Restoring Old Fiberglass Fly Rod

Question
I would like to restore an old glass 7 wt 8.5 ft Ward's Hawthorne rod of my Dad's .  The guides and guide threads are still in great shape.  I want to clean up / restore the glass , cork handle, and metal parts .. It has been a wall hanger for a long time and now that I am starting to fly-fish, he is asking about his old rod.  I want to surprise him .. The reel seems in great shap and I will load it up with new line for him too.   Any good tricks or ideas would be greatly appreciated..

Answer
Hi Doug,

I assume you want to clean it up but not strip it down and rebuild it completely.  My answers are from the point of view of cleaning and sort of renewing the rod as opposed to completely restoring it.

If the wraps and the guides are good, leave them alone.  If the coating on the thread wraps is in good shape, leave it alone as well.  If you have any threads missing or coming loose, contact me again and we'll go through how to re-wrap the guides and finish the threads with new epoxy.

The glass shaft can probably be cleaned with one of the household cleaners under the kitchen sink (dish soap, glass cleaner, general purpose cleaner, etc).  Carefully test the cleaner on a small spot of the rod shaft.  If the rod is painted, make sure the cleaner doesn't soften or remove the paint.  Try not to use anything abrasive to scrub the rod blank as you can scratch or remove the paint, if it is painted. Once you have the rod as clean as it is going to get, you can apply a coat of wax (car wax, furniture wax, etc) to return a little gloss to the finish.  

If the finish is chipped, scratched badly or gone in places, you can repaint the rod; but that is a much larger project and would involve removing and reinstalling the guides.

The cork handle can be cleaned three ways: 1) lightly sand the handle with 200-300 grit paper followed by 400-600 paper, 2) lightly clean the handle with warm water and dish soap, and 3) try one of those Mr. Clean Dry-Erase (or whatever they are called) cleaning sticks (yep, they can work) on the cork.  Please note that option #2 will clean the cork but will raise the "grain" when it dries and the handle will need to be sanded smooth.  

The dark color you remove from the cork handle is a mixture of sweat, fish slime and dirt and it is usually not very deep so treating the surface will return the cork to its original light color.  I just leave my handles dirty these days.  You do not want to remove much cork when sanding, nor should you need to do so, just a light sanding will remove the dirt layer and restore the color.

Metal parts can be cleaned if they are painted with household cleaners.  Follow the same test precautions so you don't remove any paint.  If not painted, they can usually be cleaned with #0000 steel wool and some light rubbing.  Once again, you do not want to remove and finish or plating from the metal parts.  Test this as well so you don't scratch any softer metals.  You are only trying to clean them up a bit and restore shine.  Sometimes commercial chrome or brass cleaners will help remove some of the old grime from metal parts.

It's mostly common sense.  The fiberglass rod is a pretty durable item and is made from things that should be able to handle normal cleaning products and solvents.  I always test a small spot to be sure, but these old rods clean up pretty well.  Hopefully, it will make a big difference.   Thnaks,  Joe