Northwoods Float Fishing: Float Rod With Homemade Wire Guides

This is the first time I made a rod with homemade wire guides. The rod is a Raven IM8 which was 15 feet in length at one time. I ended up breaking the tip and was lucky enough to have a friend give me a tip that fit the rod perfectly. My friend is a machinist and makes some of the lightest rods I have held from peices of old broken rods he has lying around. From this he also made his own guides out of titanium wire for his flyrods. After seeing this I had the idea to make some guides for the new/old float rod out of stainless steel wire. I went to the local tackle shop and bought an assortment of single strand wire leader in three of their heaviest guages. After that I placed a drillbit in a vice, heated the wire and bent it into shape and then cut off the excess and grinded a taper in the guide foot and then wrapped the guide. Here's a picture of the guide mounted. So far I am very happy with the performance of the guides. I have not seen any grooving from the monofiliment line (10 pound test Berkley Big Game) or distortion in the guides themselves. The rod is very light and the action extremly crisp and nearly the same as the rod would be in blank form. At this point I would consider using these guides on all of my rods due to the just how light and do far durable they are. Only time will tell just how well the guide perform and last.