advice needed on stripping old rod wraps

Looking for suggestions on the most efficient way of stripping off old wraps which were flexcoated. Do I just carefully use an exacto knife to peel the junk off and clean blanks with an acetone soaked rag, or is there a a trick with chemical or heat that would do a quicker and neater job? I seem to remember an old rodcrafter using an alcohol lamp or hairdryer to work epoxy... maybe that was just to get rid of bubbles on the application and singeing thread fuzz though....

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"Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is understanding"

Provided the wraps were put on in the standard way, you should have no problem using a razor. Just make one cut on the top and one cut on the bottom of the blank (perpendicular to the rod) and the wraps should peel right off. Stay away from the acetone. And dont use heat as you'll have a gooy mess and one hell of a clean up job afterwards.

Hey backbeach, sorry I spelled your handle incorrectly this morning. When stripping old wraps off of rod guides, I prefer to use a #1 Xacto knife. I cut the threads along the top of the guide foot and peel the epoxy coated threads away with the knife. Often you can get a single thread loose so you can unwind the thread from the blank. That works nicely when you can do it. I then lightly scrape the remaining bits of epoxy from the rod blank using the knife, being careful to scrape only the areas where the guides were and lightly enough not to damage the blank. As already suggested, forget the acetone. Once you have the guides removed and those areas scraped clean, wipe the blank clean with a soft cloth and rubbing alcohol to clean the blank prior to rewrapping. You will get best results if you remember to keep things very clean thru each step.

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I did this recently, and learned some things. Cut on top of the foot, and then peel the epoxy and wraps off, then you will have left traces of the epoxy, which you can remove with a plastic knife, not a sharp one - you can very easily scratch the blank. Acetone and such won't help - you just have to use elbow grease.

Not that I'm any kind of expert, but I did have to peel off some epoxied wraps recently. After using the knife as mentioned to get the wraps off, my teacher had me rub the remaining dried epoxy off with a chunk of cork, using it like an eraser. The rubbing heated the epoxy up enough to soften it a little, and the cork was just abrasive enough to take away the crud and not damage the blank.

You'll have to pardon me if flexcote is not amenable to this process, I'm just offering what worked for me.

Thanks for the replies and the great tips! I have some rewraps to do for a good friend and want his stuff to look better than mine - which I did quite awhile ago, and obviously wasn't on top of things then. Now I'm rusty to boot! Thanks again, Jim

Flyangler; that's a new one for me....cork as an eraser so to speak. I am a beleaver that what ever works for each bulder is good for them. We all have our own little tricks on how to do things and that's great. I will have to give that on a try some day, for I would be interested in knowing how much heat is generated. I have always shyed away from using any source of heat against a rod blank due to the damage it could likely cause if overheated.

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