What's the difference betwee the FT and Sig V. Is one a faster blank ?
Oh, and which 1 would you recommend. I'm after a 10' # 7.
Thanks in advance,
Glen

Glen:

I have built the 9' 5wt Dan Craft Sig V in four different forms. I also have the FT. Here is my take on the rods.

Sig V with Fuji Ti frame guides: Ultra smooth, but the Ti guides make the rod a bit too moderate action for my taste.

Sig V with single foot wire guides, spined on the stiffest axis: Great big water rod, best used with the Rio Grande line - not great for close in fine presentation work

Sig V with single foot wire guides, spined on the least stiff axis: Better for all-round trout fishing, best used with a Sci Anglers Ultra 4 line in my opinion, but somewhat less powerful than spining on the stiffest axis.

Sig V with single foot wire guides spined on the stiffest axis for the first two sections and on the least stiff axis for the tip section: my favorite form of this rod - fishes well close but has incredible power, all in an incredibly light package for a 5 wt. I feel that this loads more intuitively and is quite crisp in the way it casts. I use this with a Sci Anglers Ultra 4 line.

FT: Heavier than the Sig V, and best used with a Rio Grande line. I find that the rod feels a little less "responsive" than the Sig V spined as a tip flex rod. However, it is much more powerful and a very smooth rod.

Here's an analogy. The FT is like driving a Mercedes 600 sedan. The Sig V spined tip flex is like driving a Porsche 911 turbo. The Sig V spined on the stiffest axis is like driving a Porsche 911 from 1973 - fast as @#$%& but a little on the uncivilized side.

Having said all of this, they are all wonderful rods and much better than any commercial rods that I have had a chance to fish. Some days I don't know which one to take out.

Mark

Mark. I never heard of reversing the spine as you describe. With a 5 or 6 piece rod, would you reverse the last 2 sections? Will this work on any rod, or are the benefits mainly with fast actions?

Don:

I just started doing this as an experiement. Let me say first off that I'm not sure if this will have any implication on rod longevity, so caveat emptor.

I have used this technique to "fine tune" rod actions in multi-piece rods. I have found that some "fast action" rods are simply too fast action for my tastes and don't fish well up close. Some moderate action rods do not have enough power for my taste.

In general, because I like the way the "tip action" type of rods feel, I have been spining my rods so that the upper third (top section on a 3 piece, top 2 sections on a 5 piece) are spined on the least stiff axis, while the bottom two thirds of the rod are spined on their stiffest axis. Obviously, the native properties of the blank have a lot to do with whether this adjustment has any effect. In a rod that does not have a large variation in spine alignments, there will be no effect at all. However, with blanks such as the Dan Craft Sig V's, the difference is quite noticeable. I don't think the overall sense of the rod changes, but the difference is large enough that I have been using different lines on each of the different spine arrangements.

I think the ability to use the spine to fine tune a rod has become one of the great "creative" features of my fly rod building. There really is no right or wrong answer to how one uses the spine axis. However, being creative about spining multi-piece rods can give a builder the ability to really fine tune a rod for the "perfect" action.

Mark. I also like a soft tip, so will give this a try. What happens when you reverse the upper 2/3s?

Mark, very interesting and thoughtful post. Thanks for sharing your ideas and experience. I'd say if you are noticing differences and are pleased with your results then your discovery really does increase the number of options you have for each blank. Have you by any chance tried to quantify the differences in power and action by testing these different configurations using the Common Cents System. That would be neat to see. My experience with 3-7 wt. fly blanks is that most have a 1-2 penny difference in power when you compare spine-up to spine-down construction. That equates to up to 0.3 ERN difference which some may be able to feel but I admit that I probably can't or it must be darn close to my threshold of noticing.

I can't imagine how rod durability would be compromised by what you are doing, considering many blanks are not spined at all before they get built and rod failure usually involves some other sort of problem or accident anyway.

Neat ideas to think about.

Steve

Steve:

I don't want to get into hot water with the CC gurus out there, but here goes. For me, the CC system is a great way to get a macroscopic view of rod power and action. However, quite a bit of what I'm interested in is "feel" which is difficult to define. I think what we're seeing is probably more related to changes in AA for different spining. I'm wondering if there isn't a way to analyze a combination of AA and ERN to better get at "feel".

It is quite interesting to me how different all of these rods feel with these small changes in spining. I myself am quite surprised - pleasantly so.

I'll try to measure my four Sig V rods at some point and post it on the web.

I agree that ERN and AA work together to create a feel that is not easily quantified. For example, when I tested the 8'6" and 9' FTs, I was not that well prepared for the feel they would have when I actually built and casted one, the FT863-4. The rod is much more pleasant to cast and fish than I would have guessed based solely on the numbers. Still, since it's the only system I know for objectively measuring power and action I still like to know the numbers before I build. There's always more to learn though, usually on the water in actual casting and fishing situations.

Glen,
My Sig V 10 ft 7 wt, is Mid Med-fast actioned. A high, but smooth, line speed rod. A very light rod for it's size.
There is lots of Dan Craft info on the CC Data site at the top left in the blanks and fly rod sections.
Also putting " Dan Craft FT or Sig V" in the search engine should bring a huge amount of info.

Don:

I've never reversed the upper 2/3. But what I'd say is that there is no right or wrong, so get out of the mindset that there is a "correct" and "reversed" method. I'm now simply using spining to get the parabolic flex that I like. "Reversing" the upper 2/3 could make a moderate action rod faster. On a fast action blank like the Sig V, it would serve to even out the flex into the butt section, but remember that you don't get as much bang out of the effect on the butt because it is inherently stiffer.


Try it... the differences are quite dramatic in real fishing situations.

Mark.

Mark: Thanks for the VERY well communicated post! We started switching the spining on the tip sections as an experiment (like yourself) about a year ago and put the rods through a ton of testing. There's no question in my mind that there IS a difference that is noticeable, as I can usually tell by casting which rod is spined which way if I'm looking for those characteristics. And there is a subtle difference in AA...one to two degrees in our experience on a 9' 4pc. I do agree that it's more feel, probably related to resonant frequency, than simply ERN or AA.

After a year of heavy fishing with rods spined this way, I have to say that it's become the standard for me and I have to be given compelling reasons to go back to spining the entire rod "stiff" or "least stiff". We do this on virtutally all our 4pc and 3pc rods and test cast the poop out of 2pc rods to decide which is best on any given blank.

Don: We've tried about every conceivable combination of spine alignment possible, including going "back and forth" (i.e. bottom, top, bottom...etc.) and have found that placing the stiffist axis on the bottom (guide side) of all but the tip section and reversing for the tip has consistently given us more of the qualities we look for--particularly a rare combination of crisp power married to excellent tippet protection and outstanding tip-casting qualities for in-close pocket water, etc.

The only times we do not align the rod this way is when the effective spine over the entire blank "shifts" if the tip is reversed. Hard to put into words, but sometimes the butt 3 sections on a 4pc, once assembled, align perfectly to the overall spine, but when you put the tip on "reversed", it throws the whole thing out by a fifth of a rotation or so...if aligning the spine on the tip with the butt sections results in a perfectly aligned blank again, we defer to the positive characteristics gained from so doing rather than the specific and subtle tip characteristics we are normally after.

Sheesh! Hope that makes some kind of sense--apparently too many epoxy fumes of late! ;)

John
Rocky Mountain

John. So you would reverse only the tip on a 5 or 6 piece?

Well, can't say! I've yet to build a 5 or 6pc! :(

I'd probably want to play with the top two sections first with CC then casting with the desired/envisioned fishing context for that rod in mind.

Sorry I can't help on that one...let me know what you find out! :)

John
Rocky Mountain

I have built a 5pc 5wt Sig IV with guides on the soft side on the tip section and on the stiffer side on the rest. I cannot compare it to other Sig IV's but I can say it is the best single handed rod I have laid my hands on.

Jari

John & Jari

It's good to see that you have been building with varying spine directions for multi-piece rods. In my experience, this has become a critical parameter in my rod design, as I feel that I can compensate for inherent properties in the blank to get a better feel.

John: It's interesting that you talk about resonance. I think it's less a question of resonant frequency than that of damping. My "reversed tip" rods seem to damp much better than rods that have the spine all one direction. Perhaps this is because there is a discontinuity between the inherent resonance of the tip versus but sections, causing some cancellation.

Mark.

Wonder what Dan has to say about all of this?