Last winter I had a chance to do a Wonderrod restoration for a client and it turned out shockingly well. He really enjoyed fishing a totally refreshed vintage rod over the last season.

He recently sent me this little 6'6" that def has seen better days cosmetically but was structurally very sound. I removed the old wraps and grip, cleaned up the blank, redid the cork work, and rewrapped using new and more guides. The thread is a CP Green w/ CP gold and black tipping. We opted not to redo the spiral wraps b/c of the inevitable varnish yellowing that will occur over the blank. I think the current wrap choice keeps it vintage looking and ties in especially nicely with the decal.

I really am not typically a restorer or repairer as usually the requires some level of risk to do the work but these blanks tend to clean up very nicely and easily, they're not crazy high value or rare, and they cast/fish very nicely once sorted. I included some before pics to show where we started...

Wow. +1 to Driftless.

That hook-keeper wrap looked like it sat in the oven under the Thanksgiving turkey!

That came out real nice. And the decals are in great shape too.

Fanbloodytastic !

Thats a sweet resto on a sweet rod. Bravo.

Amazing work!

Saved and improved. Well done.

Thanks all! Glad you guys can appreciate getting these old rods on the water again...

The ferrules and seat hardware were original and in surprisingly nice shape considering the condition of the wraps and cork... they certainly give a lot of the vintage charm to the rod

I can only echo all of the above. How did you get the blank to look like new?

now that's a restoration!

Job well done! While the workmanship is top shelf, the new look has a lot of class.

I think the green hardware makes it a 1245 panfish special,nice save of that rod,Looks like something got to the varnish as the green metal and the decal survived.

WOw wow wow