micro guides

[Grebe]

Anyone took the stock eyes off and replaced them with micro's? If so how hard is it and what tools would I need?

[Bad Habit]

razor knife and duck tape

[polecat]

you need to remove the old guides with a single edge razor blade,use fine sandpaper to remove most of the epoxy and 90 grain alcohol to clean with. use size a tread to rewrap the new eyes on and then reapply the epoxy to finish off the threads. the rod must be put in something that will spin it at a slow speed until the epoxy drys or it will all run to one side and be a mess. now if you can't do this. take it to your local rod builder and beg him to give you a very reasonable price to fix it for you. my dryer runs so slow I can read everything on a rod while it's turning. as a rod builder we put alot of our time and money into learning to do this. check with your local tackle shops, they usually have someone in the area that is good at doing this work. the guides shoud be placed on the spine of the rod to prevent rod twisting when you catch a nice fish. wish you lived close. I'm rebuilding old rods now for the experience.

[Grebe]

Thanks polecat. I looked on shoff tackle and they have alot of different kits. Would you recommend the GM6 dryer or the GM18?

[polecat]

I don't know the numbers you have. I use pacific bay sold by mudhole.com with 36 revolutions per minute. I believe the gm18 is 18 revolutions per minute. any slower could be a problem. never used one at 6 revolutions per minute. not advertising brands on here. in a dryer, it's the speed in revolutions you have to watch. 6 in my opinion is too slow. anything else I can help you with, let me know. I'm restoring a 10ft. surf rod now that was built by a custom rod builder in 1969 and it has his initials on it with the date he scratched into the blank. this one is a great challenge. for me. I removed everthing except the reelseat and had to saw 2.5" off the base because it had split then sand a wooded plug to fit in the blank base to prevent future splitting. good luck with your project

[polecat]

if you don't want to have to use a thread preserver. I would suggest useing prowrap color fast thread. It eliminates the need for a presever and that step in restoring the rod.

[polecat]

I went to the co's web site you listed and it's very interesting site. I ordered their catalog. I would suggest the gm18 from that co. and use the fish hawk color loc thread to eliminate the preserver step I was talking about.