How good are the Fuji Hardloy guides? Will they hold up if you are using
braided lines?
Thanks,
Dave

Yes, the hardaloys will be fine with braided line.

Sean Endres
North East Rod Builders
New London, CT

Braided lines are no problem, but rust is... I made a set of 9 trolling rods with Hardloys for a charter captain, and in 3 years about 50% of the guides had a coat of surface rust and looked terrible. The Capt is a friend, and pretty meticulous about cleaning. All it takes is to put them away wet and salty once.... It's all titanium for me from now on, life is too short to be spent re-wrapping rods.

Thanks for the info. These will be primarily used for freshwater fishing.
I thought these guides are stainless steel?
Dave

The braided SUPER lines don't cut guides, the fine sediment that gets trapped in the braid does. So it all depends on how dirty the water is you fish. The ceramic ring pecking order from the bottom rungs above simply that of a chrome ring; are made of alu. oxide PacBay's Hailoy (Darker almost brown ring material) and Fuji's Hardloy (lighter gray ring material). The next step up are the Alconite guides (much thinner black ring material) and after that are SIC guides, that are really expensive but not coated. Then the coated rings start there after using all the ring materials as a base, AND CAN BE CHEAPER THAN THE UNCOATED SIC GUIDES i.e. ZIRCONIUM COATED GUIDES (Added) Considering your salt water needs the Alconite guides do come in a stainless steel frame and besides being 35% lighter (in some instances and not the Sz.25 CYAG compared to a Sz.25 Fuji hi-frame hardloy) and ARE A STEP UP IN, from 1400 to 1700 on the Vickers haerdness scale. I guess the 35% weight savings comes almost enritely in the reduction of material in the creamic ring which is visably appearent and possibly some reduction the guide frame which isn't.

Emory Harry:
Thanks for the input but I see we both learned something in the next post, it just happened that I guessed right in the 1st place, thinking Alconite guides were harder than Hardloy of Hialoy



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2006 09:42AM by Chris Karp.

Dave,
I do not know this from first hand knowledge but I have read that the early braided lines that had Kevlar in them were the ones that were tough on guides but that the new braided lines do not use Kevlar. I do know that I have not seen a guide that was etched or grooved by the line in a long time.

Chris,
Alconite guides are also made of aluminum oxide. Alconite is just a trade name. The next step up in hardness from aluminum oxide are the zerconium guides offered by several manufacturers and they are much less expensive than silicon carbide.