I have an old Team Daiwa spinning rod, it has EVA foam grips that have seen better days. How hard will it be to replace it? Someone once told me re-gripping a rod is a real pain in the butt.

G3 Fan,

I sure can be a major pain.

To regrip that rod you would have to cut the old foam off, clean the blank area free of old epoxy. Then if you wanted cork, reinstalled, depending on the total length, cork rings would have to be reamed to the blanks diameter and stacked in position. Once this is done then I would take each ring and epoxy it to the blank then have to clamp the rings together for a seamless solid grip. Once that is setup then I would have to hand shape the grip to fit the hand.

If you were wanting to remove the old foam and re-install another foam grip, then it gets tougher. You would need a foam block, or pre-shaped foam grip in the proper length, Then you need to spread your epoxy, place the grip into boiling water and then it needs to be slid onto the grip area that has been prepped. This is not any easy process no matter which way you go.

The better way IMPO would be to cut every guide off of the rod and re-grip from the front of the rod so that the grip could be turned on a lathe and reamed to fit the exact taper of the rod blank instead of from the back (widest point on the blank). Then re-wrap the guides back on.

My reasoning for this is if the foam grip is that bad on the rod you can bet that the guide wraps are probably cracked and faded, and even lose on some of the guides. It would basically be a re-do of the entire rod.

If you have never done any rod work don't try this yourself, even some of the best builders I know consider this to be a major pain in the BUTT........

Tight Lines!  

Thanks for the info, it sounds like the squeeze isn't worth the juice.