My buddy has a few older beat up custom rods built with Loomis Blanks. We were wondering if you can melt the epoxy down to remove the guides, seat, and handle so you can use the blank again?

 

Nothing wrong with the blank itself, but the rod handle is beat up, a little heavy, and a few other things from being older. 

 

Is this possible with the right equipment like heat gun or will the blank be ruined?

Yes it's doable, but time consuming. If you try melting down the epoxy you'll also desolve the rod, bet you can't figure out what holds the graphite fibers together, the blanks are made in a big high tech oven after being rolled into the shape of a blank on a mandrel. Still a lot of elbow grease will get it done. If the blanks are the old matt finished blanks, they also carry their own problems to consider during rebuild.

Actually a picture of the rod(s) might help.  In either case, as already mentioned, it's time consuming and you can't melt the epoxy to take the guides off.  Guides are removed, usually with a single edge razor blade.  You have to carefully cut through the epoxy and thread holding the guides in place and basically peel it away.  Before removing the guide, you need to mark, usually by wrapping a piece of tape around the blank, where the guide foot or feet were sitting on the blank.  So you can put the new ones in the right place on the rod.  The fore grip, the one in front of the reel seat, if it's either foam or cork can be carefully cut off.  The reel seat can be heated up to loosen the epoxy or cement that's holding it in place and can be worked loose and removed.  Then remove the grip behind the reel seat the same way you did the for egrip .  

Now you have to decide what kind of grips, reel seat and guides you want to replace the old ones with.  Order them.  Once you get them you can put the rod back together. 

  It would take you two, maybe three hours to carefully remove the old hardware.  Making sure you've marked where the old guides sat on the reel and how the reel seat was sitting on the blank.  Then you have to wrap on the new guides and coat them with epoxy.  Another 6 to 8 hours depending on the equipment you have.