Hello everybody,

I am new to this forum and I have to say; if anyone wants to know something about rodbuilding, look no further, this is the place to be!


I found this forum looking for info on building a rod for myself and I want to use the knew guide concept. The explanations in the library are very clear but there is a little thing that bothers me: you line up the guides so that the outer edge touches the (imaginary) line that is drawn from the reel spindle to the intersect point on the blank. The original explanations from the FUJI-site however, show that the line from the spindle to the intersect point should go through the center of the guides instead of touching the outer edge. Here is my problem: Fuji wants the line through the center and Tom Kirkman wants the line to touch the outer edge.

The difference is very small (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 inch) but it is a difference.

I do not think that it will make a huge difference on casting behaviour but I hope someone can answer my question.

Guido

The Netherlands

Funny you ask this question today. I was explaining the New Guide concept to a friend at work today and was wondering the same thing. Actually confused me for a second.

Gravity will pull the line to the bottom of the guide ring. What Fuji proposes is fine, but it wil not happen in actual use.

"My" system will cast a little farther than Fuji's primarily because you'll end up using slightly smaller guides. However, those will be on the lower half of the rod where the incremental weight savings will not have a terribly large effect.

Again, the line will never pass through the center of a guide ring on a spinning rod. Can't happen. Gravity makes sure of that.

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Good to know. Thanks.

Tom, I'm comparatively unsophisticated regarding rod construction, but what you said about gravity makes no sense to me. If you are saying line never touches the top inside edge of a spinning guide ring during a cast because gravity pulls it to the ring surface furthest from the rod, that is certainly not what I recall having seen when watching coils of line funnel through guides on a cast. Since each successive guide toward the tip is closer to the rod (until the last few), there is an upward movement countering gravity, and the coils rub their way around the entire ring as it reduces the diameter of the coils.

If all you meant was that the line acts as I just described and doesn't pass through the center of the guide ring curing flight, that might be true. But that wouldn't explain why one should line up the guides so a straightened line passes elsewhere than through the center.

"But that wouldn't explain why one should line up the guides so a straightened line passes elsewhere than through the center."

Lance

If the line passes through the center of the guide without touching anything, the guide is, in essence, useless. The line must touch something in order for the line to be brought under control. I think what Tom is referring to is the effect of gravity on all objects. As soon as a bullet leaves a rifle, it begins to drop at the same speed that the line leaving the reel begins to drop, regardless of direction. If you are to bring the line under control, you might as well use the effects of gravity and have the line set to touch the bottom of the first guide in order to begin to bring it under control because, due to the effects of gravity, it is going to touch it anyway. The faster you get the loops out of a spinning line, the less air resistance there will be on the line and the more efficient the cast. More efficiency in a cast means greater distance, all other things being equal.

Well said. The line coils disappear (or should disappear) once the line passes through the first guide. After that, it should be traveling in a straight line.

And if you see the line coils fully enveloping the butt guide ring, your guide placement is off. Even on the butt guide it would be unusual for the line to travel in a full circle/coil all around the ring surface.

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When in doubt, I check reality. I just put a 2500-size Daiwa ABS reel spooled with 6 lb. test mono on a 7-foot rod with Concept guides, did some casting, and carefully observed the line's behavior through the guides. It was just as I described earlier.

Fellas, we all know that mono line comes off a spinning reel spool like a big, lightweight Slinky (at least until it gets good and wet). It sure as heck doesn't stop being a Slinky between the butt guide and the next one up; indeed, it maintains this character through all the guides and after it leaves the rod tip. Passage through the first guide merely reduces the coil diameter to that of the first guide as it approaches the next, considerably smaller guide. Now, gravity may help the bottom part of the coil ride the bottom of each guide ring, but it doesn't collapse the Slinky so as to prevent the top part of the coil from rubbing the top of the guide ring.

Consider these instructions from Tom's new guide concept guidelines:
" (Generally, lines from 2lb to 8lb will easily pass through a #6 ring. 10lb to 15lb lines may require a #7 or #8 ring size.) ... Ring size (for the butt guide) should generally be at least 1/2 the diameter of the reel spool OD...."

If, as Tom's post of this morning states, the line should be traveling in a straight line after it passes the first guide, we should be using 2 or 3 mm. rings on all guides thereafter, with successively shorter stems. And if it were really unusual for the line to rub the whole ring surface of the butt guide, we should be asking the guide manufacturers for half-round (or maybe horizontal oval) butt guides to avoid having useless weight on the rod side of the guide.

Before suggesting that my rod's guides must have been set up wrong (which I wouldn't contest), string up your best spinning rod, cast it, and watch what the line actually does. (That will be easier if you have a friend cast it so you can watch from the side. ) You will see the line rub the entire surface of each guide. That being the case, it seems to me one would have less total friction if one followed the Fuji recommendation than Tom's up to the choke guide. (Actually, because of the effect of gravity, one might want to place the theoretical path of the line coil's center CLOSER to the rod than Fuji does--the opposite of Tom's approach.)

Again, I have little experience in rodbuilding, and respect that of others here. That's why I'm here. But if I'm off base on how line flight should affect guide placement, I haven't seen why yet.

Oops. In the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph of my preceding post, I should have written, "because of the effects of gravity, one might want to place the theoretical path of the line coil's center FURTHER from the rod than Fuji does, thus moving the guide rings even further from the blank than Fuji recommends and increasing the difference between Tom's recommended positioning and that which is ideal for minimizing line/guide friction."

You don't yet have your guides spaced properly. Keep in mind, that most any spincast reel, such as the venerable Zebco 33, uses an opening about the size of a #10 guide ring less than 1/2 inch in front of the reel spool. They cast very well and the line no longer travels in coils once it leaves that opening.

I suspect you're using a butt guide that is too large - you need to get the line under control and moving as straight as possible without traveling in coils much beyond that first guide. Gravity's effect is without doubt - it's pulling down on the line all along it's path. This is why using a set-up where you plot the line through the center of each ring is just not necessary. The line is going to ride on that outermost edge, coils or not, due to the effect of gravity. Using guides that are larger or higher than necessary will not buy you anything extra and can actually reduce casting distance and overall effciency.

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Lance

I think I understand what you are saying but one thing that you forget is that it is not "less friction" that one is aiming at; it is enough friction as early as possible in order to bring the line under control. The line is going to touch the bottom of the guide regardless of where you have the line centered: bottom, center or upper part of the ring. The object is not to get it through the first guide with the least amount of resistance but to get it under control as soon as possible without inhibiting the forward flow of the line. In the case of what Tom is saying is that traditional wisdom has been to use a very large guide for the butt guide because the line is looping. In his theory, given the slickness of todays guide materials, one can go to a smaller guide and through placement of the line at the bottom of the guide (where is will be regardless of where you have it lined up) get the line under control faster with less loss of momentum in the line. Looping 6 lb test mono has to create a lot of resistance to the air it is trying to pass through. Rather than let the line spend the energy looping through the air as you gradually take it down to a straight line (the optimum line position), you can use up some of that energy early by taking it to the bottom of a small guide and get it under control quicker. If this works as Tom suggests, you will have the line at or near the optimum position for efficient casting earlier with less loss of energy. I have to say that it took me a while to get the hang of what he was saying but after trying it on several rods, I think I see the wisdom in his theory.

It reminds me of a friend of mine who did a lot of design work for Shakespeare in Kalamazoo in the 50's. They built a test casting machine to see what was the best size spool to put on a spinning reel. They did their casting in the Kalamazoo College Field House. Time and time again, the reel setup that gave the greatest distance was not the open faced reel with the line looping off but the closed face reels like the old Zebco's where the line came off of the spool and was necked down within an inch and a half or so before going out of a very small (about a #8 I would think) hole to the butt guide. Same principle applies here. Get the line under control quickly and you will have a more efficient casting system.

"But since the line is going to retain coiliness anyway during its flight (at least until it becomes saturated), it seems to me we will inhibit its forward flow less if we place whatever size guides we are going to use along a line that requires the least gravity-opposed upward redirection of the line's forward momentum. "

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The line actually has two set of coils as you call them: it has the memory coils imprinted in the line itself from being stored on a spool. It also has the natural uncoiling action of the line coming off of a stationary spinning spool. These two combined create the air resistance (and rod/guide slap friction) that tend to slow the line down. We can do little to nothing about the memory coils of a line. They are there regardless of guide placement or guide size. However, we can decrease the natural spinning reel coils by choking them down as soon as possible and eliminate a very significant amount of air and slap resistance, allowing the line to continue to be pulled off of the reel. That is all we are trying to do when we move guides around and try different size guides. We are looking for that optimum configuration that is least inhibiting to the line being pulled off the spool and through the guides and will thus provide for the most efficient and accurate cast.

Granted the line will retain some memory and once allowed to go free, will once more try to return to the coiled nature. The simple truth is as stated above is that in the casting process, we can do little about getting rid of the memory coils. That does not mean that we need to ignore it in the launching phase. In fact, we simply treat all action of the line,other than that which has the line traveling in a direction down the axis of the line as being in need of control. We approach all coiling/slapping/rubbing as one process to be controlled. The ultimate opposite of this controlling action would be to have no guides to bother the naturally occurring coils of the line. The fact is, such hand lines do cast long distances but they hardly have any practical use other than putting a weighted line to a point to sit on the bottom. Since we not only want to cast the line to a certain spot, retrieve it, cast it again to another spot and do this all with an amazing degree of accuracy, we use rods. These rods also give us the ability to use lighter lines and lures than just plain hand lines. In addition, we can subdue large fish using limited materials. In using rods, we have to control the line in order to make the cast as near as possible to the exact position we want. So if we are controlling the line, the object is to control it in the most efficient way, regardless of the reason for the line being somewhere else or doing something we do not want it to do i.e. coil/slap/rub. The most efficient way appears, from long experience, to get the line under control as early as possible regardless of the reason for the line being out of control be in memory, spinning action or whatever.

I'm not sure I've explained my thoughts on this but it is something that I do not think can be proven on the written page. You just have to try different setups and see what works for you. Find what makes you happy with the performance of a rod. Nobody's setup is either "right" or "wrong". It is just how the individual rod builder approaches and solves the problem of line control in a way that suits his needs.

"one would have to place it so far ahead of the reel that there would be three harms to efficient line control:"

One brief comment and then I have to get back to writing reports:

A smaller guide will intersect the line touching the bottom of the ring in about the same location on the blank as a larger guide that will have the line past through the center of the ring. Ergo, no significant difference in line travel coming off of the reel before encountering the first guide.

However, if it makes you feel better to use large rings, use them by all means. You can even place the guides where you want them. Nothing is written in stone. Remember that this is not rocket science or brain surgery. The difference in performance that we are speaking about is not great but there is a difference. Much better rod builders than myself have shown this to be true.

Two of Lance's posts were removed due to his not listing an email address, but I did catch one of his questions that I would like to answer.

Guide height is generallly more important that ring diameter. Fishing line is quite fine in diameter and doesn't use more than a MM or two in any guide ring. If I could get more height, yes I would probably use #12 rings for most spinning rod butt guides, if not smaller. Because we can't get that kind of height, we move to a larger overall guide which by default holds a larger ring.

Richard's comment above on ring size is very well written.


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Sorry about skipping the e-mail address. Tom, thanks for answering that question.

I copied and saved one of the posts that was later deleted. For those who might someday run across this thread on a search, here it is (originally posted on April 10 before Richard's April 10 post):

Guido, you started this thread by asking why Tom K. recommends choosing guides so that the imaginary line from the spool spindle to the intersect point touches the guides' outside edge, instead of passing through their centers as Fuji recommends. After reading and rereading everything in this thread carefully, I'm going to try to answer that in a way that I think Tom and Richard would agree on (hoping for their clarification of any points of disagreement).

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The only guides currently available that place the center of the guide rings far enough from the blank for the imaginary intersect line to pass through those centers have ring sizes that are too big to accomplish the desirable goal of bringing the line under control as soon as possible.

If one tried to use a currently available guide with a smaller, more desirable ring size as the butt guide and still had the intersect line run through the ring's center as Fuji recommends, one would have to place it so far ahead of the reel that there would be three harms to efficient line control: (1) An increase in the length of air space through which the wide looping movements of the line leaving the spinning reel would occur; (2) a probable corresponding increase in the diameter of those looping movements; and (3) greater gravity-induced sag in the line before it reaches the first guide, resulting in both a loss of forward momentum as the line is forced to move sharply upward from its sagged flight path to reach the butt guide and extra friction as it has to be pulled through the butt guide at an angle.

Tom's recommended guide selection and placement shares part of harm #3 described above; the natural path of the lower half of the line coils approaching the butt guide will be further below the guide ring than they would be with the further-projecting butt guide in the Fuji system, and the diversion of those coils upward to pass through the ring decreases momentum and increases friction more than in the Fuji system. But trial and error has led Tom, Richard, and others to conclude that this harm is offset by bringing the line under control sooner.

Is that accurate, Tom and Richard? I take it that you would both like guide manufacturers to give us longer guide stems than are currently available, so that harm #3 could be reduced while achieving the objective of bringing line under control sooner.

Because small-spool UL reels' spindles are closer to the rod than are those of medium-to-heavy-duty reels, I suspect that Fuji's center-of-the-guides recommendation could be implemented for them with high-frame, small-ring match guides without having to place them too far forward.

Yes, in order to set up the rod as Fuji recommends, the butt guide would likely end up much too far ahead of the reel in many instances. But even in those cases where you wouldn't have to move them very far forward, such as with smaller reels, you will no advantage to routing your line path through the center of the guide and in fact will lose a little bit of casting performance doing it that way.

Even if you used a guide that was high enough to put the ring directly in front of the reel, as soon as the line leaves the spool it begins to fall downward. If you try both set-ups, you'll find that mine will outcast the Fuji version by a bit. It also allows you to use smaller guides at the outset, which is better in terms of rod efficiency (more of the imparted energy goes into casting the lure instead of stopping and starting extra weight).


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