Fellow Rod Builders:

I recently used a Fetha Styx casting rod which has a weighed butt. the additional weight balanced the rod incredibly. Does anyone know where to purchase, or how to build a weighted butt to enhance the balance of a spinning or casting rod?

Thanks for all your help.

I purchased mine from Mudhole for somewhere in the neighborhood of $3. Theres a couple different types out there though.

Tolan,
I typically balance the blank, during the build process.
Through a bunch of trial and error - I have a good feeling for the balance point required of a given rod style / type - when the blank is bare.
i.e experience will teach you how much weight you need to add to the bare blank at a particular point - before adding any other hardware - i..e handle, reel seat, guides or finish.
The way that I balance the "blank" is to wrap lead tape on the outside of the blank in the last 1/2, 3/4, or inch of the blank.
By only adding weight at the extreme rear of the blank, you get maximum balance effect - with minimum addition of weight.
Lead tape is availalbe in widths ranging from 1/4 inch to over 2 inches wide. A common manufactuer is 3-M corp. Lead tape is widely used in industry for things like electronic enclosure sealing and other uses.

As a general rule - for most spinning and casting reels with butt grips of 7-8 inches - i have found that a bare blank balance point of about 17-18 inches normally works out quite well.

I normally use cork to make my grips. I build the grips on the rod. So, I ream out the first ring or two to accomodate the lead tape. Then, the rest of the handle and reel seat is built in a comventional way. You need to make sure that your lead tape build up is at least 1/8th smaller than the smallest section of cork that will be on the outside of the lead tape. So, plan in advance - for the type handle being built and make sure to keep the diameter of the lead tape build up under this requirement.

Take care
Roger

If it is a custom rod it can be done quite effectively. Sometimes it is good and others it ends up being bad. I will not use the "S" word on Christmas Day! On a swim bait rod that is 90 inches long or longer it is almost a must to balance if the fisherman plans on throwing it all day. Take a look at the attached picture and see how I use rifle shell casings. Fill them with the correct amount of lead for balance. They can be removable if the fisherman wants the best of both worlds, i.e. balance and "S". Then if they can not hook the fish they have the option to Blow Them Out Of The Water!

[www.rodbuilding.org]

Visit Swampland Booth at ICRBE and take the "S" and Balance Test to see how it works. Emory - I am officially inviting you to the Show to act as official recorder and final judge for the "S" tests.

Gon Cookn

[www.rodbuilding.org]

Here is a shot of the system that I use. It is a brass thread insert epoxied into the end of the rod and a threaded hood bumper from a car. It has a 1 1/8 inch dia slightly domed rubber coated head that makes a nice butt cap even if you don’t add any balance washers. By stacking brass washers under the bumper you can adjust the balance to fit any combination. Since the weights are cantilevered off the back of the rod you get the maximum effect of the weights, and can use less weight. You could also use tungsten washers, but last time I priced it brass was $30 per foot and tungsten was $430 per foot.

Mike your drawing of a butt cap looks quite neat. Brass washers may not be the best choice. Here is the Specific Gravity table for materials. Your mention of tungsten at SG 19 would be nice, sure would not take much, but the availability and price makes it the best choice only for "government jobs". Cast lead ant SG of 12 will have to do the trick for me.

[www.reade.com]

Stomak Hurtn

A pair of sliding rings over a cork grip are a traditional way to allow the spinning rod angler to move the position in which the reel is attached, thus helping balance the rod. Surf anglers have used tape to accomplish the same result. After selecting blanks, components and methods of rodbuilding to produce the lightest practical rod - flyrods in particular - adding weight to rods goes against the grain for me.

The Fetha Stix I've seen were just a standard aluminum fighting butt with rubber tip installed instead of a more standard butt cap. The longer Lamiglas rods have had them for a while also. I don't like the unfinished look in relation to the cork so much from most of them. The Munich Man has some with a larger OD on the aluminum end that looks much nicer. They are at the Rod Shop.

Moving the reel to balance the rod may work on ultra light rods used with one hand, but the rods that we are discussing here are heavy power Bass fishing rods which almost always are used for two handed casting. The length of the handle is very important for ergonomic considerations, both for two handed casting and for supporting the rod beneath your elbow. It is still critical to use the lightest parts and construction possible to minimize the amount of counterbalance weight that you have to use.

Bill tungsten would indeed be ideal. When I was designing the system I modeled it both with brass and tungsten, that is one of the beauties of CAD you can do lots if what if iterations. With my system a 1 oz washer in brass is .230 thick, tungsten of the same weight is considerably smaller. In fact that is another downside to using tungsten if you are machining washers from bar stock, in washers ½ oz or less they are so thin that even with a thin cut off tool you end up with more than 50% waste. The best way to manufacture the washers would be to sinter them from powdered metal, that way you have no waste. Fuji sells a kit with tungsten washers in Japan and I believe that they make their washers this way, it is a very nice kit but very expensive.

The reason that I don’t like weight inside of the blank is that you are so limited in the OD of your weights that you have no choice but to make the weight longer. As the weight gets longer it gets closer to the reel seat and gets less effective as a counterbalance. I am not sure how much extra weight you would have to add compared to a system that has the weight entirely behind the end of the blank. When I get back to work I can model it each way and see how much difference it makes.

I have built numerous shakey head rods using Munich Rod Man's round knobs butt sections. They are neat. If you drilled one of them out to remove the aluminum you could probably pour in 300 lbs of tungsten, We are bringing an arm tuck Swim Bait rod with one of Mark's round butt cap balancing systems to High Point for display in the Swampland Booth.