I’ve been thinking about the Replies to my recent Post (8-4-05) on a Ratio Method for this spacing. I think there’s a way to find the hidden ratios in the Intersect Method, but in order to do that, I would need more data. Among the Replies, Tom Kirkman said:

“Any ratio for locating the choke guide position must center around the spool diameter and line diameter. With some work, those could probably be combined to get you a really good method for determining the optimum choke guide location. Such a ratio would be ideal, but again, it would have to center around the spool diameter and line size, not rod length.

Until we have that ratio, on any rod longer than about 5 feet, using the spool upsweep angle to plot an intersection point will put you closer to a good choke guide location than anything else that is nearly as easy. Now if somebody (Cliff?) wanted to go to work on a good spool diameter / line diameter to choke guide distance, that would be a very worthwhile endeavor.” [Re: Cliff... Tom Kirkman July 31, 15:38 ]

So, I’m interested in working to describe a system that models our rods and reels and casting issues, and can predict butt & choke guide placement. But I can’t do that without enough data. So, if you are willing to share that information, I’ll see if I can work this out.
Here’s the information I am asking for.

REEL DIMENSIONS:
(A) Reel diameter
distance from reel shaft centerline to the near edge of the rod blank.
BUTT GUIDE DIMENSIONS:
(Cb) nominal guide ring size;
(Db) inner diameter of the open ring;
(Eb) distance from the farthest inner edge of the guide ring to the rod blank .
CHOKE GUIDE DIMENSIONS:
(Cc) nominal guide ring size;
(Dc) inner diameter of the open ring;
(Ec) distance from the farthest inner edge of the guide ring to the rod blank .
DISTANCES:
(F) spool face to butt guide;
(G) spool face to choke guide;
(H) rod-tip to choke guide;
(I) rod-tip to butt-guide;
(J) rod-tip to butt cap = overall rod length.

If someone could clarify for me the terminology used for the line guides, I’d appreciate that. From the reel spool face moving toward the rod tip: BUTT, CHOKER, RUNNING (several), TIP-TOP. Is that correct? Is that the way these terms are being used?

I suppose it is better if you e-mail me directly cmkmhall@ufl.edu, and spare the Forum the details. Thanks in advance for your help.
-Cliff Hall, Gainesville, FL-USA+++

The butt guide is the first guide from the reel - the guide nearest the butt. The choke guide is where an imaginary line running from the spool centerline would intersect with the rod blank. The running guides are those guides placed from the choke guide forward. They are the same size as the choke guide. These terms would apply to the New Guide Concept.

For the cone of flight method, you have a butt guide and then simply subsequent guides on out to the tip. No intersect point.

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

E A S Y G U Y S. . . Give Cliff a chance. If one doesn't care about his input, then maybe we're better off keeping our comments to ourselves and moving on to comment about another post.

As long as the system I am using for attaching guides to my rods works for me, I'll continue using that system. If the system I am using satisfies me and my my customers, I will continue on. If I get complaints, I'll change. However, I'm always open for suggestions to improve technique.

Some viewers may think Cliff is picking to deep in a pile of nits. However, if Cliff is on to something that really works, many will be glad he persevered.

Bob Turpen

My understanding of the Concept-Intersect methodology and its terminology is as follows:

The Butt Guide and the Choke Guide are usually NOT adjacent to one another. There is usually at least ONE other guide between the Choke Guide and the Butt Guide. Is that correct?

If the Intersect Point seems too far forward on the rod blank (too close to the rod tip), then an artificial Intersect Point location is imposed by the rod-builder, based on his experience when laying out guides on rods with similar reels. Is that also correct?

Furthermore, the butt guide and the choke guide are separated by some appropriate distance. The Concept Primer* says: “Butt or stripping guides should generally fall between 17 to 23 inches from the spool face on most freshwater type rods; and 21 to 30 inches on larger saltwater rods. Select a guide size and style that puts you into these categories.” Test-casting would be used to refine the final placement for the Butt Guide, rather than some ratio relative to the reel spool diameter (as far as is currently known). Is that correct?

* - My reference is “The NEW GUIDE CONCEPT PRIMER” by Tom Kirkman. This article originally ran in RodMaker Magazine Volume 7 Issue #1. I do not have access to the more detailed information on this System, which appeared in the RMM-3(4).

Obviously, I am trying to get enough information from fellow rod builders to discover if there is indeed a mathematical relationship between the (reel spool diameter) and the (distance from the reel spool to the butt guide), so that a mathematical equation or ratio could be used to more closely predict an optimum distance between the reel spool and the butt guide. I am persuaded that such a mathematical relationship does indeed exist. And obviously I intend to formulate it and share it here at RBO. I hope to be able to get enough reel & guide data from you all in order to make that possible, and to see that pattern emerge.

Special thanks to Tom Kirkman for his contemplation and Replies in this tedious process. And also to Bob Turpen, who pretty much said it all: “Some viewers may think Cliff is picking too deep in a pile of nits. However, if Cliff is on to something that really works, then many will be glad he persevered.” I won’t know if it was really worth all the fuss and tedium until I get enough reel & guide data to do the math on this system. Thanks for your input and support. Thanks to fellows like Emory Harry who set a high, yet practical standard for such discussions. And thanks to fellows like Ray Adams and Mo Yang for their appreciation and encouragement. And to Shawn Moore and Dan Bundy for their prodding challenges. Dan, you are the ONLY person who actually sent me any measurements! Thanks, Dan. I’ll need a lot more data than his one rod and my imagination to complete this project, fellas!!

My apologies to those Readers who are apathetic to such a technical discussion of this subject. I’m just trying to fill out the scientific side of a System that works well on its artistic side.

Earnestly, -Cliff Hall, Gainesville, FL-USA +++

Readers that aren't interested can simply skip over this thread/topic. That's one of the nice things about such a forum - you don't have to read anything you're not interested in.

Generally, you would find that on most smaller freshwater reels, you'd have a butt guide, and then at least one more guide before you reached the choke guide located on the intersect point. With larger reels, you usually wind up with 2 or sometimes 3 guides between the butt and choke guide. It would be rare that any reel would have so much upsweep that you could move directly from butt to choke guide in just a matter of a few inches. The distance between them, even on smaller reels, is generally enough that at least one guide needs to fall between them for good stress distribution.

In most cases rods set up via the New Guide Concept primer on the library page here fail to benefit from test casting - you find that the lay-out puts you pretty much on the money right off the bat. While this isn't always the case, in many if not most cases you'll fall right on the mark the first time out.

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

And thanks to Ken Finch for his practical comments: "If Cliff's ratio is going to require a different ratio for each different rod length, then I don't see what it accomplishes. What is needed is a system that remains the same for each rod and reel but automatically takes into account the differences between them." You are right, Ken. And that's what I am shooting for.

And to Rich Handrick for Best Comedian: "A crappie [speckled perch] I caught the other day was wondering about my guide spacing. He actually criticized my butt guide placement, saying 'it was clearly too close to the foregrip'. I ate him. " (Grin !!) -Cliff Hall +++



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2005 11:39PM by Cliff Hall.

Cliff,
I have been thinking about what you want to do and I think that your attempt to come up with a mathamatical model for optimum guide positioning that other rod builders could use is a worthy effort. If you could come up with a spread sheet into which a rod builder could plug a few numbers including a few measurements taken from his blank that would then give him the optimum number and positioning of guides it would be a great tool for rod builders. However, I do not think that developing this model is a trivial effort and I hope that you are not underestimating the difficulty of the task. I think that there are a lot of variables affecting the optimum number and positioning of guides that a rod builder takes into consideration when building a rod and the fewer of these variables that you incorporate into your model the less useful that your model probably will be. Just a few of the variables are; blank length, blank length from reel to tip, blank action angle, blank power, blank weight, type of guides, size of guides, weight of guides, height of guides off the blank, reel spool size, reel spool angle, type of line. It may even be necessary to incorporate a couple of these variables, blank action and power, at several different amounts of blank deflection.

There are models for things that are much more complex than the positioning of guides on a fishing rod so I have no doubt that a model is possible. I am familiar with some modeling tools, for example SPICE which is software for modeling the analog performance of electronic circuits. The modeling tools that I am familiar with are admittedly more complex than what you are attempting but they have taken many man years of effort to develope and are actually still being worked on and improved.

I wish you well with your effort and I will help if I can but I hope that the water you are jumping into is not too deep and cold and the current too swift.

What? Cliff, so short and terse an opening post? LOL. I opened this thread expecting another encyclopedic tome....:)

Anyway, I for one am glad to see you attempt to attack this challenge. I have already learned some valuable things just from reading the long threads.

Anyways, one bit of fact. With VERY LIMP braided lines, the spool diameter does not seem to make much difference at all. I picked up a very lightweight but HUGE spool diameter (2 1/4 inches) spin reel and did a lot of AB comparison againt another UL reel with a much smaller spool diameter. The large diameter reel is hightly rated for increased casting distance. Well, I found zero to virtually zero difference in casting distance. I did a careful test using identical rods, identical weights, identical leaders etc. ONLY the spool size and reel changed. Surprised, I had an extended verbal discussion with the president/designer of the company and the comment was that with braided line, the spool diameter is really quite inconsequential and I would not see the distance gained. With mono line, that changes.

So with braided line, the spool diameter may indeed not make much difference as they have virtually zero memory.

I just acquired some 4 lb test Fireline. This is even thinner by a considerable amount than the normal 10 lb braided line (Spiderwire) line that we normally use. The Fireline starts out with some memory but with use, the memory drops drastically as the outer layer wears. I'm very curious to test this too.

Hope this is one bit of helpful datapoint.

Mo

Fellas, I need some DATA. Right now, the chief hindrance to progress on this project is simply an astounding lack of input from fellow builders. I literally have received only ONE set of data, and even that one was incomplete, because it only reported the butt guide position at 75% of the distance from the rod-tip to the reel spool. (I don’t even know anything about the butt guide.)

Please send your rod-reel-guide data to me at cmkmhall@ufl.edu. Please see first Post at the top of this Thread for the specifics on the array of information I would need to make one complete set of data for a single fishing rod. That’s ~ 13 measurements for each rod layout. And I would like to get ~ 10 layouts for open-face spinning rods, with rod lengths of 5 feet to 12 feet, at ~ 1 foot increments. That’s ~ 80 rods times 13 measurements each. That’s over 1000 bits of information. But MS-Excel can handle it. What I need is access to enough data. I suspect that if there is not enough data, neither I nor you will be persuaded that a strong and true relationship exists between the variables. This inquiry would degenerate to being inconclusive. So, whenever you all are ready, send your data to me, please, and we’ll get cranking on doing the math. -Thank you, Cliff Hall.

And regarding guide wrap strengths and wrap weights: I have already generated such a Table. Go to [www.rodbuilding.org]
TITLE: "Gudebrod Thread Table: Strength & Weight of Guide Wraps for Size 2/0 - E" Table of Wrap Strength & Wrap Weight per 1 cm Width of Guide Wrap around a 1 cm circumference section of rod blank (OD = 3.18 mm) for selected popular Styles & Sizes of Gudebrod Rod-Building Thread. (Calculated values, not direct "in-situ" measurements.)
-Cliff Hall +++

Emory – Right now, I have so many rod & reel related right triangles and frustrums and lines and angles and cones and vortexes and vertices and asymptotic tangent functions and line-choking plots floating around in my head that it almost doesn’t matter whether my eyes are open or closed. Until I go back to sleep in the next hour, it’s all the same. I think I have sufficient experience (in quantitative and qualitative systems analysis and problem-solving in a multi-variable system from my training as a student in chemistry, chemical engineering, and pharmacy, and my professional career as a research and analytical chemist (HPLC)) to address such a relatively simple system. The dynamic forces in this system are beyond me, or even the static load distributions. But with this system, the problem readily reduces to just the physical layout of the fishing rod components here. And that’s it. And that makes it mostly a matter of geometry, and simple mathematics. The only dynamic aspect of significance is the behavior of the line upon casting, and that can be evaluated by test-casting, and re-checked on the next iteration.

The key steps to describing a complex system and formulating a mathematical model and solving problems within that system are almost always: (1) to identify the relevant variables; (2) to relegate the other variables to the status of a constant (by fixing the conditions or re-drawing the boundaries); (3) and to solve the equations in the correct order. Including too many variables, or ignoring latent variables, or an insufficient quality or quantity of data can easily block a solution. If there is a sufficient quantity and quality of data, we can see what patterns and truths emerge. –Cliff Hall +++.

Mo Yang wrote: "What? Cliff, so short and terse an opening post? LOL. I opened this thread expecting another encyclopedic tome...."
Mo - 'Sorry to disappoint you !! But thanks for that hilarious description. ... Well, it did take me about an entire PAGE just to say "Send more data!", so I guess I may have lived up to my reputation after all. .

Mo - Thank you very much for corroborating (with others Posters) the suspicion that with today's quality braid lines, that there is so little memory and so little stiffness, that reel spool diameter adds virtually nothing to these components of the fishing line’s dynamic behavior, as it cyclones off the reel, thru the butt guide, and on down the rod thru the other guides. This is also an excellent example of how changing a single variable (type of line) can dramatically affect the significance of other variables (spool diameter), if not render them nearly inconsequential. So now the spool diameter matters little if the line is braid. But if the line is monofilament nylon, then the significance of the reel diameter as a variable affecting butt guide size & placement remains.

Nothing like more than one perspective to give us a full orb view. Thanks, Mo. –Cliff Hall +++

This is precisely why I've often stated that the optimum distance from reel spool to butt guide location is determined by both the reel spool diameter and the line used. Braid, or even light test mono's, do not create the need for very large butt guides.


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

Cliff,

One reason that you may not receive much data, is that what you are attempting to do is not much of an issue for most builders. Locating the butt guide position is something most learn to do by trial and error, or through the use of the New Guide Concept which makes the location almost automatic.

I hope you'll stick with it, but be prepared to formulate your own data by a lot of test casting with various set-ups. Only a relatively few builders are having trouble with butt guide location and thus few may be inclined to send you any data.

.........

Cliff,
You mentioned above that there were 13 measurements that you needed. What are the 13 measurements? If you mentioned before what the 13 measurements that you needed were I missed it.

Please send your rod-reel-guide data to me at cmkmhall@ufl.edu. Please see first Post at the top of this Thread for the specifics on the array of information I would need to make one complete set of data for a single fishing rod. I have prepared an Excel *.XLS file for this ARRAY of Data. For each ROD, it can be sent as a separate Array of data. Or additional columns can be generated to create a MATRIX and sent to me as an *.XLS file. Thanks for your cooperation with my efforts. -Cliff Hall+++

GENERAL INFORMATION:
Rod Builder's Name:
Method Used for Guide Placement Layout:
Rod Blank Taper:
Fishing Line, Type (braid or nylon) and Line Test (#):
REEL DIMENSIONS: (MILLIMETERS)
(A) Reel diameter
distance from reel shaft centerline to the near edge of the rod blank.
BUTT GUIDE DIMENSIONS: (MILLIMETERS)
(Cb) nominal guide ring size;
(Db) inner diameter of the open ring;
(Eb) distance from the farthest inner edge of the guide ring to the rod blank.
CHOKE GUIDE DIMENSIONS: (MILLIMETERS)
(Cc) nominal guide ring size;
(Dc) inner diameter of the open ring;
(Ec) distance from the farthest inner edge of the guide ring to the rod blank.
DISTANCES: (INCHES)
(F) spool face to butt guide;
(G) spool face to choke guide;
(H) rod-tip to choke guide;
(I) rod-tip to butt-guide;
(J) rod-tip to butt cap = overall rod length.

OTHER PERTINENT INFORMATION:

"That’s all, folks!" There were over 1000 Views and 90 Replies on these 3 related Threads over the last 2 weeks, relating to the Concept / Intersect Method and my attempts to describe a more mathematical model for the system. Thanks for your interest and input and criticism. But the number of data sets sent to me was very disappointing: ZERO to be exact, as of this Post. … So, that puts all this revamping on hold, because the rate-limiting step in this process has become the dearth of data. It will be winter before I have the time to generate enough of my own new configurations to get a consensus on what the patterns are, as I see them, in a novel system. And even then, because the number of layouts is still likely to be relatively small, I’ll probably just keep the findings to myself. It’s hard to establish validity and make generalizations based on a small number of rods & reels. Any further discussions would be via e-mail, in private, and not in public here at RBO. Bye for now, –Cliff Hall, Gainesville, FL +++ cmkmhall@ufl.edu .