After seeing Bassectomy try it I aswell tryed to modify some of my rods.

Here is my new split griped Swimbait Rod

Looks good, how long or should I say how many hours ya got into it?

Well taking off the cork was the easy part that took me about a half hour maybe a little bit more or less.

But trying to take off the glue man that was a pain staking ne vs cards game lol so about 2 hrs chipping away.  The more expensive rods load and I mean load theres cork with glue and I also had a 4" strand of twine or some kind of cord burried with in the glue to.

But I was very careful with the heat gun applying only so much heat and chip and more heat and chip. So its a little bit of a nerve wracker and fun too.

As for the Slammers being decaled on well that didnt work on account of the tape I used has a silicone base and the oils didn't allow the Flex Coat 2 to bond on top of it but it beaded up and shead off so I am back to the drawing board and thinking up a good way to have some custom flare on the swimbait rod.

Here it is my new decal made up and flexed in with its first coat

another coat to follow

There it is 8-)

Killer job

I make vinyl windows for a living, so we use heat guns alot, hopefully my talent will follow on to the rod side with it ;D

You have to be really careful with the heat being ion the blank to long I have been told it could warp it I am not sure if this is true but I rather not find out the hard way

So good luck with it and post it up seems to be the winter of the split grip

Could I have a tutorial on how to do this?

Looks pretty good dude! Another person on another forum of mine brought this up and did his own also.

Bored in the winter, it gives you something fun to try. I personally did it to two of my non used rods. I dont think i had the proper tools to do it, causing me to not get all the glue off. But this just shows me that i shouldn't try it on a more expensive rod! But it was fun to try.

Sure BassBoss

First I find the best placement for my hands while palming the rod to my desire then I mark the cork with a sharpie then I figure out about how much cork I wish to have left on my butt.

On this Swimbait rod I chose to keep a good bit of cork under the reel seat and take as much off as I could till I got to the butt about 8 inches in total.  then with a sharp blade I cut into the cork with out digging into the blank completely around in a full circle on both the top and bottom of the space I wanted to remove.

From there I made one long cut again being carefull not to hit the blank from the top to the bottom of the cut I had just made.

Then I used a flat head screw driver to forcefull remove the cork.

I noticed this was alot easier than making tons of cuts within the area of being removed which could lead to damaging ur blank.

Then what you are left with is a lot or little bit of glue and some small parts of cork.  Depending on the quality of the rod lower theres little to no glue or higher tons of glue.

This swimbait rod was loaed but the allstart I finised before this had about half the glue of this one.

I used a heat gun and slowly chipped away at the glue and the blank with a putty knife.  This takes a while and please dont rush through it.

after removing as much of the glue as I could I took some paint thinner and removed and cleaned any and all glue that was left.

After this I started to lightly sand the blank starting with 300 grit and ending with 600 grit by wet sanding.

After again cleaning with thinner and a dry paper towel I panited the blank black with a Black Acrylique panit and alowed to dry sanding again with the 600 did this twice.  

Frome there I printed out what item I wanted to make a decal of and glued it to a peice of foil w/ a Clear parts cement by Testors.  THis sealed the decal and glued it at the same time.

Let it stand for about an hr to let it dry and then marked out the blank with a pencil and applyed a small amount of contact cement to the area and the back side of the decal smoothed out removed any and all cement with thinner ect.. trying not to hit the decal and remove it before it was fully cured.  

Waited about 30 mins mixed up a bit of the Flex Coat 2 and applyed over all the bottom of the blank.  

the steps you would have to take remove the foregrip are the same but you might have to remove the hook keeper ect with a sharp blade and side cutters and smal pliars.

there are a few web addresses I will try to link on to this aswell and they are a good help too.

Hope I helped please ignore any and all spelling and grammer as I am writing this quickly and heading out the door.

Good Luck keep us posted of your work ;D

Brandon, I found the link

Just a Reminder;  your rod warrant may be voided by modifying. Check w/the manufacturer to fiind out.  

http://www.georgescustomrods.com/split_your_grip.htm

Thats it Paul thanks

Couldn't think of it thanks for getting it out lol