Hi all I am wondering if there is any way to salvage teh tip of my Rainshadow IF905-4 blank I was wraping it by hand and when I weent to pull the thread throught to lock the thread down the tip snaped. Does anyone know if I can send it in under the warranty for repair or will this not be covered? if not can anyone tell me how I could repair it my self?
Thank you
Tyler

I'd get with the good people at Rainshadow, they are great about this stuff. Probably will need to send them the second section to match the tip section with,if they don't just send you a new blank. Are you putting to much tension on your wraps?

Sounds like you need to place your rod supports closer together? Even with a 0 weight rod you shouldn't be snapping them while wrapping.

Possible explanations for this snapping of the rod tip during the locking pull-thru:

*** Too much thread tension. Although this seems like the most obvious culprit, this is probably the LEAST LIKELY cause, IMO. --READ ON--

*** Too many whipping winds over the pull-thru loop. ~ 2 mm of whipping band-width (5 wraps) is like a minimum. 3-5 mm of whipping is usually strong enough, and still makes a neat wrap. Anything over 5 mm gets to be difficult to work with, and is only useful on heavy-duty rods (30# +) with larger gauge thread (D or E).

*** Too much of the pull-thru loop sticking out, having to be pulled under. It could be a foot long on the handle side of the pull-thread, if that's what it takes to grab it around your fingers. But a few millimeters sticking out on the Loop side should be all that is needed. Nothing much longer than the width of the number of winds whipping it down should be used. IMO.

*** Too long a tag end on the thread which will be pulled-thru and tucked under the whipping bands. This is probably very unlikely as the cause. Witness that some rod-builders like to leave several centimeters or even inches to be pulled-thru, so that they can grab the tag end after it is thru, to help when trimming it off.

*** Poor Support / grasp of the limber rod tip when pulling. I suspect this is the MAIN REASON for this particular failure. Grasp the rod tip firmly in your hands, but gently. If the rod blank is bending significantly between your fingers, WATCH OUT. You are not holding it correctly and / or using too much force. Practice on the smaller size wooden bar-be-que skewer sticks (the 6 inch size may be better practice than the 12 inch length). They are a thousand times cheaper than any rod tip you will ever build on. When wrapping a guide near the rod tip, you may have to remove the rod blank from your wrapping jig (rollers or cradle or V-notch), and rest the butt on the floor or on a table from which it cannot roll off. Sit or stand, whatever works for your whole configuration. Just make sure the rod will not be hanging by its own weight, from your one supporting hand. Grasp your fingers around the rod blank by laying the rod blank in the first crease of the first joint of your 4 fingers, at the end of your palm, where your fingers begin. Do not involve your thumb AT ALL. DO NOT let your thumb touch the rod blank. Period. This way, it should be next to impossible to put any bend in the rod blank this way, because your palm is straight and flat, and should be kept straight in-line with the rest of the rod blank. Once you involve your thumb in touching the rod blank, the tendency is to push the rod blank over the top of your index finger with your thumb, and snap the twig. Remember, the first thing I recommended is to wrap your 4 fingers around the shaft of the rod blank. With all your fingers covering the rod blank, it is impossible for your thumb to touch to rod blank, EXCEPT ABOVE your index finger. That is PRECISELY where your thumb can EASILY generate enough force in the blink of an eye to snap the stick in your hand. That is probably what happened. Or at least the thumb was the finger that did the snapping, as you pressed or pinched on the rod blank somehow. The other fingers are mechanically almost incapable of generating and applying at the correct angle that snapping force and motion. However, because the thumb is opposable, like the free half of a stone crab claw, it can snap the rod tip like a twig. As you are now well aware.

*** Poor Technique on Pulling the Pull Loop thru. – This may have made the matter of your pinching-pincer grasp or thumb-fight reflex even more dangerous. Pull the Pull-Thru Loop in a direction toward the rod BUTT or toward the rod TIP. NOT AWAY FROM the rod blank. Lay the Pull-Thru Loop handle down FLAT along the rod blank. Then lay it off the axis of the rod blank at about a 45 degree angle. Then pull it in the under-tucking direction. This will get the tag end under as much whipping thread as possible, with a lower force needed to pull it under the whipping band than if you used a hard 90 degree turn. The worst friction comes from the U-bend / hair-pin kink in the pull-thru thread, which acts as a tiny (non-rolling) pulley, trying to let the tag end reel over it. This generates LOTS of heat and friction and usually starts untwisting and flattening the braid pattern in the tag end thread. This can greatly weaken that hair-pin section of the pull-thru loop. AVOID using that same exact spot on the pull-loop more than once, or it could sever on the next use, and you may need to re-do the entire wrap. If you try these directions for pulling on the Pull-Thru Loop, this will keep the force from your grasp and your pull on the limber rod tip in such a direction that it is nearly impossible to BEND the rod tip whatsoever, never mind break it. If you TUG or YANK the Pull-Thru Loop TOWARD YOU (at a 90 degree angle to the rod blank), then you are MAXIMIZING the force on the rod blank itself, from both your grasp and your pull. That is ASKING for trouble in a limber / tip section. I can practically GUARANTEE you by the price of your next rod blank that another rod tip will be snapped again, if you pull-thru at a 90 degree angle to the rod blank AND use a pincer or thumb fight grasp to hold the rod tip. It is virtually an instinctive reflex whose mechanics can only be avoided by using a different hand grasp on the rod blank and by pulling the loop in a direction along the rod axis

The reason I say that the THREAD TENSION is probably the LEAST likely culprit is because it is relatively difficult to get any rolling leverage on a small diameter rod. Since this is HAND wrapping, and not a mandrel-transmission motor-driven torque force, the fingers operate their leverage to roll the rod blank over and wrap the thread at a lever length which equals the radius of the rod blank in that section. In the tip section of the rod blank, where the diameter is so small (just a few millimeters), there is just too much slip factor in the system, in my estimation, to generate too high a thread tension, IMO. If he could have gotten the thread tension too high, then he may have broken the rod tip during the wrapping phase, before the locking pull-thru. He didn’t.

Granted, I acknowledge that the thread tension DOES indeed affect the force it takes to pull the loop thru, as Spencer Phipps was the first to immediately point out above. But, IMO, in the tip section, high thread tension is hard to generate. I suspect that the other factors and possible causes of failure that I have discussed above offer at least as much explanation for this failure, and at least as much basis for inspection & review. –IMO. Cliff Hall, Gainesville, FL-USA+++

P.S. - Living and learning right there with ya –Ouch! –CMH+++

Give Batson Ent. a call, the number is shown on their web-site listed on the left for Rain Shadow. Explain what happened. You'll probably have to send both sections in for fitting, and may be charged a nominal fee for a new tip. Ask if they will return the broken tip which can be rewrapped as a spare tip and you'll have a two tip rod. Depending on where it broke you may not notice any difference in action or could jump from a 3 to 4 wt. action, or whatever rod wt. it is. Tips can also be repaired with a sleeve and/or insert but if only a few inches lost better to just settle for shorter section and reposition guides. I'm sure Batson will treat you right, great people there !!

I emailed Batson last night and Bill replyed today saying he would pass the info on to the warranty department. So I should be hearing back from the some time soon I hope. I gave the rod to my father for fathers day. So I am hoping that batson can help me out in some way if not my father is going to try to fix it some how. he will most likely put a sleeve over the break since where it broke seems too small of a diamater to put an insert in to it. He may even just cut off the broken part and shotren the rod. By cutting about 3-4in. of the tip how will it affect the weight? the rod is a 5wt. right now ? if someone could give me an answer to this question it would be great.
Thank you
Tyler

"We may even just cut off the broken part and shorten the rod. By cutting about 3-4 inches off the tip of the rod blank, how will it affect the weight? The rod is a 5 wt. right now ? if someone could give me an answer to this question it would be great. Thank you." - Tyler Bell.

Trimming a rod blank from the tip will stiffen it. In a fly rod, it will increase the line weight. By how much is hard to predicate without knowing CCS information for its rod rating, which is beyond me at this stage.

Some idea of the new behavior of a rod that you intend to trim from the tip can be gotten by tying and taping a fishing line to the rod tip at the new point at which you expect to amputate it. You can easily do some static distribution tests that way. If you want to do some hand flexing, just hold the rod tip at the new cut-off point, and you will see how stiff it feels. Then you can try a casting test by taping a single-foot guide at that new tip end. Do a quick rod set-up by taping down the other guides and a reel (seat), and give it a shot. The extended piece past the new tip guide may interfere with this test, but there seems to be no other way to mimic the new rod before you trim the tip. Once you cut it off, you can't put it back.

Extending the rod tip has about the same effect as and is a similar process to repairing a broken rod tip. See Ralph O'Quinn's article in the RBO-LIBRARY "Repairing Broken Rods" for details.

There are no quick 2-minute answers to this question, Tyler. You & Mr. Bell will have to examine the whole situation and decide for yourselves what may work best now. Which is why an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. (Or 3 pounds in this case.)

Meanwhile, good luck with Batson and your S.O.S. to them. -Cliff Hall+++

A "Table of Effects of TRIMMING or EXTENDING a ROD BLANK" is posted at:
[www.rodbuilding.org] [CMH]