OK, you buggers all piled on me so I have spent the last couple of hours doing some testing.

First. I built up a 8' 6" steelhead blank with taped on guides, spiral wrapped, using a #6 bumper guide and casted it numerous times. I also built up an identical blank conventionally and cast it numerous times replicating the casts as near as possible . Frankly, I have to admit that I was surprised at how well the spiral wrapped rod cast. It did not cast quite as well as the conventionally wrapped rod but the difference was not large, particularly with light line,10lb. The difference started to get larger with heavier line, 25lb.

Second, I taped spinning guides on the same blank using a #25 as the first guide and then dropping to a #6 for the rest of the guides. The casting characteristics on this configuration were in a word lousey even with light line. It did not cast nearly as well as the same blank with normally sized spinning guides.
But then I taped on a set of spinning guides starting with a #25, then a #18, then a #14 and so on down to a #6, but I restricted the size of the hole in all of the guides from the second guide on down to the tip to the hole size of a #6.
What this accomplished was to essentially restrict the size of the guide to a #6 from the second guide to the tip but with all of the holes lined up properly. Again I was surprised at how well this configuration cast. It did not cast as well as it did with the larger guides but again the difference was not large with light line. And again the difference became larger with heavier line.

The conclusions that I came to as a result of a couple of hours of screwing around with these admittedly primitive experiments are:
The small bumper guide and simple spiral wrap will have some effect on the casting characteristics but not a large effect. The small bumper guide will have little effect on the casting characteristics of the rod with light line but a larger effect with heavier line.
The allignment of the guides seems to be more important than the size, particularly on a spinning rod.

Because I was stupid, I didn't get this magazine issue yet, so I'm seriously behind the power curve. I've always used the 60/120 setup. From what I've read so far, I think I get the gist of it. Doesn't entirely make sense to me, to a point, but I generally overthink things. What did strike home though was Tom's Zebco 33 reference.

The kid rods I do with micro 11's cast further than any spinning setup I use. (thinking about making myself a kid rod.. hahah). But as others have said, it begs further questions. Keep in mind that I haven't read the article yet, but while I accept the findings of guys who have built these, I'm standing next to Emory scratching my head... large guide to small guide, to larger guide, back to small guides. Why not use # 6 guides from the bumper on out?

As usual, when Tom and Emory get to swapping punches, as much as i enjoy it, I'm the one who winds up with a headache. Now I'm gonna have to spend the weekend taping guides and seeing what happens.

This is what it's all about! LOL

Mick,
I guess that I did not make it clear enough. My point in an earlier post was exactly the same as yours. Once you go to a smaller guide I do not see any point in going back to a larger one.
If you do conduct some of your own experiments I would recommend that you vary the line as well as the guide sizes. I think that when you go to the smaller guides the stiffness of the line will then have more effect than anything else. The limited and primitive tests that I ran today strongly suggest to me that the smaller guides do not create a big problem with lighter line but start to become an increasingly bigger problem as the line gets heavier.

Emory,

That's pretty much, if not exactly, what various articles in RodMaker have been saying about guide sizing and spacing for several years now. Your experiments went about as I would have expected.

......

Mick,

You could possibly use #6's from the bumper on out. There is one caveat, however, or at least there may be on some rods, particularly those of larger diameter. If the first underside guide has a very, very small ring, you could introduce some line rub on the blank between the bumper guide and that first 180 degree guide. Now this would be somewhat rare, but could occur in the right situation.

What I would do, is tape up a set and try it various sizes on the underside. The article, as Bill presented it, was largely intended to take a spiral wrap novice and allow him to set up a nice spiral wrap with almost no knowledge of spiral wraps in general - it's a conventional rod with standard guide sizing and spacing turned upside down with one additional guide thrown in. Very easy, and, it works. But I have no doubt whatsoever that any enterprising rod builder who wants to tweak the guide sizes a bit may be able to do even better by this system.

There are some special situations with regard to surf and heavy stand-up and boat type rods that we'll cover in the next issue.


.......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2005 11:14PM by Tom Kirkman.

Tom,
You notice that I did find that there was a difference. It was not large and it was in fact smaller than I expected but I did find a difference. Maybe the next thing that I need to do is to try to quantify the difference except I am not sure how to go about this that does not take a heck of a lot of time and effort.

Emory,

I also think your results were what I would expect. I mentioned this in the last post, but beside line weight, you will also see an effect of the line type as well as the lure weight.

For example, keeping with #10 line, moving from something like a Braid, to Trilene XL and then to a even stiffer line XT or P-Line XX will offer an increasing interaction with the guides. Likewise, throwing lighter and lighter lure weights can show larger differences in some set-ups. Throwing a #5 Shad Rap on certain Fluoropolymer lines can be a good test of a configuration.

mark

As you are probably aware, I have often said there was no "practical" difference. If you had a casting machine and could produce verbatim casts for the different guide set ups, you'd find that we're talking about what amounts to about a 2% to 3% difference at best (it's often even less than that). For nearly all actual on the water fishing situations, that's not a practical difference. A difference yes, but not one that amounts to any actual detrimental effect under practical applications. (And in this very same thread I've already mentioned that with regard to spinning rods, frame height is more important than ring size.)

Everything we do on a fishing rod with regard to guides is a compromise. I know guys who only use 4 guides on their 12 foot surf rods. They feel they get a little more distance than those who use 6 or 7 guides on those same rods. But the rods with 4 guides don't seem to work as well on other counts. You have to decide what you're after and whether what you gain on one end is worth what you give up on the other.

If I put the Bumper Spiral through it's paces and found that it was costing me a couple or three feet on a 100 foot cast over a conventional guides-on-top set-up, I'd stick with it as the couple feet in lost casting distance is more than made up for many times over in the inherent rod stability I gain. And, if you compare the casting distance of the Bumper Spiral with other spiral wraps, you'd probably not find a 1% difference in overall casting distance. I haven't run all the spiral wrap methods through casting tests so I can't emphatically state that 1% would be the correct figure, but I know that the guys we had testing the Bumper System over the past year and the ones who have recently emailed or called to tell me about their experiences with it, have all remarked to the effect that their rods cast just fine. None seem to feel that this method has reduced their ability to hit their targets just as easily as they have with other guide set-ups. In other words, they haven't found any practical difference in casting distance or ease.

And do keep in mind, that nowhere in the article does Bill claim that the Bumper System is the second coming, or that it works or casts better than other set-ups. No such claims are made. The intent of this system is to provide builders with a very easy and simple method for making a spiral wrap that works just as well as anything else out there. If it's easier to explain, set up and use, and yet works just as well as more complicated systems, then I believe it has merit. That's why I agreed to publish Bill's article.

...........



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2005 09:29AM by Tom Kirkman.

Tom,
With the very limited and admittedly crude testing that I did I had no way to accurately quantify the results. I have to admit that the differences were smaller than I expected but the casting differences that I found were certainly more than the 2% or 3% you suggest. I do not think that I would have even been able to detect a difference that small and I did detect a difference. My GUESS is that the differences that I detected were more on the order of 10% with lighter line and increased significantly with heavier line. I have been thinking about this since yesterday and to really nail this down would take a heck of a lot of much better controlled testing and would involve a number of other variables that I did not even address one of which would be, as Mark suggests, the line type.

EMORY - What guides are you using with size 18 & 14 spinning guides?

Obviously, larger, heavier and stiffer line plays a major role in casting distance. Without the current use of a machine capable of making verbatim casts with no human input/error, none of us can say for sure exactly how much distance difference there really is. When I had the use of my casting machine and was trying all the varioius set ups I was aware of at the time, I didn't find more than a 2% to 3% difference between standard set ups and the spiral systems of the day. That was with 8lb, 10lb and 12lb line. The difference might have been greater with heavier line or it may have still reflected the same percentage difference. I can't say as I didn't test these with anything heavier. However, most people who are building casting rods for the purpose of casting, aren't using very heavy lines. At least not in most instances. For surf, sure. And we'll cover that later. For boat and trolling, casting is a not really an issue.

So what we're left with is the human senses of guys who have built and used all these various set ups. Like you, they have cast the rods and nobody really found any practical difference. Certainly not enough that they'd begin to think about abandoning what, for them, is a great system that is easy to set up and works so well.

On the subject of spinning rods and ring sizes, I picked up on some of what the guys at C. Altenkirk (Altenkirch?) were doing many years ago. So I took some frames and extended them height-wise and then soldered small rings on top of these heightened frames. What I found, is that by dropping to significantly smaller rings didn't really affect the casting distance as long as I kept the ring up high and away from the blank. This is one of the reasons that I continue to harp on setting up the New Guilde Concept System with a very straight line path from the butt guide to the intersect guide. Ring size is not that important, but you don't want the line to have to travel a severe roller coaster path.

The only thing I can recommend to those wondering about the Bumper Spiral System, is to try it for yourself. Be careful to set it up exactly as Bill has outlined in the article. Then, put it through its paces on your type of fishing. You'll quickly know if you want to adopt it or continue on with what you're doing now.


...............



...................

... build a two-piece casting rod according to Colby's method with just the butt guide and bumper guide on the butt section. Then you have a perfect one-rod tool to test conventional v. spiral layouts (except for spine effects, though you could put the tip-section spine at 90 degrees, for the purpose of the tests). Then I wish someone would really generate some hard data, not for just distance but for repeatability (precision, spread, skew) and other variables. Yes, a lot of work, but the only way to settle the point, or try to. So far, there's been nothing but anecdotal and, at best, semi-quantitative evidence. (I don't volunteer, I don't use casting gear much, or well.)

Emory, you were very clear. I was agreeing with you. I normally start with a 10, then 8's for my two "transition" guides and my 180, then fly guides out to the tip, sometimes all 6's, sometimes one or two 6's and then 5's for the rest. I'll wait until I can read the full article, but it just seems strange to put a smaller guide in between larger ones, although I think I understand the point.

Tom, I think I see what you mean and I'm going to play around with this idea a bit. It would simplify things, and for the average stuff I do, could be a good thing. With some exceptions, most of what I build is used with 12lb line or less. This is very interesting. Now I have yet another reason to shirk my honey-do's and annoy the wife! hahahah

Thanks guys. This is good stuff.

Actually when I do a quasi-O'Quinn method, I typically put smaller guides in the spiral. One that comes to mind is a 7' Ugly Stick for 15-30# saltwater live bait & casting. My butt guide was a size 20 and first 180 (actually about 170) was a size 16. I had two 'spiral' guides inbetween that were size 10s. They were placed so as not to alter the line path. I used the smaller size so I would reduce the angle that the line was pushed away from the blank. This was my first spiral built using this method and in retrospect I should have used fly guides where those 10s now sit. Instead I used NSGs throughout. I've learned alot since that rod. One thing I can say for sure is that casting distance wasn't affected on this rod vs. the conventional layout it had before I rebuilt it. Not in a practical fishing sence anyway.

Jay

Not that it matters, but I've been goign 20-12 all 10/8's, 16-10-all 8/7/6's, 16-8 all 7/6, 12-8/7 all 6/7's since my second spiral. IT just made more sense to keep the line closer to teh blank as it went from top to bottom, rather than be a monkey and use the same guide sizes everyone else was using -20-16-12(2)-10(3)-8(4) - or whatever non-sensical numbers they used & still use. I still can;t get a better answer then that's who it's always been done. Nothing wrong with that, but geez, you gotta try tinking a little bit on your own and try things yourself & learn things on your own.

Boy!, I stumbled into this thread at an opportune time. I had wrapped a MB963M last year in the spiral fashion and was never happy with the results. I had my first 180 guide out way to far trying to keep a straight line for casting purposes. I spent last night moving guides all over the place with little casting difference with the arrangements. Then I found this thread. I immediately tried it this AM and was very pleased. It is indeed extremely simple. I did have one gripe however. I was using a 2 oz. sinker for my casting tests and felt a significant increase in drag or resistance on the retrieve even with a number 8 single foot. So, I took a nap. And as usual the answer arrived. I cut a 2" section of jig hook and taped it to the side of the blank midway and at 90 degrees to the first and second guides. This resulted in an enormous improvement in both casting ease and retrieval ease. And I achieved the longest cast of the day. My fear of a signifcant amount of uncontrolled line billowing out was not realized. I also found that setting my butt guide at about a 20-30 degree angle improved matters even more.
So now, where can I find a source for small diameter hardened rod to tape on?
Thanks a bunch for this thread!
Bob Leab

"... build a two-piece casting rod according to Colby's method with just the butt guide and bumper guide on the butt section."



If you built a two-piece rod with the butt and bumper guide on just the butt section... well that wouldn't be according to Bill's instructions. Your second guide (first one at 180) would be much too far up the rod. It would almost have to fall on the butt section as well. In almost no case would it be more than 10 or 11 inches past the butt guide.

I think what you'd have to do, is just put each guide on twice, one on the 180 and one on the 0 degree axis. Granted, this would degrade casting performance overall due to the extra weight of a second set of guides, but both configurations would be carrying the same weight so that part would be a wash. Then you could line it up and compare both set ups on the rod. Or, just tape up a set one way and cast and record results, and then do it the other way and record those results. But I can already tell you that any difference will be minimal.

...............



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2005 06:28PM by Tom Kirkman.

Tom K said:

" If you built a two-piece rod with the butt and bumper guide on just the butt section... well that wouldn't be according to Bill's instructions. Your second guide (first one at 180) would be much too far up the rod. "

Actually, I was thinking of a two-piece rod specifically built for the comparison test, if necessary by cutting and splicing back together a one-piecer. The splice would be between the bumper guide and the first 180-degree guide. The rod would be built mainly for testing purposes, but it would fish fine also, and be an ok travel rod. You could also modify a two piece blank by shortening the butt section appropriately before building on it, again, mainly for the purpose of the test, and accepting the resulting change in power and action.

If you are indeed correct that there is little if any difference (I'm not arguing either way), then a rod such as this would make a great "convincer", such as at the casting area of the Charlotte show. You could even modify the bumper guide to have a small gap to engage/release the line, so as to quickly convert back and forth between conventional and Colby layouts. The Colby layout is unique compared to the other spiral methods in allowing for one-rod test such as this.

(Edit: That was poorly worded. Not "splicing back together", but "inserting a ferrule connection.")



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2005 08:36PM by Tom Doyle.

Yes, that would be a good way to do it. Maybe we'll work up something like this for Charlotte next year. Most people who are actually trying the system seem to really like it so I don't know how much demand for a "convincer" there would actually be, but we'll keep our eyes open and see what the demand for something like that might be when the time rolls around. Thanks.

...............