Folks;

I wanted to get the collective opinion of this board on something that I experienced recently. I have a "semi-custom" graphite rod from a somewhat well-known manufacturer that I purchased a few of years ago before the rod-building bug bit me. It is a baitcaster rated at 15-25lbs outfitted with an Avet SX reel and 25lb test braid. The rod has been used sparingly due to my inventory of rods that I subsequently built.

I was preparing the night before a fishing expedition and had the reel in freespool with the clicker engaged to prevent a birdsnest. The rod was at roughly a 45 degree angle to me and I was pulling line through the tip-top to tie an binimin twist. I was applying very little pressure (2-3lbs top) on the line when I felt a sudden "release" of line.

When I looked at the rod about 6" of the rod tip had snapped off cleanly between the ttop and the first guide.

In 30+ years of fishing I have never seen anything like it. It unceremoniously snapped right off. When I contacted the manufacturer they were quick to inform me that 1) this happens all of the time 2) I should strip line from the reel and not through the guides and 3) it was not covered under warranty.

I can take it....Am I the idiot here? Is this a common way to break a blank?

J.

I wouldn't say that it's common, Joe, but from what I've seen it's not rare either. It happened to me with a fly rod I built last winter; I placed the tip top in my fingers to take a look at it, and SNAP about an inch and a half broke off.

I don't know much about the technical nitty-gritty of manufacturing rod blanks, but evidently due to the very nature of the process, a certain small percentage of blanks will turn out to be duds. What makes your situation unfortunate is that when a dud blank breaks, it almost always does it very, very early -- normally the first time that you use it -- and as a result the rod is under warranty, and the manufacturer just takes it back and gives you another one. Your problem is that because of disuse, the warranty no longer applies, and you're out of luck.

From your description, it sounds like you won't be able to salvage the rod. Too bad.

Chris Garrity Wrote:
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> From your description, it sounds like you won't be
> able to salvage the rod. Too bad.

It would really change the characteristics of the rod but I could remove the first guide, cut the blank down and glue on a new ttop where the existing first guide is. OTOH, I could build a much nicer rod on a better quality blank and just forget this ever happened ;)

Joe.

There are several possibilities. Sometimes, when folks string up a rod, they hold the rod by the tip and inadvertently end up flexing it past 90 degrees. I saw one fellow break a rod in my shop one time by doing this and he wasn't even aware he had flexed the tip at all. The other possibility is that at some point previous, you had hit the rod tip on something, fractured the blank and it then failed when a little pressure was applied to it.

If the rod had never really been fished and no decent had ever been placed upon it previously, then it's certainly possible that it was defective in some regard.


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

Even with the rod at a 45 degree angle from you, if you were pulling the line relatively parallel with the blank. You were in effect doing what is known as "high sticking"-(when some one swings a fish in the boat with high rod tip high in the air). This action causes a lot of broken rods. Same type of pressure created when pulling the line down a blank.

Thats about the right angle for highsticking to occur, or an otherwise nicked blank, but you can usually see some sort of impact creator with a magnifiying glass, the last possibility is a MFG defect but if the rod was used before it should have failed alreasdy. The break was clean that usually indicated a nick, MFG defect , or highsticking isolation overload. If you told the MFG you broke the rod setting the hook they may have replaced it want you further partonage and giving you the benefit of the doubt, but 2 of the three things mentioned are operator error/abuse related