Fellow builders, As a proponent for wrapping baitcasting rods "Roberts" style, I find that verbally I have a hard time convincing customers of the advantages. The usual skepticism that follows is sometimes hard to overcome. What I am looking for is a physical method of demonstration. Has anyone seen or maybe built a device that would show the torquing effect , or lack of, on the finished rod under load. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated, Rod Engel

Tom K. had a demo rig at Charlotte, worked great, convince anyone, easy to build. Best ask him.

Dave von Doehren
PRRODS......If man built it , man can fix it.and if man built it man can break it !

I just have two Lamiglas bass rods built identically from the same blanks in each configuration. String the rods up to something heavy,or immmobile. Hold each in front of you with the hand on the foregrip palm up and on the rear grip palm down. Flex the rod and release your grip on the rod so it just lays in your palms. The Roberts will stay "reel up" and you can demonstrate by slacking a little, the reel naturally rolling to the side, and will roll right back up with more flex. The other will just spin quickly around to a reel down position when allowed to. The rods are also used for customers to test cast. The longer steelhead rods have so many down facing guides they are really hard to demonstrate with as it takes very little load for them to stabilize.

A future issue of RodMaker will have plans for the rig I had in Charlotte. It's hard for anyone to argue after they've actually spent some time playing with this particular rig. You cannot get a standard guides on top rod to stay on top, nor can you upset a spiral wrapped rod. No gimmicks, no tricks - the rods go where they must and where they attempt to go under actual on the water fishing situations.

In short, you need to have both rods attached to a free spinning system so that when load is applied, the rods can freely move to their desired locations. All rods with guides on top are going to flip upside down - just as they all try to do when in actual use (only by firmly holding them or using a gimbal/nock can you prevent it, and even then, in some cases the upper area of the tip will twist). Spiral wrapped rods will sit upright, becoming even more stable as you apply more and more load to them. You do not have to grasp them firmly nor use a gimbal to get them to remain upright. It's the nature of the beast.


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I never doubted the advantage of a spiral wrapped rod, but I spent a lot of time playing with Tom's device in Charlotte at the rod show. It was really an 'in your face' kind of thing and really showed the differences between the two.

Now if you put the rod with the guides on top perfectly on center, it will remain upright. But it's like walking a tightrope!!! You have to be very careful to set it up there just so so and then if you as much as touch it with a finger, it will SNAP upside down with authority!! To right it takes a lot more effor than you would think and if I'm not mistaken there was less than a pound loading the rod.

On the other side of the coin, you could not make the spiral wrapped rod go upside down. You could try to turn it over by hand but it took a lot of effort to do and once upside down as soon as you let go it would SNAP back upright also with real authority!

You'd have to ask Tom, but I'm pretty sure he also put the spine on top in order to favor the rod with the guides on top, but it still snapped upside down as soon as you loaded it. You don't have to make any arguments with a device like this. You can just let them try it for themselves. They can spout numbers and arguments to you, but it doesn't matter. The proof is right there in action!!!

I'm building one of these units but I'm modifying it a little so that customers can bring their own personal rods in and try them. I want them to see that I'm not running a 'fix' or anything and that their own rods with guides on top are also totally unstable.

Shawn is correct. Because some rod builders still believe that a particular spine position can make a rod stable or somehow stop it from twisting, I oriented the spine on top - the position used by those who believe it will stop the rod from twisting when under load. Of course, it won't.

Yes, if you very carefully set the rod on a perfect 0 degree axis, it would remain upright. But as Shawn stated, only a light touch would upset it immediately and the rod would spin to the bottom in the blink of an eye with a resounding "thunk!" You cannot fish a rod on a perfect 0 degree axis, so the point should be made. In contrast, the spiral rod could be flicked and turned from side to side but it would quickly spin right back upright the instant you let go of it. Forget about trying to get it go upside down. No way.

I did not install reels on the unit the 2 days I had it in Charlotte. When I have done that, the guides-on-top rod will not stay on top even if you put it on the perfect 0 degree axis - the weight of the reel (handle side) will flip it over. I did not want anyone saying it was flipping upside down due to reel weight, so I made special line fasteners that fit into the reel seats and did not put any weight off to either side. (A spiral rod with a reel installed will also initially flip upside down because of the weight of the reel, but as soon as you loaded the rod, the effect is so strong that the rod righted itself, even overcoming the weight of the reel.)

You're obviously sold on the spiral wrap, so we have no need to convince you. But you really should move ahead and build such a device for demo use. It speaks a thousand words without you having to say anything.


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David, Tom, Spencer, Shawn,
I should not do this. I told myself that I was not going to get involved in these discussions about spiral wraps any more.
I am sorry but I do not see how you have proven anything with this demonstration except that there was enough torque on the rod to overcome the friction in the device that you were using to hold the rod. Now the question is how much friction and torque was there? If you used some thing with a bearing so that the friction was very low the torque could also be very, very low. I am sure that it made an impressive demonstration but I do not see that it proved very much. In fact I will bet a nickle that if you used something to hold the rod that had very little friction it would not make much difference where the guides were or even if the rod had any guides on it, any off center weight of the reel would be enough to make the rod rotate.

Certainly, but with the spiral wrapped rod, the rod rights itself and brings the reel back to the top when loaded, even though the weight of the reel is trying to upset it. And this was with only a pound of load. That's how strong the effect is.

In Charlotte, I did not use reels. Again, I did not want anyone claiming that it was the reel that was making the guides-on-top rod flip over (of course, we do use reels when we fish, so that's why I have this set up so I can show it both ways).

The interesting thing is how much force it there with just a pound of weight. Guys who would try to right the conventional rod had to grasp more than just the blank, they had to get a better purchase than the blank afforded or they couldn't spin the rod back upright. Again, this is a pound of load. The effect is many times greater as you move up the scale to serious boat, pier and offshore fishing.

Until you can actually play with such a device, with the two rods side by side and everything else being equal, you simply cannot understand how unstable any rod with the guides located on top really is, and how terribly stable a spiral wrapped rod is.

No one is saying that that a rod with the guides located on top won't work - they've been working for well over 100 years. But they cause you to exert a lot more effort than you might expect, and the greater the load, the more effort that is required to keep them upright. You can theorize and guess and suspect, but having two rods side by side in a device that takes human input out of the equation speaks volumes.

I used very, very smooth turning ball bearings for the supports, by the way. I did not want friction to be an issue and whatever friction was there was roughly the very same for both rods. This is a great device for custom rod builders to demonstrate to their customers. I will have plans and photos in a near future issue.


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2005 10:07PM by Tom Kirkman.

Take a twelve year old boy fishing for snapper and let him try to keep a bottom rod upright while he is cranking at the same time - the rod torque will always beat him up just trying to keep the reel in a position where he can crank. Then, if you think this is just for kids, hand a conventional standup to a big strong guy, not wearing a belt, with a 100 lb yellow fin on the business end and see where the reel ends up when he gets tired. The ball bearing test stand may not prove it to all but the real proof on stability of the two concepts is not hard to demonstrate in the real fishing world.

Gon Fishn

There are a lot of things we do in custom rod building that many don't think amounts to much. So what if you use heavier guides near the tip of a rod? How much difference in performance does it really make?? Well, it makes enough to feel and actually notice in many cases. The same is true with the effort required to hold a conventional rod upright. If that's all you've fished you may not think it's much at all. But when you actually have a chance to compare apples to apples then you see that it takes more effort than you think. You really CAN feel the difference. The best custom rods take advantage of every little performance advantage. Add up enough of these little advantages and by the time you're done you have a superior rod! Take that little extra effort that a fisherman uses to keep a conventional rod upright and give it back to him. At the end of the day he'll notice the difference. And I'm sure this difference is REALLY noticable on heavy saltwater rods!!

Rod - build yourself one of these units and let the rods speak for themselves when your customers ask. A picture is worth a thousand words and this device is worth about two thousand.

I would also like to add that if Rod is building this device to show to saltwater guys, two heavy rods loaded with several pounds of weight would really make a huge statement. Tom's device was pretty strong with just the single pound on each rod. I can only imagine what things would be like with 5 pounds!!! Talk about stunning!

Bill - we were typing at the same time. I hear you. I've been on party boats and seen just what you mention.

If the point is how much force it takes to rotate the rod with a pound of torque then if we are not careful this can be misleading. With a pound of torgue on the rod it will be very easy to rotate the rod or hold it so that it does not rotate if the rod is held at the butt where the diameter is larger. But if we try to rotate the rod or prevent it from rotating at the tip where the diameter is much smaller it can require an order of magnitude or more force to rotate it or hold it from rotating. You can see this same effect when wrapping a rod manually. It is easy to rotate the rod while wrapping when turning the rod at the butt. But when turning the rod by the tip it requires much more force. Now where do we hold the rod when fishing?

William,
I actually agree with most of what you say. For rods that will be used on large fish the torque could be significant, particularly those that require a long time to land as in many off shore fishing applications and it will not take much torque on that type of rod to add up at the end of the day, as you say, and a spiral wrap could make a significant difference. However, I think that in most fishing applications a spiral wrap is a solution for a problem that does not exist because the torque will be very low and is being exaggerated by some of the advocates for spiral wraps.

I posted about a year ago on this topic; I feel it's time to repost it because of all the new persons viewing since that time...

In 1981, I began building rods for this exact reason. A few years before, I had fought and caught a fairly large Northern Pike on a conventional, factory rod about 5 1/2' long. During the fight, I watched the rod tip twisting over 90 degrees many times. I remember cringeing, waiting for the rod to explode in my hands. Now this was a light walleye rod that I'd hooked up on this snot rocket with on a jig. I knew that there just had to be a better way to make these things.

When we finally netted this slough shark, my wrist & forearm were killing me from all of the twisting and, yes, that reel spun a few times during the fight as I let go of the handle during one of his frequent runs.

So, in 1981, I had gathered a bit of info (not nearly enough in hind sight) and set about building my first rod, a spiralled bait caster. I had no info on it, just did it. Every bait caster I've built since was the same as that first one. I sold my first customer on the bumper spiral last week and will build one on that format, changing from my original 0-60-120-180 format that I began with. I remember the wife jokingly telling customers that "He was just drunk when he built that one!"

I am a firm believer in spiral wraps. I still refuse to custom build a rod for a customer in a conventional way and have sent two down the road through the years without a sale because of this. I feel strongly enough about it that I'll do this. And Emory, I'm not exaggerating...

Incidentally, that rod was so hideous that I rejoiced when it broke many years later!! Wished I'd have saved it, though...

Putter
Williston, ND



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2005 11:34PM by Randy Parpart (Putter).

I think William brings up a good point - to overlook the added benefit of a spiral wrap, though it may be slight on lighter freshwater rods, would be along the same lines as to overlook what happens when we add unncessary weight to a rod. Does using larger guides than necessary really undermine rod performance due to extra weight? Does using too many guides, more than we actually need, undermine rod performance due to extra weight? In many cases the difference is slight, but it is there. To do less than we can as custom builders is to overlook those areas where rod performance is really very much under our control.

On many rods, if you hold the butt or reel seat (which you do) and prevent the rod from flipping upside down, the tip will then twist around to some degree. This has been documented under actual fishing situations in varioius photographs and Sunday morning ESPN fishing shows than you can shake a stick (rod?) at. Putter's experience is quite common.

But Rod's original question wasn't about whether or not the spiral wrap was worth a hoot - he's already sold. He just wants some sort of device to use as a demo unit to better explain the system to his customers. If I can get some photos up on the photo page later this coming week I certainly will.

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Gentleman, Thank you all for the response. I have to make a presentation to a Muskie Inc. chapter meeting in 2 weeks. Pics would be of great value towards making something up prior to the meeting. Thaanks again to all, Rod Engel

I attended a winter seminar where Capt. Neil Falkner had built a demo rod for the exact purposes of demonstrated the tourquing differences between conventional and spiral wraps. The one rod was wrapped with a set of each guide configuration and all one had to do was tug on the separate line threaded though each guide set up to see the dramatic difference. And you don't need a ten pound fish to tell the difference, even a two pounder on a light rig will be easier to manged than with a conventional set up.

Rod
Just build two rods. Take some say roller skate wheels and put them -two under the foregrip and two over the butt grip. Set them at an angle in some sort of holder. Run a line though them to some thing heavy Heck you don't even need the rollers. Just have people grab them and put tension on them. They will see the difference.

Capt Neil Faulkner demonstrated how bad a top mounted roller guides can twist a rod. Click on the following link to see that the rod twist even caused the line to come out of the roller Vee's and hit the side of the guides., plus the rod tip was almost an a 90 degree angle. Capt. Neil was pulling on the line sideways to simulate the way a big fish can pull. Just imagine how many BIG fish have been lost due to the line breaking due to the rubbing on the side of the guide frames.

Click on this link: [members.cox.net]


John Mantele (aka: @#$%&)


Photo courtesy of Capt. Neil Faulkner