Having gotten a handle on building fly rods with snake and single-foot wire guides, I now want to attempt to build one using single foot ceramics. How does one translate snake guide sizes to single-foot ceramic guide sizes? Also, does one use multiple sizes, or will a single size work up to the stripper guides?

Mark,

The single foot ceramics are sized by the inside diameter of the frame (not the ring, no idea why) in milimeters. Antique wire guides, and reproductions thereof, are sized by some archaic system designed before we could actually accurately measure anything :). (No idea what it's based but since I don't build antique replicas, I don't worry about it.)

On rods up to 6 wt., I find that the #6 single foot ceramics will pass all the connections I need to pass. On really light rods, 2 and 3 wts. the SIC ceramic guides are available in #5 or 5.5s. Pricey, but wonderfully light,slick, and eficient. #7s from 7 wt. up to 9 wt. have worked fine for me. 8s for big game rods. Go directly from your line taming set to the running guides. No need to 'taper' guide sizes. I do use single foots for all the guides, stripper and tamers included.

Good Luck!

Buddy

I don't know enough about the sizing of snakes to make a good comparison. But, I do know about ceramic single-foot guides. On any fly rod up to a 5 or 6 weight, all the running guides would likely be sz. 6 single foot ceramics. (The 6 stands for 6mm ring opening.) The stripper(s) would likely be 10s and 12s. On rods heavier than that, your running guides might be 7s, but this is mostly necessary if you need to pass knots of any size. The stripper(s) would likely be 12s and 16s. Regarding the transition from strippers to running guides, you can use multiple sizes to step down, but it's hardly ever necessary. Usually, you can go from your sz. 10 stripper to a sz. 8, then on to your 6s. You might even be able to be more agressive and go right from 10s to 6s.

Personally, I always try to use the smallest guides I can get away with. For example, on 3 and 4 wts., I commonly use two 8s as my strippers (4" apart), then go right to 6s the rest of the way out. I've test cast with both this set-up, and one with multiple sizes starting with a 10 or 12, and I don't really see any casting difference between the two. And since the 8s weigh less than the 10s or 12s, I use the 8s.

Personally, I like the aesthetics of descending guide sizes, 12-10-8-6-5s. When I do static testing, it sometime behooves one to repeat a guide size, like two 6s, before jumping to the 5s. Because the blank tapers, I don't jump down to the smallest immediately.

Mark: Buddy's given you a pretty thorough and descriptive answer...just to give you some comparisons, though, I'd say a size 6 sf ceramic would be similar to a 2/0, a size 7 similar to a 1/0 IN TERMS OF OPENING SIZE. They aren't actually "similar" in the strictest sense as the sf ceramics hold the line off the rod, while a 1/0 or 2/0 sf wire guide keeps the line very, very close to the blank. My argument is strongly biased toward holding the line off the blank, so much so that on the few blanks I build NOT using ceramics, I only use Hopkins & Holloway "standoff" single foot guides (which are sized like regular snakes, btw).

Hi,

These are actual measurements I took a while back from our single foot wire guides and snake guides. I came up with the following OD's:
Single foot OD's:
2/0 = 5.5
1/0 = 6.0
1 = 6.5
2 = 7.0
3 = 8.0
4 = 8.5
5 = 9.0
6 = 10.0

I hope that is what you're looking for. I get different measurements from the snake guides were we measure inside ID's not the OD's like above.

Snakes ID's

2/0 = 4.5
1/0 = 4.8
1 = 5.1
2 = 5.7
3 = 6.3
4 = 7.0
5 = 7.7
6 = 8.5

Warmest regards, Joe Meehan, American Tackle

I have asked this question of a vendor. His reply was that you cannot compare wire snake guide sizes to ceramic sizes. However he would relate them as:

Snake - Ceramic
1.............6
2.............7
3.............8
4.............10

I don't have any to compare with, but I will have Monday.

JIm Williams



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2005 08:09PM by Jim Williams.