I have a Rain Shadow that my son uses. He recently switched to braid and is having trouble because the rod had ceramic guides (large gathering guide). Is it worth having the rod stripped and rewrapped? He like the way the rod reacts and the action it has. New guides and the cost to have it rewrapped vs. the cost of a new rod.....am I over thinking this?

Perfect!
Wait til next winter and I'll take care of it,,,,
It might not be real pretty but she'll fish... :-)

He might consider rewrapping it himself. Pretty easy and a good thing to learn if he is serious about fishing. Would only take a night or two.

I would say NOT worth having it stripped/re-wrapped by a "pro". DEFINITELY worth doing yourself. I've got a Loomis I've wrapped 3-4 times.

I would say NOT worth having it stripped/re-wrapped by a "pro". DEFINITELY worth doing yourself. I've got a Loomis I've wrapped 3-4 times.

Definitely more work to strip than start from scratch. I have a few techniques and tools which make stripping tolerable and safe for blank. A COF strip usually takes a couple hours. Concept builds argh.

He might consider rewrapping it himself. Pretty easy and a good thing to learn if he is serious about fishing. Would only take a night or two.

I actually thought about this, however I do not have the proper equipment, rod turner and related items to build a rod.

You don't need a lot of equipment to build a rod.
You can make a support out of scrap lumber, furniture casters, or even a wooden box. You can make a tension device out of a book. You turn the rod by hand (millions of rods have been built this way). The guide layouts are not difficult after a little research on the internet (or he could just copy a layout from a similar length rod).

A rainshadow blank, although a decent rod, is nothing special. A professional will need to charge you labor to strip the rod (and refinish it if he is concerned about putting out high quality work with his name attached) as well as rewrap it and provide the materials. Doing it yourself , if function is the priority, you can ignore the cosmetic bit (i.e., being able to see where the old wraps were).

There is another cheaper option. If he swaps braid for fused Fireline 20# (the waxy black stuff) the rod will probably cast and fish fine.

Echoing George. You need ZERO tools to wrap a rod. The only tool I MIGHT buy would be rod dryer. Though I wrapped a bunch spinning it by hand while watching TV while the epoxy set.

I get more satisfaction out of fishing my "ghetto" rods than naything I have ever purchased.

Thanks for the advice George. I thing we are going to give it a shot. After poking around on the web, its not so intimidating.

I just did my second rod, using a couple of cardboard v-blocks taped to the back of chairs and used a book for tension on a chair that I could move around with me. To epoxy/finish I used a grill rotisserie and some PVC and thumb screws to turn it. simple, about $30 total.

They aren't pretty, but they work. I like to learn about things, especially things I enjoy, so for me it was a very worthwhile effort, but if you put the rods I wrapped up against pbadad's you would think there was something wrong with me. But the guides are placed right, it casts fine and fights well. I owe all that I've learned to these guys.

Both pbadad and numbskull are full of knowledge. They build rods and often on the technological cutting edge and both build plugs as well. These guys know stuff, listen. I do, you will learn more that you think you will and perhaps be inspired to continue on.

...and yeah, fireline fixes a lot of stuff, at both the reel and the rod layout. Unless you already have an aggressive layout, then it probably will hurt.

You don't need a lot of equipment to build a rod.
You can make a support out of scrap lumber, furniture casters, or even a wooden box. You can make a tension device out of a book. You turn the rod by hand (millions of rods have been built this way). The guide layouts are not difficult after a little research on the internet (or he could just copy a layout from a similar length rod).

A rainshadow blank, although a decent rod, is nothing special. A professional will need to charge you labor to strip the rod (and refinish it if he is concerned about putting out high quality work with his name attached) as well as rewrap it and provide the materials. Doing it yourself , if function is the priority, you can ignore the cosmetic bit (i.e., being able to see where the old wraps were).

There is another cheaper option. If he swaps braid for fused Fireline 20# (the waxy black stuff) the rod will probably cast and fish fine.

Don't understand why the large guides are a problem?

I still have a couple sets of Iron guides hanging around from the good ol Burma cane days.
I say this to help build your confidence. You can do it.

Don't understand why the large guides are a problem?

Guides do a different job for braid as opposed to mono. This is because of braid's small diameter and greater flexibility. It is more prone to over run and loop a guide, particularly as line velocities increase with longer rods. Braid behaves best if the initial 1-2 guides do most of the "taming" (i.e., damping of the loops) and the subsequent guides serve only to guide it down to the blank and out to the tip in a straight line. To do this you want smaller and taller collector guides with a loop shedding design. An old large collector doesn't tame the braid and the coils just continue on until they hit a small low guide where looping and breakoff occur.

There are also substantial benefits with smaller guides in regards to tip weight and rod reverberation but that is not what the original poster is concerned about.

Thanks for the explanation, thats exactly whats happening. He has lost several plugs (a Professor M spook amongst others) and is not happy about it.

A good way to tension the thread is by using a fly tying bobbin
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