Not asking the fastest action necessarily, but who makes the most crisp and quickly dampening blank? Assume it is built well with short wraps, light finish and good components.

That's going to be hard to determine because somebody would have to have had taken some timed tests or done resonant frequency readings (or CCF readings) on a wide varity of blanks.

Generally the higher modulus blanks will damp more quickly than blanks made from lower modulus fibers, but even that is not guaranteed as the action of the blank does figure heavily in how quickly any rod will damp. In other words, a medium action blank made from the highest modulus fiber may not damp as quickly as a very fast action blank made from a lower modulus material. Where the material in the blank is located and what mass is set in motion will play a role in damping time.

I can only say this - the less expensive blanks, which are quite good these days, generally do not damp as quickly as the more expensive, higher modulus blanks, This really becomes apparent when you begin to move into the longer and higher line weight models.

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Marty--ditto on Tom's assessment that that's a tough one to answer. I can say the Dan Craft Signature V series has to be a strong contender, though. Those suckers are almost frightening in their recovery speed--much "crisper" than the FT's, IMO. The new Rainshadow RX8+ blanks are extremely fast as well, though not the same "crispness" as the Sig V's--they are much fuller in feel, however.

I have been doing RF testing on blanks for almost 2 years and the fastest responding fly blanks I have tested are the Gatti FRHP.
Not surprisingly they are also the lightest.

Christian

Marty,
Normally crispness and damping are considered two different characteristics of a rod but they are very closely related and are both determined by the same properties of the rod.
A shorter rod will feel crisper and dampen more quickly than a longer rod.
A faster action rod will feel crisper and dampen more quickly than a slower action rod.
A lighter rod will feel crisper and dampen more quickly than a heavier rod.
A more powerful rod will feel crisper and dampen more quickly than a less powerful rod.
A rod constructed from higher modulus material will feel crisper and dampen more quickly than a rod constructed of lower modulus material.
These are all the same variables that determine the rods resonant frequency. The higher the resonant frequency the crisper it will feel and the faster it will dampen. The most dominant of the variables is the length and a couple of the variables are somewhat mutually exclusive, lighter and more powerful.
Most people are not interested in the math behind this but if you are interested send me an e-mail and I will give you the formula for resonant frequency and damping.

Out of everything I've cast(Sage XP,Loomis GLX,etc),the SIG V would have to be the fastest recovering of the bunch,or at least top 2 that's for sure.

I haven't tried one yet,but I hear the LOOP Grey Line rods have some seriously fast recovery.

One way to answer this question is to look at the physics involved. What you need to damp is the oscillation in the tip that happens after the rod is stopped on the forward stroke and the rod springs straight. At this point the loop forms and the line uncouples from the rod and goes sailing off as the cast. Unfortunately at this point the rod tip is moving at the same speed as the line and therefore has kinetic energy. This energy is proportional to the effective weight of the rod, and it provides the energy for the oscillation. So the lighter the effective weight of the rod relative to the weight of the line or lure the less of a problem this is. What actually does the damping? It's a combination of air resistance working on the rod plus the work of jogging the line up and down as it runs out. Thus the damping is not really a property of the material of the rod itself except insofar as it contributes to the effective weight. On the whole faster rods will have less of a problem than slower rods of the same material. This is because they will be thinner out near the tip so that they flex more there. Being thinner they have less weight out there to carry energy to feed the oscillation.

However there is a way damping depends critically on the material of the rod. In principle, one could take a modern fast graphite rod and measure its flex inch by inch along it, and duplicate the flex in steel using standard engineering formulas. A common cents measurement would give the same ERN and action angle for the rods, but the steel rod would cast like a klunk and and oscillate like crazy because it would be so much heavier.

I have been working on a way to measure the effective weight of a rod. It's not the weight you get by simply putting the rod on a scale. It's the live weight that is acting in the oscillation of the rod. It includes the effects of the distribution of weight in the blank itself, and the fittings attached to it. It involves measuring the oscillation frequency with several diffent weights attached to the tip. It's work in progress and I'll say more about it when it's ready.

Finally a note on terminology. Dampening is to make something moist or wet. Damping is to dissipate energy.

Mike

I wondered why Tom changed the spelling in the subject line of his post.

Hi Shawn--dampENing is (as many builders put it) what happens when your rod gets wet. ;) DampING is the term used to describe how quickly a blank/rod returns to straight upon unloading or its speed of recovery. Give Tom a few hours and I'm sure he'll respond with a much better explanation, but that's the gist of it! :)

Mike,
I am not so sure that I agree about the material not having an effect on damping. The material effects resonant frequency therefore the tip velocity and therefore the amount of kinetic energy and different materials have different Q. Even in a vacuum and without the effects of gravity, mass of the blank, the oscillations would damp out in time.

I have been corrected a couple of times about the difference between damping and dampening, in fact Mr. Kirkman has taken me to task about this a couple of times.. I do not know why I keep using the word dampening to describe damping.

Emory

What I was really getting at there was that I think that the internal damping of the rod itself is not significant. By that I mean friction of fiber against fiber or the effect of compressing or stretching them. Before that comes into play I think the compression of the cork or rubber rod handle in the hand and the compliance of the hand itself would be a larger effect. Larger than that, and likely dominating is air resistance on the rod. If you rigidly clamped a rod with no hand grip and made it oscillate in a vacuum, then the internal damping would be the main effect. The springiness of the rod and the distribution of weight in it do depend on the material of the rod, but mostly as the enabler of the transfer of energy into the oscillation you want to damp.

Mike

Air resistance would be the #1 damping factor on a fishing rod. But even so, the mass we set in motion tends to dictate how long it will take for the rod to completely return to straight.

A larger diameter bamboo or glass rod would be subject to much greater air resistance - but neither will damp faster than a smaller diameter graphite rod. The difference is the amount of mass set in motion to begin with. This is why the material the rod is made from and where that material is distributed does play a large role in how long it takes a rod to stop oscillating.

The natural shape of any fishing rod - slick and round, means that the damping force that does exist in air resistance is slight. Coupled with the small amount of internal material friction the result is only a very small overall damping system. The best way to get a rod to damp faster is to build a lighter rod (or distribute the weight you have more favorably toward the butt - faster action). By setting less mass in motion, the damping system that does exist, small though it may be, will bring the rod back to straight faster that it would with a heavier rod or blank.

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