How To Fix Broken Fishing Rod Guides?
With a bit of time and focus, you can repair your broken rod in a few steps. Drip some crazy glue into the hollow ends of the fishing rod and place the round rod of choice into the hollow portion of both broken ends of the rod. Be sure to get to a least one inch of your round rod into both sections of the fishing rod to ensure strength.
Rod guides are the circular metal pieces along the length of the rod that help keep your line straight. Measure out and mix your glue, I find an old glossy magazine makes a good mixing surface and cocktail sticks good mixer/ application tools. Work a thin layer into the bindings go around a second time and check for missed spots then apply a thin but visible layer over the whole binding.
Put a bit of glue on the rod, wind the teflon tightly, which will carry the glue forward, add a dab of glue as it runs out. Wrap with the polyethylene strip try and work out any air bubbles then secure with the tape, leave the applicator stick in the remains of the glue to check for set. Quick set epoxy glue has a working time of only 5 minutes at best, so preparation is a must. Recheck your alignment, at this point you can still tweak the position of the guide, or remove the binding and start again. Work quickly with the epoxy since it will quickly start to dry and harden once you mix it. If you don’t have any other thread, you can also use a thin fishing line instead.
At this point, cut a small piece of thread and loop it over itself. Continue wrapping over the loop you’ve made until you reach the bottom of the guide ring. Take your running thread and pass it through the small loop to secure it. Look carefully at the rod in the area where you removed the old guide, and you should see an indentation or some mark from where the last guide was. Use that as your starting point, carefully align the new eyelet in the proper position. Rip a thin piece of masking tape and wrap it around the guide to secure it to the rod.
Make sure there is a thin bead of glue above and below the binding and fill the void under the guide legs as well. This rod has been knocked about a bit and had an eye missing from further up. As you can see from the last photo this is where the yellow nylon thread ran out and I tried the button thread. Carefully examine the area to ensure you’ve removed all epoxy finish and loose thread.
Use a thread burnisher to straighten out any of your wraps, ensuring they’re tight and uniform. Many anglers look at a broken guide as a death sentence for a fishing rod, but that isn’t the case. Replacement guides are inexpensive, and they’re easy to replace with a bit of know-how and a few tools. Once you reach the end of your wrapping, cut the end of the thread you used to wrap and pull it through the middle of the loop. Pull the other end of the looped piece down and away from the guide to pull the thread underneath the wrapping.
By cutting over the rod foot, you’ll protect the blank below from being damaged by the blade. Now that your new guide is tightly wrapped, it’s time to apply the epoxy for fishing rod guides to lock the eyelet in place permanently. When you’re learning how to put new eyes on a fishing rod, there’s no reason to be intimidated. The repair process is as simple as removing the broken guide, preparing the new rod eye, installing it, and epoxying it in place.
Dion Liriano is a 51-year-old American zookeeper who has retired from the business. He was once a highly successful director of the Zoo and Aquarium, but he has since hung up his gloves and moved on to other ventures. Dion's passion for animals began at a young age, when he would help his father care for their family pets. This love grew exponentially when he started working at the zoo; Dion quickly became one of the most experienced keepers in the business. He credits his success to the relationships he built with both staff and animals over the years.