MickD

there is almost no chance that your Pro Coat is bad. 99% of failure to cure problems with epoxy are caused by insufficient mixing. Mix it for a solid two minutes, scraping it all together many times, then dip your brush into the center of it, not the edge. Pro Coat takes a long time to get truly hard, so check it again before doing anything. It is likely that you can simply put a new coat on over the first one and have a good build. Better to try it and find out it won't work than to simply assume it won't work. You end up in the same place if it fails, but if successful you've avoided rewrapping the guides. If you are working in an especially cool area, that can also affect curing of epoxy, but not likely.

I like to leave mine on all the time, but found out in my first year with two of the latest models on the boat, and wired into the circuit of the outboard motor, that they drained my battery and the outboard would not start. Jump start from the trolling motor batteries worked, but there is a better solution. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014F2MN9O/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Get one of these and do what you want-you will not be let down. I've never failed a transducer from leaving sonar on while the transducer was out of the water. Never failed a transducer at all.

Mudhole.com will have all you ever could desire on rodbuilding. Min shipping of $6.95, I think, so look their catalog over well to make sure you have all you want in one order. Great customer service, call them if in doubt-they will help. You don't need Flexcoat and Prokote, so make your choice and order one. The difference between them is that Flexcoat will set up faster than Prokote, so if you are manually rotating the blank, you won't have to rotate it so long. Prokote is a fine product, too, but even after a day, you may wonder if it will ever get really hard. If you've mixed it properly, it will. DON'T make the mistake of doing a quick mix on these two-part products. I force myself to mix them for at least two minutes, and scrape it all together while mixing to ensure even distribution of the two parts. Then blow on the surface through a straw to break the bubbles, and then apply. Gently blow on the wrap through the straw, and you're done. Exc for rotating if you decide to do that, which I recommend.

Any liquid epoxy will do the job, but it may not look that good. Epoxies designed for wrapping guides level well after application, are very clear, and turn amber slower than epoxies meant for structural use. If using black thread I expect any fluid epoxy will look fine for a long time. I think that 5 minute epoxy would harden before it has time to level, but have no experience with it for guides. If I were to do this repair and I didn't want to buy the real wrap epoxy, I'd use one that takes the normal time to cure and rotate the rod every fifteen minutes or so. If you get significant sags, take the excess off by touching a brush to the underside of the guide to remove the "drop."

Might be a stupid question, but if I have a Daiwa reel with "SV" in the name, do I have an SV spool? Just bought a Tatula 103 TW SV, casts superbly.

I never add weight to a rod. Build it as light as possible to do its intended job, and leave it alone. IMHO, way too many guides on the rod (16) which will contribute to the tip-heavy condition. To minimize this, my direction would be to cut the number of guides. I also don't believe that line touching the blank is an issue, but agree that if it crosses over, it simply looks bad, so I try to avoid it. The suggestion to do it spiral will result in the minimum number of guides (based on stress test). Search for "simple spiral wrap rodbuilding" on the internet. The simple spiral is easy to set up and is effective, results in no line tending to accumulate on one side of the reel like some other methods.

It was low in front. I towed with a GM mini van.

How did I ever get through towing my old rig thousands of miles off-level?

thanks. I would not use this reel for stripers, I'd find a way to get a modern reel rather than try to control a fish like that with a reel with no anti-reverse. They really are not that expensive, and I'll bet all of them, at any price, will perform better than the old reel. Without knocking the skin off my knuckles. But, different strokes. . .

No drag? Probably no anti-reverse? If not, consider how badly your knuckles might get whacked when a big striper hits. Don't ask me how I know this (with pike, probably much smaller than your stripers.)

I believe the blanks use nano technology, right? If so, they should be less prone to damage than the old blanks.

What is that ribbed thing made of. For most materials one can CAREFULLY use a Dremel saw, cut longitudinally part way through, don't touch the blank, then try to split the part off. Depending on how well it was epoxied on initially, it will be fairly easy to get it all off, or it could be very hard. Be careful with heat-some heat will soften the epoxy, will never melt it, and if you get the blank too hot, it will fail. So count more on cutting/sanding/splitting/etc than heating.

For color, function, style, and ease of building, hard to beat the Winn grips. They do have "complete" sets at Mudhole and othere marketers of Winn.

Drop shot. I find it hard to not work it too much. My son will be catching with drop shot, I change to the same thing, and still don't do very well.

There have been millions of fish caught with rods of all varieties, materials, powers, and actions. How many rods did your father have? Probably one. So, IMO, it is not a necessity to have a crankbait rod. But it can be advantageous. If you are using mono or FC now, lines with quite a bit of stretch, which equates to "forgiveness" when the fish hits, it may not make a big difference. But if you are using braid you will probably do better with a moderate action, which will be more forgiving, resulting in fewer missed fish due to too aggressive hook sets on the strike. All the crank rods do, regardless of material, is soften up the rod's reaction to the strike. In other words, consider it a system, line + rod. The system should be "harder/stiffer" for finesse applications, "softer" for cranks and surface. (treble hooks). The casting characteristics will be somewhat different, but that's not compelling, and what works better for one caster may not work better for another. As previously stated, if you're not missing a lot of strikes now, getting another rod won't be a big improvement. To me, bigger than the action difference is the convenience of having more setups, each for its own technique and lure, so lure changes won't be necessary so often.

I should have added that rubber parts have a mold release on them to help get them out of the mold that forms them. It may interfere with the effectiveness of epoxy. What I do is to "wash" them with alcohol, vigorous rubdown with a wet with alcohol paper towel, then sand the barb and internal surfaces with 150 grit sandpaper. I don't know that it is necessary, but I've done it many times with no failures.

I believe the post above has it right. If you get to the point of needing something more than patching it, and getting a new butt knob is inconvenient (as in ordering only one part and paying $7 for shipping) go to anl O'REilly's auto parts store and go to their display of interior trim fasteners/parts and find the container with the 5/8 inch diameter rubber "bumper" pieces, and buy it, glue one into the hole to provide a black rubber bumper on the butt of the rod.

I've owned both Shimano and Daiwa, my early Daiwas being the Cabelas Prodigy. I have never met a Daiwa spinning reel that I didn't love. Both are very good, but one can usually find more Daiwas on sale than Shimanos.

OK, here is the truth you've been looking for. All the others are not telling the whole story. :-) This post could go on for years without a resolution that works for everyone. There are a hundred ways to screw up an FG knot, and when people tell you how they are tying it they most likely are not telling you the real secrets of the knot. Not that they are evil, but they most likely don't understand what they are doing right. There are simply so many variables in that knot that in spite of tying it for about 3 years now, I still am learning. There are probably fifty ways to screw up an Alberto. The most obvious is the direction the tag end goes out after doing the wraps. But the method of doing the wraps and tightening them are important. Here again, I think people who are doing it right don't even know how to tell us others what the important parts of the technique are. I for one have trouble making an effective Alberto. With certain fishing techniques, they often unravel. The double uni is large, but it is reliable. Unless you have pretty small micros, it should work OK if you trim the leader as has been mentioned. One other trick is to use UV cure epoxy on it, forming a more streamlined shape to go through the guides. If you are using small micros, like below about 5 1/2 mm, then it most likely will not work with your heavy line/leader combination. OK, time for everyone to tell me if I just did this one little secrety of theirs. . .

That is what I thought. I think the best blanks for these are blanks with moderate or moderate fast actions, but really, just about any rod will work fine. You might make your selection of characteristics based on having a rod that will work well with other techniques. Finesse leads you to faster actions, cranks to moderate. Base the power on the weight of the lures so that the rod gets loaded properly on the cast.

Isn't it great when you pay $1700 for a magic sonar unit that is touted to do everything but make bacon and eggs in the morning and you find out you have to spend a couple hundred more to either protect it or make it work properly?

After placing the guides on the blank per the chart instructions put line through them and stress the blank about 20% of its length and look at the angles the line makes at the guides and the path of the line through the first three guides. Looking down the rod try to get a "bullseye" appearance with the first three as best you can. Adjust the positions of the runners to get small, equal angles. If you cannot acheive this, move the first guide out a little and retest. If it still looks like the angles are too large, add a running guide. Test cast, moving the first two guides up and down an inch or two. There are great articles on this topic, but at sources not allowed on the forum.

So where is Lake Menderchuck?

You might want to look at my profile pic.

If it makes a huge roostertail, it's mounted too low. Further North is right. The comments about the advantage of a second transducer keeping the mega above stuff that could damage it are right, too. At a cost of about hundred bucks.