Hi Guys! I recently picked up Jeffroey's P761 Galaxy rod.
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Thanks Jeffroey! this may be a slower paced build thread, but Ive started working so I figured Id start documenting.

I sanded the tip section to improve the fit of the last ferrule with good results in about 20 minutes. A quick yard casting session showed that the rod would probably work best as a 7wt for me. It cast a rio gold 6 well enough and could be fished as a 6 at longer distances, but I think a 7 is a better fit. I only have a DT7, but I may try out a WF7 some time soon. I suspect the rod has the tip strength to handle sinking lines as well.

at this point my plan is to perform a fly only conversion with a Fenwick style grip and possibly a small fighting butt. I would prefer to save the original reel seat if possible. Im imagining a short powerful 6/7 that can handle streamers, intermediate or sink tip lines, poppers, terrestrials, or moderately heavy indicator rigs. Given my location and the rods apparent niche I suspect it will be a creek/kayak warm water rod mostly but it could also have streamer and nymph applications for trout.

yesterday I began working on stripping the rod down. all of the guides came off without much of a struggle, but the threads will need some more work to remove. the blank will need to be cleaned off and likely refinished. with the guides off the rod feels a little more limber. perhaps this is wishful thinking, but those heavy guides certainly weren't making the rod more flexible.

next I moved on to trying to boil off the reel seat. my first attempt to pull the reel seat off was at about the 10 minute mark. No dice. I tried again every 10 minutes for an hour and never persuaded the seat to come off. at one point, I yielded to the temptation to give the seat a gentle twist, and I didnt like what I saw in terms of the whole thing wanting to twist up under some of the cork. Ofcourse, that was the end of the twisting experiment. Id rather not boil it for any longer, Im worried about softening the fiberglass. I am fairly certain that the glass under the grip and real seat was softened by the prolonged boil time. I dont want to cut the seat off, but given the choice between risking the blank and destroying the reel seat, Ill save the blank. Any ideas?

Thanks for following along! pics to come.

I've got the fly-only version of that, is a nice 7wt I pack into local lakes with.

You don't need to apply finish to entire rod, just the wraps.

Boiling never works for me, I heat with a torch or cut em off.

Stains probably not coming off. From my days of having three daughters running around, I have a hundred or more colored sharpies and the like. I can almost always find something to mask defects. But aren't you going to wrap over them anyway?

Thanks for the advice. I think it may turn out to be a really great all purpose rod. Im get more excited the more I work on it.

Ive successfully removed u40 rod bond by boiling but apparently whatever lamiglass used back in the day was "the good stuff".

Ill definitely wrap over the ferrules and the ends of each segment. Its really just the places where there were guides mid section that might turn out to be visible. That wouldnt be the end of the world though if the marks end up being permanent.

Hi guys. Ive made a good bit of progress on the P761 rebuild. I resolved myself to live with the stains from the original thread wraps. I copied the guide spacing from my FF756, gave that a shot, made a few minor tweaks, and the wrapped the guides with red A nylon. In a reel-taped-to-the-blank test the rod seemed to really like a WF7. At this point all threads wraps are done except for trim wraps on the butt section.



Im waiting on cork in the mail for the grip and working on a downlocking fighting butt set up. Unfortunately my made from scratch fighting butt idea hasnt worked out too well.



My thought was to set the upper ring of an uplocking reel seat into a cork ring, then build it into a fighting butt glued up on a fiberglass rod. After initial glue up, I glued three more ring onto the tip top end of the set up to make an arbor to slip into the rod butt. With the butt aligned and affixed to the blank as well as the barrel of the seat self aligning into the fighting butt I thought everything would be very concentric and sturdy. Thats where I went wrong

It appears that the steel ring is a good ways out of center in the fighting butt, and with the whole thing assembled you can tell (in person) that the fighting but is not on the same axis as the blank. This might by what Wile e coyote felt like?

I could probably hand sand the butt to be close enough to looking right to the bare eye, but Ill have to think more about the crookedness. Perhaps I can undersize the arbor to gain the slop I need to get it straight? Im not sure if the super thin veneer or cork on the outside of the ring will hold up long term either what do you guys think ?

Ps - when I get the fighting butt right Ill trim about an inch off of the butt of the rod to make all of the section lengths match.

O-rings (any hardware or auto parts store) are the most adaptable to fit a removable fighting butt and compensate for slight irregularities in the male or the female. They can be fixed in place on the shaft and are easily replaceable. Cork works a few times but looses its resilience if compressed repeatedly.

The end result was certainly worth the effort. Great job!