I currently am building a spiral wrap (bumper style) bottom rod in the 30# class for a client who has very large hands. The problem is that the line coming off his reel of choice cuts across the top knuckle of his left thumb.

Since I can only turn down the EVA fore grip just so much, the next step would be to find a butt guide with a higher frame height. I started out with a Fuji MNSG20, and that is the question.

Do the various manufactures of guides make available their guide specs so that I would have been able to find a guide with the right ring size and frame height needed (blank to bottom of ring) and thereby eliminate buying guides on the trial and error basis? I'm sure that other builders have encountered this problem and would be interested in how they resolved this problem.

I would also like to thank Tom Kirkman for his suggestions and the guys at Mud-Hole for taking their valuable time in measuring various styles of guides that I hope will take care of this particular problem.

Just seems to me that there should be data available somewhere for a builder when determining what type of guide we need to be using.

Hiya, Stan - If the Fuji MNSG-20mm was not high enough, have you considered the Fuji MNSG-25mm? ... A 25+mm Ring on a Butt Guide for a Boat Rod seems large at first, but once I got to enjoy the extra "rod" clearance (BNLG-25mm), I have come to like it.

If that 25mm Ring seems too large, then the M-H 2006 Catalog (p.70) shows another SIC Series, a "High-Frame Surf & Spinning Guides", the Fuji HVSG's. Did M-H mention having those in stock? They have listed:

HVSG-20mm-MEDIUM . $12
HVSG-25mm-MEDIUM . $14
HVSG-25mm-HIGH ...... $15

These HVSG Rings look like they would be higher off the rod blank than the MNSG Rings for the same Ring Size, ... but that is hard to confirm from photos in the M-H Catalog, however good the pictures are. The HVSG is a BLACK Frame, while the MNSG Frame is ... the usual Gunsmoke?

'Hope that helps, Stan Kulgoski.
Good Luck, -Cliff Hall+++, Gainesville, FL-USA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2006 11:09AM by Cliff Hall.

For those rod-builders who want choose a Brand and Dealer of high-quality Ceramic Ring Guides whose Ring OD, ID, Ring Height, Foot Length, and Ring/Frame-Material/Color are all available On-Line on the same web-page on which you place your order,

Consider BATSON'S FORECAST Guides at Robert Tignor's www.FISHSTICKS4U.com. At FS4U, all such physical & dimensional descriptions are listed for ALL the RainShadow and ALL the ForeCast components. It will spoil you, and the RS-FC / FS4U prices are hard to shake a stick at.

IMO, -Cliff Hall+++, FL-USA

Stan,
Have the customer put the line through all the guides but the one on top and see if he likes it. Had a female customer who needed a shorter, faster tipped blank do to her shoulder bothering her while using a longer rod.
She liked it so much she also started using it for sturgeon, oversized ones. Everyrhing was fine till her husband helped her bring a big one in. First he burned his thumb, than cut the foregrip due to the extra load he put on the rod, I moved the first guide to 90 degrees like the old Roberts rods I had seen and they have been happy with the rod for many years.
The customer is using a levelwind Penn 320.