# Rod repair



## Carolina Rebel (Aug 25, 2005)

The Lami rod I built and wrote a big glowing review on and yadda yadda yadda......
I broke the hell out of it. 
Had a crankbait on it I wanted to remove, and instead of hitting the freespool button on my Ambassadeur I grabbed the thing way over my head, pulled it straight down, flexed the heck out of the rod tip and before I knew it SNAP.   
Broke it off very cleanly at the 2nd guide from the tip top. I was worried sick because this was right where maximum flex would be, but with a trip coming up in a couple days I didn't have time to worry too much over it. I followed the consensus of instructions I found on the internet, and wish I had taken pictures as I went along because the repair seems to have gone really well. 
1. I broke the rod just forward of the 2nd guide from the tip, so I knew this guide would have to come off. Little work with a heat gun and I watched my hard work from the week before just come right off  I carefully scraped off remaining thread and used alcohol to remove left over epoxy. 
2. I carefuly sanded the rod at the break point to where it was smooth, and checked for hairline fractures in the graphite. Fortunately there was none of the latter.
3. I needed an interior and an exterior sleeve for the rod. You want something more flexible than the original blank for the sleeves, and I knew the rod was graphite, fairly low-modulus, so I knew I'd need something pretty flexible. Quick inventory revealed an old broken bream buster, why the hell I never threw it away I don't know but I gave a prayer of thanks just for that. The tip of it was like rubber, extremely flexible fiberglass, and perfect diameter for both sleeves. We were in business!
4. I cut the interior sleeve about a quarter inch long, as per the instructions on all the guides I found. 
5. I cut the exterior sleeve about 1 5/8" long, near-as-possible to flush fit as far as the taper goes. 
6. I applied 5 minute epoxy to the interior sleeve, then slid it halfway into the bottom portion of the broken rod. I then slid the exterior sleeve over the upper portion of the broken rod, applied epoxy to the top half of the interior sleeve, and slid the upper portion of the broken rod onto it. 
7. Once the latest coat of epoxy finished (meaning the interior sleeve was completely epoxied into place) I applied a little epoxy over the outside of the break, then slid the exterior sleeve over it. Once this set I put the rod on the dryer motor and applied a good thick coat of epoxy over the entire exterior sleeve, to about 1/16" past the end of it on either side. 
8. Once this dried I sanded the epoxy/sleeve down to match the taper of the blank, making the transition from sleeve to blank as smooth as possible on either side. 
9. Now it was time to re-wrap the guide. I was lucky the break was so near to one, as I was able to just center the guide over the break. I did a single layer wrap, starting just beyond the end of the sleeve on both sides of the guide. To be safe I wrapped inside of the guide too, directly over the break.
10. Double coat of Flex-Coat and my work was done.

I was still worried sick about the rod, but good pullage from bluefish in the surf as well as hard casting of a Hopkins spoon this past weekend assured me that the thing is trustworthy now. Messing around with it I put some serious flex on its upper portion, heck the bluefish had it arced nearly double, and the rod never showed any signs of weakness or even variation in action from its original, unbroken state. Pendulum casting the spoon didn't hurt it either, so I believe I got lucky and hit this repair just right. 
I'm here to tell you if I can do this anyone can. This process really wasn't difficult at all, and now I'm kicking myself for throwing away a couple decent-but-broken rods in the recent past.


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## derekxec (Apr 26, 2006)

good job! if it was my lazy butt i would have just slapped a tip on the end and left it at that HAHA


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