I read the Batson enterprises post and saw that they were going to have a demo of "waranteed" and "unwaranteed" breakages. This is great to see and know as it's hard for the hobby/part time builder to deal with.

With that said, what are the worst kind of breaks you've seen come back due to "client error"? When I toured the Lamiglass factory, I saw the most hidious examples of this.

2 cases in particular came to mind

The first was a guy who had gone through 6 halibut rods. Each time he would state that the rod broke when playing a large fish. Lami replaced them with a minimal charge, which I though was cool. But when I asked about the defect rate of those rods the engineer kind of smiled and pointed to the paint smudged deeply into the blank. Apparently the guy refused to use a belt when landing larger fish and would "rest" the rod on the edge of his boat when fighting the fish! The rest is a bit obvious.

But I think the worst offender they showed me was the dude who had a 4 piece rod that broke on 2 different ferrules when playing a fish. Apparently he liked the rod to "flex" more at the butt and took a Gloomis butt section, a Lami tip, and one other brand for the middle to sections. Needless to say, the ferrules didn't fit properly and broke. I think the worst part of it was, he expected Lamiglas to refund him a full rod for their defect!

Any other horror stories?

-- Cheers
-- James

There are many tell-tale signs of how a rod has been handled. Often the rod does break on a fish, but the damage was inflicted earlier.

I had one guy bring back a 7 year old rod broken about a foot above the handle area. But, the butt guide was smashed and the frame crushed. The tip-top was missing a ring and also deformed, as were a couple of other guides. The rod had seen some rough treatment.

A surf fisherman brought back a 2 year old rod he had broken on a cast. Trouble was, in the area of the break were dozens of nicks and gouges in the blank surface. He couldn't explain them. I could. He used a bumper mounted surf rod rack when traveling up and down the beach, rods stuck in the rack, with pyramid sinkers swinging and beating/banging the rod surfaces.

Fishermen break rods - they just don't always know that they are the cause.

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

My best story : Customer wanted me to pay for the repair to his roof and roof rod mount because the Stuart Tuff Butt he grabbed when he swung on board his boat didn't break but the rod mount pulled free. I asked him if he would instead write a testimonial on the quality of the rod. Hmm 200+ pounds swinging on a Tuff Butt and the rod rack screws pulled out. imagne that! Then there are the "strange" .... (with splintered rod in hand) "I didn't think I closed the tail gate that hard 'cause I was only going a little way down the beach" .

Had one come in yesterday, an UL 7' spin rod broken between the foregrip and butt guide.
The footprint was still faintly visible in the 12" area that was "shattered".
At least he didn't claim a fish broke it.


Best wishes,
Ron Schneider
Schneider's Rod Shop
Mountain Home, Arkansas
[www.schneidersrods.com]
mtnron40@yahoo.com
870-424-3381

Working retail, I was managing a local fishing tackle shop. A customer came in with a broken rod complaining that the sales person who sold him the rod was remiss in his duties, as he should have beed asvised, that he could not slam the rod in the car door. I reflexivly thought that my sales person should have also insluted his intelligence further by telling him is not a good practice to slam his penis in the car door either. I settled for telling the customer that my sales person was indeed remiss in his duties as he should have also sold him a rod tube for transport.

As Tom K. defly indicates Fishermen cause rod failures and even in the off season rods should be stored in rod tubes, not stood up in the back of a closet next to the vacuum thats inadvertantly knicks a blank and it fails next time you pull it out to go fishing. Most true defects in Mfg materials or workmanship (which is all the vast majority of MFG's limited lifetime warranties cover) will occur in the 1st few uses of the rod.

Theses new, graphite scrimmed, ultra thin walled, super light blanks are what I call ADULT rods as the intregrity of the blank is then greatly reliant upon the blank remaining wholy intacted, a simple nick in an entry level series blank might endue forever, where as in these these ultra thin high modulas blanks creates a short fused ticking time bomb.