to all,
i am building a 14' two piece surf casting rod that i will use with a jigmaster conventional reel. i am having trouble finding the spine of the bottom half of the pole.
does it matter if the top half and the bottom half be aligned exactly? also will a 10lb. or heavier fish twist the pole during the fight? what is the easiest way to find the spine other than tilting the pole at a 45 degree angle, bending and rolling it on a smooth surface.
thanks jason

You can get a good spine finder from several sponsors on the list to the left that
will help you locate that spine. However, if you cant find the spine it is not as big
a deal a some might think.

You will always experience some torque twisting when using a conventional casting
rod and the longer the rod the worse this effect is. A spiral wrap setup like the "bumper"
wrap is the only way to rid yourself of that problem and produce a stable casting rod.


Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

If the blank has matching butt section to tip section marks I use those and spine the blank. If not I make my own temp marks, spine the blank, and wrap. I do try to find any bend or spine the butt section has, if I cannot detect any then I couple the butt and tip sections together and mark as described above go with that.

Lou

Jason -- it depends on the strength rating of the blank, and how much the lower half bends.

When building two-piece rods, I identify the spine on both on the top and bottom, and try to align the two when putting the rod together. I've even wrapped masking tape on each, where they meet, with marks to make it easier to line them up. But if you finished the bottom without checking for spine, I don't think you have a whole lot to worry about -- almost all the blanks I've ever dealt with have a tendency to bend, under stress, almost entirely in the top section. A few of my heavier-weight surf rods actually have bottom sections that do not bend at all -- they're like broom sticks. I've noticed that the lighter the rod, the more the bottom half bends -- it's especially pronounced in fly rod blanks -- but that most surf blanks bend very little in the bottom piece.

If you understand rod spine, there's no reason not to check both the top and bottom section of a 2-piece rod, and align them properly. It only takes a few seconds, and will only improve the finished rod's action. But if you finished the bottom without checking the blank, you're probably fine, especially with a 14-foot blank.

Here's what I'd do in your shoes: put the reel, spooled with the type of line you plan on using, on the rod, and run the line through the guides. Have a friend hold the rod, and put a good bend into the blank, and see where the rod stops bending. It's probably somewhere in the top piece; if so, then I wouldn't worry about the spine in bottom piece (I'm assuming that you located the spine correctly on the top piece, and installed guides properly). Even if there is a small amount of bend in the bottom piece, I still don't think that you're going to have a problem. Again, there's no reason not to match the spines of the two pieces, but since probably around 98% of a surf blank's action is going to be in the top piece, if the bottom piece is not spined correctly, it is not going to affect rod performance in any noticeable way.

This is just my opinion, of course, and I welcome anyone who disagrees...