Hi All,

I am building a Dan Craft Sig V 8'6 3 wt 4 piece. I have read some of the reviews regarding snake guides vs single foot, but I still cannot make up my mind. I like the aesthetics of snake guides (ie the traditional look) and was wondering whether using the REC lite wire snakes would really make a noticable difference to the action and feel of the Sig V 8'6 3 wt 4 piece.

What size guides and how many would you recommend on the Sig V 8'6 3 wt 4 piece?

Thanks,
Gavin

I going through this same struggle with a 9' sage 2 wt I have here.

Since this 2 wt is like a wet noodle I wanted the lightest weight guides I could find so I have bought two sets. I bought a set of fuji sic and a set of sic finish snakes (titanium with a polished sic finish I believe).

Anyway, I got out the reloading scale to weight both sets and the sic single foots were almost twice the weight of the snakes. since the feet on the snakes are half as long as the feet on the single foots it is going to take about the same amount of wrap and finish for either one.

I tend to prefer a single foot guide with either gold cermet or sic inserts but for this ultralight rod I think I am going to favor the titanium finished snakes for this particular project.

I know your blank is different from what I am working on here but if you are worried about the weight of guides affecting that 3wt too much, weigh out the two sets your considering. You can always put the unused set on a future rod.

Ray

At one time the same argument over "traditional" ring and loop guides versus the new snakes took place. The only tradition in fly rods is really one of constant change.

Action will not change due to guide style or type. The initial flex of the rod will still take place in the same area. But, the more weight you have on the rod the slower it will react and the longer it will take to recover. There are advantages to having the lightest possible guides on the rod.

You only need 3 guide sizes, the butt guide, one intermediate and then the rest as running guides. Don't bother trying to use all the available sizes.

On a rod of that length you'll need about 8 or 9 guides plus a tiptop.

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

Good Morning Gavin and Ray,

From your posts, I think you are comparing ceramic single foot guides to wire snake guides. There are also wire single foot guides that are coated with ceramic materials such as TiN (TiGold), TiCh, and TiO2 (TiBlue). I believe these are distributed by by American Tackle, Batson, and Pacific Bay. These wire single foot guides are lighter than their ceramic counterparts and ought to be lighter than the snake guides as well except possibly the light wire REC guides. For the weight of rods you are building, I think the single foot wire guides would be a better choice at least in terms of weight. I have used them on 4 wt fly rods and the customers really liked them.

As a rod builder who is quite traditonal towards the building and look of fly rods, I wrestled with the idea of using single foot guides, but after using them and seeing their performance on light rods I am convinced. I now use ceramic single foot guides on heavier weight fly rods as well. I have also switched to single foot guides for spinning rods. If you choose the single foot guides be sure to use the Forhan locking wrap ( the article on how to do the Forhan locking wrap is located in the Library at the top of the page and can be downloaded and printed out. Good luck with your decision and your rods.

Mike Blomme

I think I'd use something like 10, 1, than 2/0s to the tip on your 3 wt. The REC tip tops are awfully bis and tin can looking so I think I'd go with a small chrome tip top as the REC guides are quite light is color.

Gavin,
About a year ago I built a Dan Craft Sig V 8'6 3 wt 4 piece for myself and like the results.

Here's what I did and why. It's based on hunches not science. Others probably strongly disagree. Because I build so few rods I have no way to make sound comparisons to the results achievable using other methods.

Used 8 (cheap and heavy) hialoy ceramics + tip
- I hate the the noise and line wear from unlined guides.
- I'm too cheap to pay for expensive guides.
- I think that all the ceramics are so hard that harder and more expensive insert materials bring only insignificant improvements in smoothness.
- The real benefits of the more expensive guides is in their weight saving, especially with Ti frames (as oppposed to Ti coatings)
- 9 guides aren't necessary. Save weight (and work) by using 8. Maybe you could use even less.
- Grind the feet of your guide back to to about 2/3 of their factory length to reduce guide weight and the the length of the epoxy.
- Don't use a standard tip top. Bind on to the end of the rod the same #6 guide that you use for the guides at the tip end of the rod. I suspect this is much lighter than standard tip tops (even snake or REC style tip tops) because there is no weight from the barrel (tube).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2007 02:02PM by David McDonough.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the really informative posts. Ok so here is what I did - I ordered the REC AUSL reel seat in black with a Maple Bird's Eye spacer (I have a REC PLRN cork seat with sliding rings and will make the final choice when I have everything in front of me but I will probably use the former and put the cork seat on a owt or 1wt down the line), REC light wire snake guides (Quite a few bad reports about the H&H). I have a set of single foot guides here and I will make the choice when they are infront of me.

It seems from Tom's post that action will not really be effected by snake vs single foot and if one does what David suggests and grind the ends back slightly it should reduce the weight and hence not affect the recovery that much.

Will let you know how it turns out.

Regards,
Gavin