Rod Building

[Jim]

Does anyone have a tool or good idea of how they line up guides on rod blanks. I'm having trouble getting all of them to line up straight just by sighting down the blank. After a couple tries, one guide always seems to be off just a little.

[Chuckles]

I always sight down thru the feet of the guides and also thru the eyelet openings themselves. Seems to work for me pretty well. Good luck on your new rod - what are you building out of curiousity? Chuckles

[Wurm]

One thing that may help is... when you look down the blank, keep the eyes on the bottom, and then look done the blank towards a light colored wall, or turn your TV to a fuzzy channel, and use it as a background when lineing them up. It really helps.

Udjust each of the guides ever so slightly. It can be a tedious task, but the blank wall and fuzzy TV thing will help. As soon as you finally get them lined up, put on a coating of color preserve to lock them in place, before you accidently knock one out of place.

[Tom B]

Also.... there are lots of motors and jigs on ebay. If you were building more than one, looks like a guy could get outfitted reasonably.

Tom B

[REW]

In addition to the other posts; sight down the rod lenght on both sides of the rod.

i.e. - when first setting up the guides, sight down the rod, looing through the eyelets, for getting them reasonaly aligned.

After getting them close, flip the rod over and sight down the rod, as you rock the rod from side to side, you should be able to see each guide equally, as your rock the rod from side to side, looking down the rod, from the non guide side of the rod.

It is very easy to see a very slight rod misalignment, using this method.

Interestingly enough, I was looking at a couple of different rod building web sites, and there has been a lazer level adapted to rod building. Clip this tool (it is basically a laser level) to the blank, and adjust each guide, so that the laser light splits each guide equally.

Although I have not used such a device for aligning guides, I can believe that It would work very well. I have used laser levels in the building trades, as well as for using it for making saw cuts - with a laser guide on a radial arm as well as a table saw. It works very well indeed.
I have also used laser sights on both rifles and hand guns and they also work very well. So, I would see no reason to see why such a level wouldn't work very well for aligning fishing rod guids just as well.

Take care
REW

[custom rod builder]

REW said it right. Sight down the rod with the butt placed in your chest, look toward a light or white colored wall. Equal spacing on either side of the blank will correctly aling the guides. Tweek them ever so little to make a big difference. Work at it and it will be perfect.

I have the laser guide alingment system on my Renzetti lathe. It is more than worth the money it cost to purchase. Good for lots of things in rod building. This laser is much different than those that you can purchase in the office stores. It has a flat line that helps aling everyting along the way. Easy to use, easy to see, expensive as it eats batteries like mad!

Good luck and tight wraps.

Kris Kristufek
LakeLady Rods
www.lakeladyrods.com

[rod builder]

Just as rew said

use the back side of thr rod

one thing that might be your problem though is when adjusting the guides make sure to turn the guides on the blank don't just grab and twist some times you can get the guides ##### eyed on the blank this will be a problem when you epoxy the giudes will tend to straighten with the blank and become off center as the epoxy cures

thread tension is critical especially with small guides and "a" thread double foot guides are easier to deal with

as for the lazer i have never used the one mentioned here but use one regularly at work and if i had the chooice i would never use one again
my lazer has been nothing but problems since day one another thing to think about with the lazer they can "shoot" a curved line