About 6 months back i purchased a second hand WV80XH. It was in good condition, but you could tell that it had been fished. I paid $650 for the rod and had a friend pick it up for me shipped from japan. Once i saw the rod, i told myself "dammit". Being a rod builder for the last 15 years, i was pretty upset with myself for spending that kind of money for a used factory rod, no matter what manufacturer.
A few weeks ago, i was bored sitting around the house with my girlfriend, so decided to tear down the rod to bare blank and give it a makeover plus a couple of changes.
Step one was to get rid of the foregrip. I dont like foam as a grip material, and i absolutely despise using gloves while fishing. So the foam was replaced by my favorite grip material of surf style cork-tape. It has a slimmer and solid feel on the blank, while being very "sticky" in the hand under all conditions. The reelseat and reargrip were kept original out of laziness. The original foam foregrip has a slightly larger inside diameter than the blank handle, and is attached with a "weave" of masking tape and epoxy. It was not attached very well as there was not much contact area between the foam/tape/epoxy/blank, and masking tape should never ever ever be used in rodbuilding. A better attachment would have been a full contact epoxy coat, with the foam fit snuggly to the blank. I never took off the reelseat so i dont know if it is also attached with masking tape arbors or not.
Step two was to tear down all the wrapping on the rod from butt to tip. I have to say that i was disappointed with the guide wraps on the rod. They were only wrapped on with a single layer of size E thread with an underwrap of size D. For a rod that retails for about $1200, it should be expected that the guides come double overwrapped. (So far out of the several high end Japanese rods that i have repaired, only Fisherman Rods come double wrapped from the factory) The epoxy on the guides of the WV was done very very well, despite the single wrap job.
Once the guides were off, i replaced the 40mnsg stripper guide with a 40HH. It sits much higher off the blank, and i am finding much smoother casting with this stripper guide compared to the mnsg (keeps the line slap off the blank). It is the same stripper that i prefer on some of my distance shore rods.
No disrespect to the Carpenter Brand at all, it is a great rod, and well built for a factory rod. It's just that as a custom builder, i had hoped to see a little more since my rods cost waaaaay less than this factory rod retails for. It is all about the blank though, and the WV 80XH is a really nice blank!
For the re-wrap, i went with double "A" thread underwraps in a cream color, with metallic burgundy center bands trimmed in varigated gold/black thread. Followed on top by triple wrapping the guides with "D", then "D" again, then "A" for the finish wrap in a Burgundy color thread. All over-wraps are trimmed off again with metallic burgundy and gold/black variated. Each layer of thread was epoxy coated before adding another thread layer, then the final layer finished off with a triple coat of epoxy.
The Buttwrap is an old school "Streamlined Thunderbird" from the 60's. Again done with Burgundy/Cream/Metallic Borders to match the guide wraps.
Sorry for the crappy pics, my camera is half broken, i'll try to get some better ones posted when i can steal my girlfriend's camera. You cant even see the gold/black border highlights on the guides and buttwrap, lame
ALOHA!
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