IMX SJR844 Strip Down

The Danube Delta was a revelation for my friend Razvan, at least in what his new rodbuilding project should be. After 3 days of fishing with his G.Loomis SJR 844, a gift from his wife, he decided that in order for him to fish with this rod again he’d have to convert it to a baitcaster. This baby had the backbone and the sensitivity needed for the task. One problem… who would strip his rod to a virgin blank?

Unfortunately for me,  he was fishing with his favorite rodbuilder… ME! when his light bulb lit up. I just couldn’t refuse him. A unique project. I haven’t stripped down any rod from top to bottom, so I finally got my chance to do so.

From past topics on Rodbuilding.org and Tackletour I remembered that IMX and GLX rods didn’t have any topcoat whatsoever. I wish this would be right, but it wasn’t. They are protected by the thinnest coating I’ve seen so far. Luckily a light sanding does the trick in getting to the bare blank.

Ok! Let’s trace back our steps to see how do you strip a blank of all of its components. To start with, if you wish you could rinse the rod of any larger debris.

This is about all you need

1. Do you speak Guide language?

The Fuji Alconite were wrapped with what I believe was a C size thread, of unknown origin. Before getting your blade in the wrapping try warming the area with a hair dryer in order to make the epoxy finish more malleable. Then plunge into the base of the guide with an exacto blade. Try stripping to the left as you look at the guide. Fortunately I got the direction of the wrap straight on, and after cutting at the base of the guide I started unwrapping the thread. Unlike Megabass rods, the thread wrapping is single threaded. This means easy unwrapping, uninterrupted by other thread inlays.

How you cut the thread after heating the area with a hair dryer

You need to find the right direction to "unwind" the thread.

This is how the after looks like.

The first guide is the toughest to take of, the rest will be a piece of cake.

Bulky epoxy remains

Ok. We have removed all the guides. But what about the epoxy residue that’s left after removing the guides? This is where the delicate work starts.

I use whatever metallic blade I have at hand, that’s not that sharp, to do the removing operation. You’ll probably think I’m nuts, but until now I haven’t been able to find a better solution for this. Plastic did not cut the mustard in this case. It work up to a point. If you get the angle of the blade right you’ll see that when you get to the blank it won’t scrape of any more material. What I love about this method is that you feel and control the entire operation. After you get the hang of it, it’s pretty straight forward.

Scrape to the bare blank.

To the bare blank I said!

How clean is clean enough? No visible marks where the guide used to be.

I recommend warming the epoxy residue with the hair dryer first, for perfect results. After removing the residue from all of the guides I’ve removed I started sanding the blank on all it’s length with a 1000 grit sandpaper. After this operation you won’t see any difference in where the guides once were.

2. Can we keep the G.Loomis logo?

Who would have believed that Loomis stamped their rods, instead of applying decals like all the others do? This is just my fortune, as Razvan asked me to try to keep the original writing on the blank. I told him that only a miracle would do that, if he wants a Matagi lipstick on the rod.

Well… I got my miracle. You just have to be patient during this operation. I really can’t illustrate it with pictures, but a good set of nails will do the trick. Warm up the area with the hair dryer as best as you can, in order to soften the finish as much as possible. Unwrap thread above and under the sticker (or at least from under the sticker to have a point to start with), and after that try peeling the epoxy of the sticker by using your nails. It’s easier said than done actually. This operation took almost as much as removing all the residue epoxy from where all the guides used to be.

I removed the thread from under the "sticker"

Prety neet

After removing the finish that was covering the original writing, you can remove the rest with a knife, or whatever blade you have at hand (don’t use the sharpest you find). I used a kitchen knife and the back of an exacto knife to finish it off.

3. Removing of the cork.

This is probably the easiest task so far. After removing the vinyl winding check and the vinyl butt cap you get right into it. The one where you don’t have to be that gentle. Just stick that knife in. The blank will have a thick enough layer of epoxy over it to be able to protect it from any harm. Roughly remove the cork, until you get to the bare epoxy on the blank. Here you go through the same stages as above. Hair dryer to soften up the epoxy and blade to remove it from the blank.

Cut the vinyl winding check

The winding check's of. The cork is in the way.

Straight into it. No hard feelings...

Cut the butt cap of. Vinyl is easy to cut.

This is what the vinyl was covering up. Yuk...:)

The reel seat is in the way. Wonder why they call it Super Sticker.

4. Super Sticker reel seat… hard to get, hard to remove

This is where the Dremelcomes in. No other tool will do the job better than a dremel. The Super Sticker reel seat is a pretty tough one to crack, if you haven’t used one before. Do a cross cut on the back of the reel seat, and one on the other. Be really careful with the dremel, because it gets pretty close to the blank. You don’t want to damage it, so be patient.  After this operation I find myself using a wide screwdriver to spread the reel seat. You can figure this one out without further explanation. After this the same hair dryer, blade/knife operation to clean up the epoxy residue.

Prepare the dremel. Super Sticker... super sticks.

Cut it open.

The screw driver trick.

That's why they call it SuperSticker... Easy to put on, but hard to get of. Sticks to it's owner like SuperGlue.

Finally it's of...

The leftovers. Want some?!

After you remove all the residue epoxy, try finding a 800 grit sandpaper, to scrape the blank of whatever finish there’s left. A 1000, or a 1200 should finish the job, so there is no visible scratch.

After the sanding process wipe the blank clean with alcohol. It’ll need multiple wipes, until you have no residue on whatever you use to clean the blank with. And now it’s ready for the Matagi parts… just waiting for them to get here.

Looks like an off the shelf blank. Strip it off - the only way to get one these days.

Until next time!… I’m going to have a blast building this one.

About Andrei

Professional angler, rodbuilder, lurebuilder, if it's about fishing you name it, he does it. He hates "relaxing", and takes each day as a challange. Whenever he's got a spare moment he's either fishing, cycling, hiking or training his ass at the gym. He's fishing for more than 20 years now. Strictly on artifficial baits from the age of 7, he's always on the look out for the newest stuff and techniques out there.

View all posts by Andrei →

After a recent zander fishing tournament, one of my friends, Razvan approached me pretty upset, holding in his hand a recently bought Megabass Destroyer rod.

“You have to repair my Megabass!” he sais.
Well what’s it’s problem? I ask.
“It almost broke my wrist.”
What?…
“Are you blind, can’t you see it’s rear grip is just for aesthetics? How do you want me to properly set the hook, if it’s always slipping! This is for Japanese sight fishing.”

The original very short rear grip.

The truth is that there’s no wonder it’s called “F4-62XS Sight Fisher”. It’s designed to sight fish in shallow waters, and Megabass USA says that it’s for deep water fishing as well, it being so sensitive that you won’t need any visual aid to determine what’s underwater. The Megabass USA website actually describes it as an all rouner as far as I can tell, but with that short rear grip it makes me wonder… Anyways Razvan loves the the rod above the grip for finesse zander presentations. He just wanted to love the entire rod, rear grip included, and we put our brains to the work.

Megabass "Sight Fisher" features

Yuki Ito leaves no part of the Megabass untouched

First of all I took all the necessary measurements. The carbon tube that formed the split grip was 15mm O.D. After a short browsing through Matagi’s catalog I find the page with the carbon tubings with different diameters. I suggested the clear one to Razvan, but he wanted to be a little more eccentric. He wanted the one with golden inserts…he said it would match the rest of the rod. From the past I knew there was a specific winding check that resembled almost perfectly the Megabass winding above the EVA barrel at the butt. I knew that saving the EVA barrel from the original rod was out of question so we added a Matagi barrel shaped EVA to the order. Even though I found almost everything in mister Mamoru’s catalog, I still had to save the butt cap. I also added an extra golden winding check to mask the portion just at the rear of the reel seat.

Matagi features premium custom rod components

These are the parts ordered from the catalog:

• EVA barrel: EBL (page 58, 2010 catalog) – Rear end of the grip.
• Megabass resembling winding check: D16-VF (page 73, Matagi 2010 catalog) – just above the EVA barrel.
• Golden winding check: D16-FR – I.D. 15mm (page 72, Matagi 2010 catalog) – right under the reel seat.
• Carbon tubing with golden inserts, because it best fits the golden accents from the rod: G-MC50-15 (page 64, Matagi 2010 catalog) – it’s obvious where this goes.

Now let’s get back to business. I have to mention this is my first Megabass customization. I’ve done other “repairs”, but mainly USA made. This is my first JDM. To see how is it actually made, I cut the rear tubing somewhere closer to the butt. I needed to know if the actual carbon tube was the actual extension or if it was glued over an actual portion of the blank. There was no surprise to see the blank ended somewhere in the middle of the reel seat, and that the carbon tubing was the actual extension. This was going to be trickier to “repair”.

Gripless Megabass

Not a pretty rear for the Megabass after the final cut

Let’s see how are we going to make the extension with what we have at hand. I have some older broken rods/blanks. Only thing to mention is that you need a very stiff blank material to make this work, because you need to actually insert it in the rear of the actual blank, and the I.D. of the Megabass blank is about 7-8mm . I have cut a proper blank piece needed for the extension just as long as the rear grip is going to be. I taped it, so I can fit the carbon tubing over it snugly. It definitely added some weight to the overall rod, but there’s nothing actually wrong in this. It will balance the rod just perfect.

All the components that went in the build, and the partially taped extension

Next step is epoxying the extension to the rod blank. After mixing of the epoxy, just drip some in the actual rod blank butt. Then brush some on the end of the extension that goes in the blank. I usually use a small piece of EVA to cover that end of the extension, so no epoxy flows inside it. I want the epoxy dripped in the rod blank to flow, and fill the space, if there is any, between the blank and the extension(see the drawing below). To make this happen, after inserting the extension in the butt leave the rod upright onto the extension. Leave this for the epoxy to harden for at least 3-4 hours, and then you can go ahead with the rest. This way you’ll cement the extension to the Megabass blank.

This is how the epoxy should fill in the gap between the blank and the extension(if any).

Next step is to glue the woven carbon tubing to the extension. It’s quite nothing to it, but make sure you get as much epoxy as you can in the butt of the reel seat portion. You need a hard base between the reel seat, extension and carbon tubing in order to have a solid rear grip that will last for ages(see red line in the picture). Of course… do not forget to mask all parts that might get epoxied (carbon tubing, and reel seat end for example).

Taped rear extension before epoxying of the carbon tubing.

Leave the rod until the epoxy hardens. I usually leave it for at least 4 hours. The rest is history, as you only have to do basic gluing to do for the winding checks, EVA barrel, and butt cap that was removed from the original Megabass.

The winding check you'll never see.

The rod wouldn't be complete without the original butt cap.

Here you have the final full grip, about 7cm longer than the original.

The pictures actually speak for themselves. I need not tell you that my pall was more enthusiastic with the “repaired” rod than the original one.

Keep on tuned! I have some more customizing articles to come.

About Andrei

Professional angler, rodbuilder, lurebuilder, if it's about fishing you name it, he does it. He hates "relaxing", and takes each day as a challange. Whenever he's got a spare moment he's either fishing, cycling, hiking or training his ass at the gym. He's fishing for more than 20 years now. Strictly on artifficial baits from the age of 7, he's always on the look out for the newest stuff and techniques out there.

View all posts by Andrei →

These, now, very popular grips have first made their appearance in Japan with weight reduction in mind. That along with increased sensitivity and, well… of course better looks. It’s all accessible now, and pretty simple as well.

I bet you all have at least one rod that you don’t like the looks of. Not all the rod of course, but I bet if there’s something you would change it is about the handle. What if you could make your own JDM style split grip?

For this tutorial I used 2 EVA grips, 2 winding checks, a graphite tube, that can come either from specialty shops, either from an older broken rod (preferably a larger diameter blank portion), and a light St.Croix rod that had it’s rear grip eaten by mice. Say what?!… yup…eaten by mice.
Enough with all this yabayaba….. Let’s get down to business.

1. Choosing of the rod you are going to use for your own purposes, and removal of the old grip (had some help with that ).

The rod I chose, you can see how it already looks. I had my work cut out by some mice or rats. I still had to remove some of the cork. In this case I don’t really need to remove the cork so the blank remains squeaky clean. I’ll mask it with a carbon tube, so there’s no need to. If you chose a more powerful blank (larger but ID) you will have to try to remove all the cork or EVA from the blank with sand paper, an exacto knife and some patience. In that case you will have to wrap and apply finish over that portion of the blank, and only afterward put those EVA or even cork grips on.

2. Choosing of the graphite insert (where it may apply).

This is chosen according to the blank’s but O.D. (outer diameter). Meaning that the graphite or woven carbon tube must have an I.D. larger than the blanks O.D. As you will see, my method wont lessen your rod’s weight. It might even increase it due to the tape and epoxy that will be hiding under the carbon insert. In this case it’s exactly what I want, just because I didn’t like how my rod counter balanced before, and this is the way it will make my rod balance perfectly.

I guess I was lucky those mice were hungry.

3. Taping

For these purposes I prefer not to use arbors. I prefer to use paper tape. You will have to tape the blank as you see in the image in such a manner that the insert will fit snugly over the tape.

4. Gluing everything together with epoxy

You can use almost any type of epoxy. I mainly use 30-minute epoxy. That means you can manipulate that epoxy for about 30 minutes. You mix 2 equal quantities of resin and hardener thoroughly. As soon as you’ve done that you can start applying it on the blank covering as well as you can the wrapped tape so it will afterward remain sealed in epoxy.

I strongly recommend not using 5-10 min. epoxy, because it usually hardens before you can finish your job, and that’s not pleasant at all.

5. Masking and closing

Using the same paper tape you will cover up all the parts that you think might get in contact with the epoxy. You will cover up the end of the reel seat (in this case), the EVA grips, and some portions of the insert. Immediately after you slide the graphite/carbon insert on the epoxied blank you can usually glue the grips on the insert. You can actually glue the grips on the insert before mounting it on the blank. Don’t forget about the winding checks.

You will use toothpicks to apply epoxy to glue on the winding checks.
You won’t see the actual gluing in the pictures, because that didn’t happen on camera because I had my hands busy and no cameraman.
Happy JDM lookalike fishing!

I know you still have a lot of uncertainties but I promise new tutorials that will clear everything up for you. Just keep on tuned.

About Andrei

Professional angler, rodbuilder, lurebuilder, if it's about fishing you name it, he does it. He hates "relaxing", and takes each day as a challange. Whenever he's got a spare moment he's either fishing, cycling, hiking or training his ass at the gym. He's fishing for more than 20 years now. Strictly on artifficial baits from the age of 7, he's always on the look out for the newest stuff and techniques out there.

View all posts by Andrei →