Fixing broken rods

[TnRiver46]

Over the years I have collected about 30-40 broken fishing rods. I finally decided to attempt fixing some of them, starting with a 8’6” 5 Wt fly rod that was shattered (5-7 inch annihilation) between the grip and the stripping guide. I used two different pieces of old broken rods to give a little taper and inserted them inside each other and glued them togterher. I then somehow managed to get all this inside the fly rod and wrapped the heck out of it with thread and coated with 5 minute epoxy. I have casted this rod pretty aggressively out in the street and on the water and it feels pretty darn good. Haven’t caught a fish with it yet so we shall see. So then I tried a 5’ 8” medium spinning rod that was broken about the middle (clean fracture only 1/2 inch long). I cut a piece to fit inside this one that fit absolutely perfectly and wrapped with thread and epoxy. When I put a reel and line on this rod, I pulled the line to bend the rod and I could hear the epoxy cracking.

 Do they make a flexible version of this stuff that will bend? Anyway this rod re-broke  after an hour of fishing and the piece I had put inside was also broken. Is the middle just a bad place for a rod to break because of the flex or will my imagined rod repair method basically never work?

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

You're on the right track but In the flex parts of the rod you need to use an over sleeve rather than insert and it must be lower modulus (fiberglass). Search the library of rod building.org for the repair article 

[MickD]

glass rod pieces are getting hard to find, and glass is the right material to use.  Due to not having glass, I have used graphite, so far so good.  My 8 wt fly rod shattered so badly I used a graphite spigot on the inside and graphite sleeve outside and the CCS numbers and casting quality were unchanged from original.

[TnRiver46]

Thanks for the informative replies. You guys are more handy than a pocket on a shirt! Here’s a picture of my first two attempts 

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

Also the larger the diameter the longer the sleeve should be. 

[TnRiver46]

So will old pieces of fiberglass rods work as sleeves? 

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

Yup. 

[TnRiver46]

Awesome I have plenty of those! My thought is instead of coating the entire repair with epoxy, that I should just coat the areas where it will bond to the whole rod. Thus, leaving the fiberglass sleeve some room to flex. Is that a good or bad idea? Thanks again for all your help

[MickD]

This is hearsay, but from people who should know:  5 minute epoxy is not as strong as the liquid slow cure rod-building epoxy.  Also, use liquid-it gives the best possibility of getting the epoxy everywhere .  You don't want to just use it at the ends-you should cover the whole area of the blank/sleeve interface with epoxy.  My only failures of repairs have come when I didn't get enough epoxy in place.  One end of the blank pulled out.  Doing a proper epoxying job then fixed the rods permanently.  If you are hearing cracking with an oversleeve, then I think you are not getting enough epoxy in place, using inferior epoxy, or too short a sleeve.  

 

Outer sleeves are needed, interior spigots only when the fracture is such that you think you need to reinforce the repair as much as possible, or when the rod is shattered such that a spigot will stabilze the parts within the outer sleeve.

 

Interior spigots are no larger than the I.D. of the broken blank, so they cannot be as strong as the unbroken blank. 

 

Because sleeves are larger than the O.D. of the blank, there is a possibility that the sleeve can cause a "flat spot" in the action due to the higher strength.  The use of glass sleeves on graphite rods is an attempt to reduce this tendency.  

 

Read the Rodbuilding.org article-well worth it.

[spoonplugger1]

The fiberglass sleeve should overlap the two pieces by at least 6 times the diameter of the pieces put in the sleeve. As Mick said the fiberglass has the durability and flexibility to repair the rod. I fully overwrap the sleeve and rod pieces on both sides for added assurance like you would wrap a ferrule for the same reason. Garage sales are a great place to find old, inexpensive glass rods you can use for repairing other rods, just found a weel cared fro Roddy rod and Daiwa reel last week for $3.

[TnRiver46]

Thanks guys. The fly rod finally broke after about 150 white bass. I will attempt some fiberglass next time