I have acquired two older Hardy 1010 rods. One has a good butt section but a broken tip section, while the other has a broken butt section and a good tip. My plan is to make one of the two. The only problem is that the two blanks are of slightly different colours, the tip is considerably lighter then the butt section. I would like the colour to match, so probably have to darken the tip. How do l match the colour? Or any other suggestions. Thank you.

Easiest would be to strip both sections and recolor with the same color/process etc. Trying to match one to the other's existing color might be tough. Although, you have another butt and tip section that you could use for color matching experiments.

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Jeeze, l never even thought of that (using the old sections). My neighbour suggested that l take the good section into a paint store where they have a way of matching the colour with an analyzer, l don't know how accurate it would turn out, but l would have enough left over to paint some of my fence. I may have to paint the rod all one colour, a 1010 is quite flexable so l believe the paint would have to be as well, and l don't want it to end up with the paint cracking.