I posted this as a question on the tag end of a post on spine question but had no response, I thought I would submit the question as a topic of its own. However, my intention is not to once more wade into the troubled waters of "To Spine or Not To Spine" but rather to see if there is an knowledge out there as to any historical reason why spine has come down to use as being so important. Here is my question:


Given that such a big deal has been made of finding the proper spine of a rod for so long in the rod building community, could it be possible that spine on the old bamboos and solid wood fly rods, as examples, was much more pronounced and did in fact, have an actual effect on the rods action; an effect far greater than what we experience with today's modern blanks, thereby causing the old-time rod builders to write in stone about the necessity of the importance of determining spine?


Your comments and any stories from any old-timers would be appreciated and valuable to our understanding a possible historical connection to the tradition of importance of spine.

Nearly any shaft will exhibit what we call the spine effect. But it's no greater on average on older rods of other materials than it is on newer rods of graphite. In fact, when wood was the material of choice it was much more common to use the straightest axis to build on rather than the "spine." Many older wooden boat rods, for example, had guides located on both sides of the rod so that you could fish it one way until it began to take a set in that direction, then flip it over and fish it against the set to straighten it back out again. Straightness, rather than spine effect, was the primary concern in those days. (For many, it still is.)

You mention that "... why spine has come down to use as being so important." That's probably because somebody thought it was, wrote about it, and others just starting out took that information as being important. In fact, it hasn't been that many years ago that one publication continually promoted the idea that if you didn't locate the spine in a particular orientation for a particular rod type, the rod would supposedly flip, twist or spin on you. Of course, we know that's not true - spine orientation has almost nothing to do with rod stability (guide position has everything to do with it). This is where most of the confusion comes from.

So is spine at all important? I think it can be depending on what you want to do with a rod. It's certainly an excellent reference point to work around and in that capacity, I think it has its greatest importance. But it's a shame that so many beginning rod builders are misled into believing that if they don't orient the spine in a particular place that their rod is going to explode, fail to cast, twist, spin, flip, vibrate, etc. It won't, and it's a shame that these notions still serve to confuse and worry so many people who would like to get involved in rod building. Bad information has been presented on the spine effect over many years and it continues to confuse and confound builders mainly because people are still writing the same bad information without actually understanding it. They continue basing their statements and writing on information that originated long ago and which was wrong to begin with.


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There is a good deal more known about spine and its effect than one might guess. The graphite golf club shaft manufacturers have done quite a bit of work and experimenting with spine and are, in my judgement, a step ahead of the rod blank manufacturers and are making graphite golf club shafts that have virtually no detectable spine. The spine in a blank is after all a manufacturing anomoly, you might even use the words manufacturing defect.
If you are interested, here is a web site that may give you a different perspective. [csfa.com] Go to the web site and then look at the Tech Notes, then look at The Final Word on Spine. These technical notes have been written by a man named Joh Kaufman who is a very sharp mechanical engineer and has done a good deal of experimenting with golf club shafts. He designed and manufacturers a device designed for measuring the resonant frequency and torque of a golf club shaft but can also be used on rod blanks because of their simularity to golf club shafts. Just recently he has also done some looking at several graphite rod blanks that I sent him. He said that they reacted just like many golf club shafts, particularly the earlier ones.
It is probably only a question of time until some blank manufacturer comes out with blanks that have no detectable spine that we have to deal with. Wouldn't that be nice.

It would be very nice, but I don't think that will happen due to the nature of how rod blanks are made, their length and their diameter. Graphite golf club shafts are somewhat easier to make. One of the manufacturing anomolies that creates and contributes to the spine effect is the straightness of the blank. It's very difficult to make a truly straight rod blank in the type diameters and tapers that we're talking about with the particular manufacturing process in place at the moment. This is why people like Nicholas Whipp said to heck with it and just designed a process and structure that actually creates a very strong spine effect, yet one that falls in the exact same place every time.

But the spine effect still has very little to do with rod stability or casting accuracy.


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Add me to the list of people who think spine is highly overrated. But I do think that in order to have your rods look and feel consistently alike you need to locate the spine in the same place every time. Just for consistency. Same thing if you prefer to use the straightest axis to build on. Where ever you put it, put it there on every rod every time. It just makes your rods more consistent.

Yes I have also heard about all the horrible things that will happen if you don't put the spine in one place on a casting rod and another on a spinning or fly rod. You can trace most all of this stuff back to the original Clemens books. I LIKE those books but I think Mr. Clemens was way off on his assessment of rod spine and what it actually does or can do for you. Do you think he got his info from someone else who really didn't understand it either??

It actually goes back farther than that. I'd like to try and find the article that was published in BASSMaster Magazine in the early 1970's. It really kicked off what we think of as the modern rod building craze (if you can call it a craze). I just can't remember if they mentioned anything about rod spine, but I think they did.

In the 1974 book, TackleCraft by C. Boyd Pheiffer, Boyd is emphatic in saying that you must find the spine and if you do not align the guides either on it or opposite it, the rod will "cast off to one side." He also said the spine was the blank's stiffest axis (usually the straightest) so in that context, he was correct - if you build off of the straightest axis and there is enough warp or curve to the blank, it will indeed cast a bit off to one side.

In another 1974 book, Fiberglass Rod Making by Dale Clemens, Dale says you need to find the "spline" of the blank and then he goes on to call this the "high side." He says to locate the place where the blank "jumps under your fingers" and mark the opposite side for reference. He did somewhat of an about-face in his next book, Advanced Custom Rod Building and changed the term and the location.

It's no wonder why so much confusion exists.

Having said all this, I should also add that those two books were responsible for creating thousands and thousands of rod builders. Along with the BASSMaster article, they are as responsible as anything for the state of rod building in the latter part of the 20th century.


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2005 11:20AM by Tom Kirkman.

Tom,
I think that you are right about golf club shafts being easier to build. They do not have quite the level of concern about modulus and weight because they hang a big weight, the head, on the end of the shaft. Plus they are much more concerned about torque than we are because of the heavy and off center weight at the end of the shaft so the lower end of the shaft is much thicker.
But that site has a much better write up on spine than I have seen written about rod blanks and it applys directly to rod blanks for anyone who is interested.

OK, so you can spell anomolies better than I can. Someone once told me that anyone who cn only spell a word one way has no imagination.

In that case, Bob Balcombe is the most imaginative person I've run across. Kidding aside, Bob is also one of the nicest and most helpful people in all of rod building.

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Rich Forhan did not touch on the issue of rod spine in his Powerhand Baitcasting book, but the write up he did in a later RodMaker article is one of the most sensible articles I've ever read with regard to the subject in a practical sense.

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Tom,
That is funny that you say that about Bob because I sent him an e-mail saying the same thing. I think that you are right on both counts the spelling and being a super nice guy.

Back to the original topic... 8^)

When I worked briefly at the Orvis factory in Manchester VT in the 60's, it was still the era of bamboo. (I was one of the first to try their first fiberglas rod -- it was awful!) The culms (ridges) were ground off the bamboo to make the section smooth for milling. Great care was then taken to offset the culms of one milled section so that they fell halfway between the adjacent section's culms. The sections were carefully matched for stiffness (to avoid a spine). Once the blank was completed, each section was heated over an alcohol lamp and straightened by hand. As far as I can remember, I never heard of spine in an Orvis bamboo rod -- every effort was made to eliminate it. Because "graphite" is wrapped around a tapered mandrel, as opposed to gluing six bamboo sections, there must be a starting and ending point of the cloth wrap, so a spine is unavoidable until somebody comes up with an alternative (expensive) method to eliminate it.

When I check for a blank spine, the section really jumps in my hand, and I'm bending it a lot less than the rainbows around here bend it. The section wants to bend in a certain direction, so why not work with it? It takes only a few seconds. I think that spine makes a significant difference, otherwise the section will tend to torque under load, putting unnecessary strain on the rod.

My $0.02!

So what I seem to be hearing is that there does not seem to be any "historical" reason to worry about spine. That the rods of old really were not any better or worse with regards to spine than we have now although due to materials used, they were apt to take a set.

If this is true, then what we have coming down to us in all of the warnings and cautions about spine is basically an old wives tale, a figment of someones imagination just like the 35 inch brown that lives in the deep hole in my favorite river. And if it is true and the proposition that spine does make one iota of difference in the function or performance of a rod is valid, then it is up to those who carry on the tradition of the "Myth of the rod spine" to back up their claims with solid data.

(And to teach all newbies that the word is "spine" and not "spline")

Once you load the rod with a line through the guides, it's a different ball game. Bending it by hand is entirely different and does not approximate what happens when a fish is on the end of the line. That is the one thing that many of the authors of the various books seem to have missed.

As far as spine being an old wives' tale or figment of someone's imagination, I would say that much of the information about it certainly is. Spine orientation is not going to provide you with a stable rod, a more accurate rod nor much of anything beyond some very subtle performance charateristics or a slightly different feel from one position to another. It does exist, but it does not affect rod performance to the degree that many have said over the years.





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As a very young boy I built my first rod in either 1969 or 1970. It was a spinning rod. Building it I followed directions from an Australian fishing magazine. I learn't about spine and I spined that rod. A different source and different place and time. Spine has been around a while! It has been ingrained in me ever since.


I am pleased to read about the realistic approach to spine (ing) a rod that is now being taken. No point in making things harder than they need to be. Trouble is I think old ideas die hard!

Cheers
John

New Zealand

ICW with the comment about newbies and spline/spine. You can find it referred to as spline in books, so is not a newbie dumb word. Probably part of all the mystery. I wanted to know about the spine, and thanks to this board....now I know. Now that I know, I find I don't care! Thanks to Tom and others I understand the elusive spine. Now I don't even want to know about it. I just want to find the natural characteristics of my rod blank so I can build the rod properly. But, it is a shear joy to read these posts. What a bunch of great people with wonderful information.

Jim Williams
".....no bad days"

Tom, Do you regret the section in your book on spine? I stumbled over this quite a bit between your book and Garcia's. I finally said to @#$%& with it and placed the giudes on the inside of where the rod wanted to rest. It just seemed the natural thing to do. Now I think it's time you write a that new book that you think about on the basics of rod building. The books available now are a little out dated. You could call it the rod builders bible. Just a thought. By the way, your book is the best. Tom

Not at all - in fact mine may be the only book that doesn't say, "put your guides here" or "you must locate the spine in this position." Instead, I explained what caused the spine effect, what it does and doesn't do and listed the most popular placements. I also finished up by saying that builders should try various positions for themselves and decide which one they liked best. I never liked the idea that other authors pushed that the builder must locate the spine in a particular place or something bad was going to happen. There is no correct nor incorrect way to orient the spine.

But since you brought it up, I certainly would like to rewrite sections of it. You only see flaws or things you could have explained better after something is published and you begin to see how people are interpreting certain things you said. Hindsight. Nobody will ever write the perfect treatise on rod spine. But we hope to try in an upcoming issue of RodMaker.

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As long as we're killing sacred cows here...in addition to the spine I think there is way too much "witchcraft" concerning guide placement out there. Rich Forhan also wrote a very sensible article about this in RM, and it should be read right after the one TK cited above.
==dave==

"Not at all - in fact mine may be the only book that doesn't say, "put your guides here" or "you must locate the spine in this position."

and that fact drove me CRAZY!!!!!! ;-)

eric
forced to think for himself once again in fresno, ca.

Sorry about that. I wanted the book I did to be a bit different than the other ones already on the market. There were plenty of paint by the numbers books that told you what to do, but few if any told you why you were doing it. When I was discussing the project with Amato I told them I wanted the book to be aimed at beginners but to not only show them how to build a rod, but why we do things certain ways and what options were available in some areas.

The "paint by the numbers" approach certainly has merit for many, but others want a little more. Since those type books were already out there, I decided to pattern Amato's along a different approach. Instead of "Just do this" but rather, "Here's what we need to accomplish and here are the various ways we can do it."

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