You understand correctly.

Larry

Its the oversleeve. I'm not going for looks, just function, so I'll probably cut it off and wrap both halves. Trying to figure out the image upload.

From Andy, a film of super-wetting super glue (e.g. Zap pink-label) on the male ferrule.
Um, make sure you let that dry a day.

I’m following.

Cracked, or just uneven and rough on the end. Can do light sanding evenly and in circles on low grit sand paper. It’s not been mashed has it? Lemme know what else we can do for ya.

I love old Berkleys and have stripped two of them and rebuilt one. If it’s bad enough, maybe find another Berkley on eBay.

Thanks for the pictures, ya done good.
The oversleeve on Berkley's was mostly cosmetic... I would either push that back into shape, superglue then overwrap, or just trim a bit off of oversleeve. Either way is gonna work fine.

We had a discussion years ago on the oversleeves on B's, my theory is the sleeve hides the gap, people would see the gap, and try to shove tip and butt together till the tip split, so Berkley did the sleeve so folks couldn't see the gap. Oversleeve also adds some strength to the female.

I got most of the old paint off the rod and the guides wrapped on. I was too cheap to spring for paint stripper for one project, so I just used a plastic scraper and razor blade to skate along the surface and pop off the paint; it came off pretty easily.

I like the translucent brown, so I will not paint it. And there are some small flecks of paint in the valleys between the fiberglass wraps. They don't bother me and kind of give it a unique look if you look close enough to see.

I'll do a test coat of Flex Seal on one of the wraps and surrounding area, and then try to coat the whole thing.

I have ordered two tip tops, and both have been too small. I tried reaming them out, but it just didn't work. That will be last to finish before the final coat of epoxy.

Then I noticed that my guide spacing looked funny on one guide. I somehow got the first snake 2" too far from the stripper guide. If it seems to allow too much belly in the line, I'll either add another in that gap or move it down. If it doesn't bother me, then I'll call it good.

This has been fun so far; its definitely time consuming though.