Good morning..
My first time on the forum and I have been building rods for about a year now. Tons to learn. I have a walleye fishing friend that saw a bait casting rod that "twisted" so that guides starting on top at the reel seat, turned 180 degrees at the tip to enhance vertical jigging. I'd like to give this a try and need some advice. Rod spline on top or bottom? Spacing and how much to turn the first guides to get the rest on the underside? My thought was to add a guide between the last two and twist two guides @ 60 and 120 degrees.. I'd appreciate your advice!

If you use the search function here, and search on spiral wrap, you'll get about a month's worth of reading.

Lot's of choices for methods, but a couple of suggestions to get you started.

The simple spiral, also described in rod maker magazine goes like this.

Place the guides on top as you normally would with your spacing preference.
Rotate all but the butt guide to the bottom of the rod (180 from the butt guide/reel seet)
Add a low profile guide half way between the butt guide and the next guide, and place at 90 degrees.

Flex the rod with line through guides and see that the line contacts the transition guide at the bottom. Some minor adjustment may need to be made to ensure that it is contacting the bottom of the guide and not the side. Rod spine is not important in this method as the guides on the bottom will overwhelm any spine effect.

There are several other methods. This one is easy to implement. The others involve a more gradual transition from top to bottom. I prefer these for casting rods as the line seems to flow better than with the simple spiral.

Go build.

Terry

I see what you mean! Thanks!

Also to let you know, the spiral wrap only makes the rod stable when fighting the fish. It will not have anything to do for enhancing vertical jigging.

I would concur with what Terry said above, although you can rest assured that once the rod is loaded the first 180 degree guide on the bottom will indeed have the line contacting it as the load shifts to that area (which is the only time it matters). You should use the same size guides all along the bottom, or, one size smaller for the first 180 guide and one size larger for all the rest. But do not use any sort of progressive guide sizing. It's not needed.

The Simple Spiral allows the line to transition itself pretty much as it wishes. Other spiral wrap types, all good, actually fight the line a bit, keeping it up top and on the side of the rod longer than the line would prefer.

Tape up a couple different variations and see which one suits you.

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