I’m refinishing an old boo rod. Taking a 3 piece and using the front 2 sections
to build a 2 piece 4 weight as measured with the common cent’s system.
If anyone else has built such a project what is your recommendation as
far as guide spacing with 7 guide’s?
For what you are doing, I would do a static placement.
Find your spine. Boo rods have one, too.
Start by placing both ends and then fill in the guides.
To position the stripping guide, hold the rod by the grip if you have it mounted, or ream the grip and slide it on to it’s final position. It does not have to be glued down as yet. With your hand at your hip, reach the other hand forward like you were going to grab line to strip it in. The point you reach to is where you want your stripping guide. It should work out to about 28"-30" from the butt.
Glue the tip top in position. Use the hot glue if you think you will need to remove it again. I would use the hot glue anyway as it makes things easier to remove if you need to for future repairs. Position your guides, using elastic string or slices of surgical tubing, like this. Start 4" from the tip. then go another 5", then another 6", 7", 8", etc. The guide placement in the chart below is a good place to start. It was stolen from Castwell’s article series on building graphite rods on this site.
Now clamp the butt down so it is not going anywhere with the guides up and put a good bend in it like you did to measure it with the CCS with a weight tied to the tip top. Run a line through the guides and adjust your guides, moving them usually a bit farther apart so the line isn’t hitting the rod at any point. Add guides if you need to, but you will usually not need to.
Now turn the rod over with the guides down. Put a weight on the tip top to put a good bend in the rod like you are fighting a whopper. Adjust the guides so you get a nice smooth flow on the line run through the guides if you need to. If you moved them around much, flip it back over and make sure the line is not touching the blank anywhere. Don’t put any more tension on the line run through the guides than you have to. Just enough to keep it taut.
If you have used the surgical tubing or taped the guides in place, you can test cast the rod at this point. It should cast smoothly with no line slap. If I am happy at this point, I put a drop of super glue on each guide foot and let it set up.
Wrap them down.
I am sure others will have other ways to do it, but this works for me.