Making myself a heavy casting rod for travel to the salt. Using one of the real nice Allstar 3 piece blanks (10-30 lb). Using the spiral wrap. The neat thing is that with the 3 piece, all of the turn guides go on the middle section. It gives a wonderful opportunity to fool with the first guide orientation, etc. because you can change it by turning the section. Fun to play with a 3 piece set up this way. Since you can flip the tip over it only takes rewrapping 3 or 4 guides to try guides on top and on bottm, etc.

I did a similar thing to an all star titanium, but with a "twist" -- put both the spiral guides and conventional on the mid section. That way you can test/demontrate the difference between the two on the same blank by rotating the tip section either up or down.

==dave==

that is clever. Tell me, how do you like it best, spiral or conventional?

I like spiral so much that I have converted all my casting type rods, and I have a lot of them. John Butterfield

Couldn't tell a difference in casting, but the 'torque effect' is eliminated with the spiral wrap -- haven't caught a fish with it yet, but just bending it with the line you can tell it will be more stable guides down.
==dave==

From the land of the totally lost here.

What exactly is a "spiral wrap"? My Kirkman book hasn't arrived yet and when I mention getting a Clemens book my husband just looks at me and says "Christmas is coming" (which, come to think of it, is what he says every time I ask for something after September. Think it's time to start building up my nickel supply again).

In my mind's eye I see a rod with the guides "staggered" around the blank slowly to the point where the tip tip is rotated 180 degrees from the reel, so that the line runs from the reel and is slowly "rolled" from the upper side of the rod (the reel side) to the bottom side of the rod (the tip top side).

Since this image falls under my "what the heck am I thinking? Well maybe" catagory, I had to ask.

Thanks in advance,
Cindy