I'm about to use graphite arbors for the first time. Everything up to this point has been the poly arbors or the old "dry wall tape with Rod Bond" technique. Is there anything noticably different with the graphite arbors? Given the properties of graphite, are graphite arbors more rigid and thus do they contribute to greater sensitivity?

Are you really talking about hard graphite arbors? Or do you have the brick-foam arbors sold by Fuji and Pacific Bay?


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I believe they are Pac Bay. Maybe I'm not understanding what they're made of. Is it not some sort of graphite/resin?

No, they're known as "brick-foam." These are very rigid yet very light and thus are excellent if you wish to preserve as much of the blank's inherent sensitivity as possible. The older graphite arbors were considerably much heavier than the brick-foam type. I'm not sure anyone even offers them anymore.


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[shop.mudhole.com]

I think you can find both graphite and poly arbors just about anywhere. I dont know if these are the same you and Tom are talking about or not. See the above for example. I use the polyurethane arbors exclusively now. I dont think there's been any loss of sensitivity.

Marty,

There actually is a difference between the poly & "graphite" arbors. Fuji sells a graphite arbor, as does Pac Bay. Where the graphite comes in, I'm not real sure. It's some kind of a grind/blend rather than a woven graphite. It's quite a bit more dense than a poly arbor and a LOT heavier. I can snap a 24mm brick foam arbor in half pretty easily, where I don't think I'm strong enough to snap the graphite. They're DENSE.

I've only used the graphite in larger diameters in my own builds, so I can't really say they're more or less sensitive than the foam models. Just based on their density, I'd have to guess that they might be.

If you click on the arbor pictures on this page [] and enlarge them, you can actually see that the graphite arbors are less porous, more dense than the brick foam arbors.

Mark Griffin
[]
C&M Custom Tackle
San Dimas, California

Wow Mark!
All this time looking on your site and I never knew the pix would blow up like that by
clicking on them!! Gonna take me twice as long now to get off your site after I get there.

You da MAN!!!!!

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

Why aren't cork rings commonly used for arbors?

UL

.... I think I remember way back when,.... 20+ years back..... people using cork rings for arbors.

I am sorta wondering of the utility of 'graphite' arbors. The magic of structural graphite is the strength of the fibers. And yet I don't detect a single fiber in the pics I've seen. So is this stuff just plastic/resin with carbon dust added? If so, why would it be any different in usage than the resin by itself?

And on the flip side, if there really are fibers in there and you get the magic strength/weight/rigidity of structural graphite, wouldn't rings of the stuff around your blank create nice places for the blank to break off at under stress? Less bending down down the butt than anywhere else,,, but there is some.

And if tf the carbon is added to increase the density (as Mark G seems to imply), then the foam takes away the benefits of that addition, yes?

So what is the alure of 'graphite' for arbors? The word 'graphite' implying better and high tech? To catch egos and create one-upsmanship? Or is it to put a more dense material in there, and unknowingly in that process to create a nice point of potential blank failure? All of the above?

Sorry,,,, I'm thinking too much again