxy and apply a new decal.
The thread is a white glow nylon size A so i was going to cut along the bottom side incase I nick the blank an all.

I initially thought about trying to sand it down but didnt want to damage the wrap underneath and end up with more of a mess.

Have been weighing the risk/reward of doing all of this on top of it. The build is basically done, but If I can successfully fix this I would like to.

So just to update those that care to know. I went with the plan I outlined above.

All i had was a very light coat over the thread and another over the decal.

I used a heat gun and took a razor to the back end very lightly and once i got the blade deep enough the wrap sort of spread on its own and got the entire section off successfully. With the new thread on is unnoticeable. Happy with how it ended up.

You could wrap over the decal area, epoxy, decal and final coat. Down side is won’t be level with the rest unless you build it up too

Francis,
Thanks for following up. That’s the way I have done it when doing rod repair. Works pretty well.