Hello,
I am currently in the process of figuring out the guide placement on a short 3wt flyrod. I just finished reading the FAQ "5. Where should I locate the spine on my rod blank in relation to the guides? " I was a little confused by the "spine on top" vs "spine on bottom" thing. What I really couldn't figure out is whether spine on top means that the guides are on the same side as the spine OR that they are on the opposite side from the spine. Can someone please take a moment to clarify this for me?
Thanks,
Joe

Normally you would want the guides on the side that the rod wants to flex to. This would be for fly rods and spinning rods, you would want the guides on the opposite side with casting rods. You see the rational here, you don't want your rod twisting your guides into the wrong direction when it is under a load, such as, god forbid, a fish !

Any questions email me.

Tight lines,
Art
mrparramoure@yahoo.com

Spine on top means the spine would located on top of the rod - facing up, regardless of what type rod you're building.

Art is a little off here, (sorry Art) as spine has nothing to do with rod twist. No fly rod is going to twist under load. Can't happen as the guides are on the bottom of the rod. Guide position determines rod stability, not spine orientation.

You rod cannot "twist your guides into the wrong direction." If the guides are on the bottom of the rod, the loaded line will hold the rod in that position. If the guides are on the top of the rod, any load will attempt to twist the rod around (the guides will attempt to move to the bottom of the rod - the direction the load is coming from) . This holds true regardless of whether you put the spine on top, bottom of off to the side somewhere.


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2005 02:35PM by Tom Kirkman.

This is very true. No matter where you position the spine you will never see a fly or spin rod loaded and the blank twist the guides over onto the top of the rod. The guides will aways hold the rod stable and the guides will stay on the bottom of the rod. I follow Don Phillips advice and put the spine on the side or 90 degrees. This makes the rod feel less torquey on both the forward and back casts. None of my fly rods have ever twisted and I've taken saltwater fish to nearly 160 pounds.

so if you locate the spine just anywhere on a fly rod it won't matter not even when you back cast the fly rod and those guides are now located on top while the rod is still under a load,that wont twist in your hand while you are doing that...so from what i remember,there is a active spine and a working spine. is the active spine the place on the rod where it is stiffest while you are spine testing it? and the working spine the place where it locks in kind of in between the two stiffest parts when you are spine testing it? i am wondering only because i have been using the locked in place to locate my guides on all my rods i have built.either casting on the outside of the bend where it locks in and fly or spinning on the inside of the bend where it locks in.???

Active and working spine? Not to my knowledge unless someone has concocted some new terms there. The spine is worth knowing about and useful as a reference, but it is highly overated in terms of what it actually influences under practical fishing conditions.

The rod will always want to twist so that the guides are located towards the direction of load. On a fly rod, this means that on the backcast you could tend to have some attempt to twist. However, snake guides and low frame ringed guides have short moment arms (snake guides have none, really) and with what amounts to a fairly light load, rod twist would not be a problem. And, if it did twist, it's not likely to detrimentally affect anything anyway due to any rotation being around the central axis and on a light load.

Under heavy load from a fish - the kind of load that really puts a rod under stress, having the guides on the bottom of the rod means that no twist will be experienced there regardless of where the spine is oriented.

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I am curious too, what are the terms "Active Spine" and, "Working Spine" supposed to mean???

One of the worst things ever perpetrated on the hobby of rod building has to be all the nonsense about the spine. Yes you can bend a rod by hand and find a spot where it has the least resistance and will roll to. But that goes out the window once you put guides on the rod and string a line through it. The line will always pull the guides around to where the direction of pull is coming from and will not stop this from happening no matter where you put the spine.

Now all we need is more confusion and nonsense on rod spine. It has very little to do with what actually happens to a rod out on the water and now we'll have thousands more new rod builders confused by something that amounts to about a hill of beans.

If you want a superior performing fly rod, just sight down the blank and find the natural bend. Position the blank so that the tip is high and wrap the guides on the bottom. This puts you on the straightest axis and you will not experience any rod twist while fighting a fish. You will even be hard pressed to find any sort of twist on the backcast.

Far too much is made of rod spine. It's time to move past it and understand that if it was such a big deal then those of us who don't bother with it would be having all sorts of problems with our rods, which we aren't.

I have to admit that I was blind following the blind for many years. Somebody wrote about rod spine and how if you didn\'t put it in a certain place your rod would twist! Scary thought! So then the authors of all the rod building books picked up on it and just kept saying the same thing. Then one day I guess somebody actually tried it and found that it was all mostly hooey. LOL!

Tom\'s book was the first to explain rod spine in practical terms and put it where it belongs........... in the \"nice to know but not terribly important\" catagory. It made me think for myself and try a few things. What I found was that if you rig up a rod with guides in your spine finder and instead of loading it by pressing down on it with your hand, you pull on the line and you find that the rod will always spin upside down until the guides are on the bottom. And yea this is true no matter where you put the darn spine! LOL again!

I\'ve started just building on the straightest axis and have to say that the rods are every bit as good or better as when I was married to the idea that on fly and spin the guides went opposite the spine and casting guides went on the spine. I think I might have been wasting my time.............. and losing hair over nothing. LOL!!!

PS If I was going to worry over anything it would be on learning good guide placement and sizing and building for less weight. Those things make a difference you can actually FEEL!

Like so many things in rod building, you have all you need in your own hands right now. Tape up a set of guides on the spine, opposite the spine, and on the straightest axis and go out and spend some time test casting each set-up. You'll soon know which you prefer (although you may find that you can't really tell much difference on many blanks). The key is not to get caught up in the idea that if you don't put the spine in a particular place that something terrible will happen to you or your rod - it won't.

If I was going to devote a great deal of time to anything along these lines, it would be in learning how to space, size and affix guides in such a way that rod efficiency was kept high and weight distribution was optimized. These are areas that good custom rod builders can work within to make a noticeable difference in bettering rod performance. Jonathan's PS is certainly right on the money there.


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Mike,
I completely agree with you on most but not all blanks. On heavy boat rods where the spine can be very pronounced it should be dealt with. In my judgement spine is the result of a number of manufacturing irregularities and a perfect blank would have no spine. But what is this about "Active Spine" and "Working Spine".

Kenny,
If you are concerned about how the blank will react to the spine while casting you can find the spine dynamically rather than statically, or where the spine is when the rod is in use, or when casting, by mounting the butt of the blank on something solid, like your work bench, and deflecting the tip and releasing it. The blank will oscillate straight up and down if it is oscillating on the plane of the spine. If it does not oscillate straight up and down but the tip starts to move in an ellipse or oval then it is oscillating off of the spine in which case you need to rotate it a little and repeat this until it does oscillate straight up and down. When you find the spot that the blank does oscillate straight up and down when deflected and then released you will have found the dynamic spine.
Now if you repeat this process after you have mounted the guides on the blank you will find that the rod will only oscillate straight up and down when it is oscillating on the plane that you have mounted the guides on. In fact, it will only oscillate straight up and down on the plane that the guides are mounted on regardless of whether you mounted the guides on or off of the spine. If you mount the guides off of the spine you will see after many oscillations a little movement toward an ellipse. Just tape the guides on and try it. I think that you will see why many people are not very concerned about the effect of the spine.

For many years I built my spinning rods with the guides located roughly opposite the spine. This was, of course, opposite the conventional wisdom of the day which dictated that you must put the spine on top of the rod in order to prevent rod twist.

One notable builder even suggested that when I had a good fish on one of my spinning rods, my incorrect spine position would result in the rod spinning and the guides then pointing straight up. Imagine that. After 25 years of use, I'm still waiting for one of those spinning rods to spin and send the guides to the top.


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see thats why i was asking. evereybody has a different thought of spining a rod.i have only been building for a short time and i want know all the facts to build better. when i spine a rod i lay the butt on a flat surface and hold the end and press down in the middle.then it rolls to the place where it wants to go.then i feel the rod while rolling it both directions it kind of sticks in there/ locks in to that spot while loaded up.i then mark it center where it locks in.if i am tying a spinning rod i use that inside curve mark or if its a casting i use the outside curve which is oposite of that mark.i have tested the casting with guides in many different locations regarding the spine.i get less twist in that location when the rod is loaded,like when i would be fighting a fish.i have even turned and rolled the rod like a fish would when it decides to go a different direction..it kind of wants to stay there in that position it twists a little but not as much as it does if the guides are in different locations regarding the spine.for a casting rod.when you realy feel it want to kick your wrist out .does this make sence?

Kenny,
If I understand what you are saying then no it does not make sense. When you have a load on the rod the rod will want to twist in the direction of the load. It is the torque on the rod causing it. The torque is the result of what is called the moment arm times the force. The moment arm is the distance that the line through the guides is off of the center axis of the rod. The rod will try to twist so that the line through the guides is on the same plane as the load. When you try to twist the rod in one direction or the other relative to the direction of the load you are creating torque that is trying to pull it back. That does not have a damn thing to do with spine.

Kenny,
Please do not get the idea that we are jumping on you personally. We are not. There has been a lot of smoke in the air about spine and its effects for a lot of years and it sometimes gets a little frustrating to many rod builders that some of the myths about the spine are still being perpetuated. Take Tom's, Jonathan's and Mike's advice and don't worry about spine. If you are still troubled about it send me an e-mail and maybe we can work our way through to a point where you are more comfortable with it.

ok im geting it.while testing it. so its not realy relevent to where you put the spine on a casting rod cause it always going to want to flip over.unless its a spiral wraped rod then it stays put.

lol.. i just read your second post. i am a newbe just trying to learn the facts, and taking some smoke blown my way may help.because some times you read things and read them again many, many times and they don't always make sence.then you see it done and its like a light bulb.. i got the last post about the moment arm force then tried it out on a couple casting rods that i spined and one that i know is off and it didn't matter under that situation of line pulling down.

If you think you located the spine in the right place, finish your rod and go out on the lawn and cast it. At this point it dos'nt matter where that spine was cus this is the best darn castin rod anyone could own.

Keep in mind that when you flex the rod by hand that is a totally different thing than when a fish loads the blank by pulling on a line that is strung through the guides. I think this is what confuses people. In actual fishing situations, you do not flex the blank by hand. The rod is loaded by means of the line running through guides.

Smoke is exactly what most people's opinion of the spine is. I think most of them got their information from book authors who also didn't know squat about it. It's one of those mis information things that after it gets repeated enough it tends to 'become' the truth!

I'm equally guilty and went by something I had read many years ago. When this board came up and I read the spine info in the faqs section I took some time and finally did some testing on my own and guess what? The info in the faqs section here is dead on the money. Spine is there but it's not the overriding factor that some want to make it.

Kenny and Joe you may want to consider how you cast when placing the spine. Most people do not cast perfectly overhand and with the reel on top. Most all baitcasting fishermen turn their wrists so that the reel handle is pointing up when casting. That's a matter of human ergonomics and it's due to the way the human wrist works.

I have always placed my rod spine to the side on casting rods to put it in the casting plane. Think of the back of the rod's butt cap as a clock face when you have the casting reel on top. For right handers this means to position it a9 o'clock and for left handers at 3 o'clock. The guides would be at 12 o'clock unless you're spiral wrapped and then only the first one at 12 and the rest at 6. When the fisherman casts he's going to turn his wrist so that the reel is on its side and now the spine will be in he casting plane.

I don't think the spine has terrible importance but I do put it in the same place every time just for consistency.