I'm not arguing one side or the other here, I've heard the same thing about this guys rods from other people besides Mike & Andrew, and I'm just playing Devil's Advocate (I'm wearing my Devil tee shirt today, so I gotta play the role, lol).

I hate to nitpick, but this here caught my atteniton: "off the rod blank, that tube you mention has its own stiffness and structural integrity. Spiral one up (off the blank) and flex it - it won't even hold the structure you just put it in, it'll just fall apart. It would rely on the rod blank for "stiffness." It has none of its own to add"

I agree, the thread has no "holding power" on it's own as you mention. But once you add epoxy, it definately is able to hold itself straight out. In this case, the thread + epoxy defiantely does act like the tubing, albeit not nearly as strong. I'm sure if you went to the extreme of adding 50 coats of epoxy to a blank, building up a 1 inch thick coat all around, that the blank action & power would change significantly. Yes, it would be awfully heavy, but I'm not taking about weight savings, strictly the blank bending differently.

If you added enough stiffening or splinting in some form on the blank, then surely you would affect the power and action. (Of course, any weight that doesn't result in the same ratio of extra stiffness for the weight will reduce efficiency.)

But, what this fellow is doing isn't likely to have any effect insofar as where or how the rod bends or the power it has. A thread wrap with a couple coats of epoxy just doesn't have that effect.

I don't like to throw off on the things builders come up with to sell rods. But I strongly suspect that if you ran the measurements before and after he's made his wraps, you'll find the action unchanged, the power reduced (very slightly if even measurable) and not much else.

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



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2005 04:10PM by Tom Kirkman.

Bill,
You make a good point, that if enough epoxy is added it will change the characteristics of the blank, change the action and increase the power, but it is going to take more epoxy than any of us would put on a blank, enough that it will dramatically increase the weight.

At sometime in the past you have no doubt peeled off a layer of epoxy or epoxy saturated thread that you had previously applied to a rod and then examined it by bending it, twisting it , tearing it, etc. You saw that it had almost zero stiffness or modulus of elasticity. When it is bent it does not tend to immediately return to its original position or shape. But the stiffness is not zero, though small it does have some stiffness, so if enough is added it will increase the stiffness or power of a blank or a section of a blank as you suggest. The question now is how much has to be added. I have not measured it or looked it up but the stiffness of the epoxy is at least a couple of orders of magnitude less than graphite or fiber glass which means that a great deal of epoxy will have to be added to have any measureable effect on a rods power, certainly much more than is being added with any decorative butt wrap.

Another way, that is only a little over simplified, to think about it is, the overall modulus of the typical blank is about one half of the modulus of the fiber itself and the typical blank is about 50% resin (epoxy) which says the resin has almost zero modulus or stiffness.