I am building my second casting rod and have glued the grip and cork using the straightest axis method. I have used tubing and tape to attach the guides in conventional, simple and what I think is a revolver spiral and have been making test casts. The guides and the tip top(which is simply taped on) on the upper half of the rod keep ending up rotating under the tubing or tape to where they are 90degrees to the right of where I have placed them. I have repeated this problem several times. I checked the spine of the rod and where the guides always end up is the inside curve of the spine. Is this the guides wanting to go to the spine when I am casting or retrieving or do you think that it might be the tip top rotating on the cast and the upper guides following? I ran out of daylight so I will have to pick up on it again tomorrow and see if attaching the tip top more securely might help. Thanks for any advice.

Andy

No, the guides will always want to be on the bottom. They are in effect, lever arms. They will follow the direction any load is coming from including when you cast. The important thing is, what happens when the rod is under a fish fighting load? This is the important aspect of guide placement.

Do this - rig the rod up again, and put the rod under load as if you were fighting a fish - hang some weight from the line. I guarantee you that the guides will move to and stay on the bottom of the rod. Guaranteed. And they will do this no matter where you orient the spine.

All casting rods with the guides on top are inherently unstable, and again, this is true no matter what you choose to do with the spine. The guides will always move towards the direction the applied load is coming from.

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It is because you are casting and not retrieving through pressure (water) so they are getting torqued on the cast and not realigned when you are reeling. Same thing happened to my first spiral.

But if you look at the amount of time you spend in the act of casting vs the amount of time spent retrieving and you will realize it makes sense to have the guides on the bottom.

Tell me if I'm wrong here, but isn't the torque nonexistent when the rod is in-line with the line as is usually the case when retrieving the lure. Even when in the act of fighting a fish, that part of the rod which is bent in-line with the line can not be exerting a torque on the guides. Only those guides which are at an angle to the line can induce a torque and the closer the angle is to 90 degrees the greater the torque.

John,

You are never going to able to cast, retrieve and fight a fish on a perfect nor single axis or plane. The guides will always attempt to turn and twist towards the direction the load is coming from and that direction is going to vary.

The Spiral Wrap Demo Device which I've carried to several Expos now, has one rod set up with the spine on top (where proponents say it will eliminate rod twist) and with a weight hanging straight down below it on the 0 axis, it's still impossible to keep the rod from flipping over. Trying to maintain that perfect alignment on the 0 axis just isn't practical nor possible in actual fishing situations.


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When you cast, are you right handed? It seems if you are right handed you would have your spiral going to the right to help keep the line off the blank when you make your cast. That puts the load of whatever your are casting to the right as you hold the rod. Unless you cast the rod from behind you going straight overhead as you make the cast, you most likely hold the rod to one side or the other during the casting motion. The tip top will be somewhat pulled the direction of whatever side you cast toward and if your bumper guide is also that direction it makes sense the guides in between will want to line up in a straight line between the tip top and the bumper guide as the line tries to follow a straight path. Perhaps I am off on this, but maybe not. I think it just happens that in this case your rod spine was in the same direction as the pull from what you are casting.
What happens if you rotate the top section 180 to put your spine to the left and make the same test casts in the same fashion with the same weight? I'm guessing the guides will still pull the way you cast regardless of how you orient the spine.

I agree with Tom. I think the pull is from the tug of the line / casting weight acting on the guides, not the spine. It will be interesting to hear your results.

Andy K

His experience is going to be the same, no matter where he orients the spine. The lever arm effect of the guides trumps the spine every time.

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Tom, I agree with what you are saying. I'm just trying to give a fuller understanding (at least in my opinion ) as to of what is going on.

There is no torque on those guides that induce no change in the angle in the line as it passes through them because there would be no force on those guides. Am I wrong?

Theoretically there is no torque about the rod whether the guides are mounted on top or the bottom if the pull on the line is straight down. However, if the guides are mounted on top, the slightest off-center force will cause an unstable condition that will result in increasing torque that will peak when the guides rotate to 90 degrees to the force. From this point the torque will decrease as the guides rotate to the bottom of the rod. This would be the most stable location.

The torque occurs first at the rod tip and as the rod flexes each successive guide receives more force (assuming the line changes direction). The taller the guide and/or the bigger guide's I.D. the greater the torque. And as the line becomes parallel to the rod tip, as the tip flexes, the torque decreases and is virtually nonexistent anywhere the line is parallel to the rod (no change in the angle of the line as it passes through a guide).

When considering the effects of torque, I would think that it would be advantageous for the guides to spiral to the bottom of the rod as soon as possible. And the stiffer the rod (or rod section) the more important that the guides be on the bottom.

Seems to me that you have it all figured out. Very well put.

Again, you can't really have that situation where the guides are on top and the load is always going to be exactly opposite. It's like trying to walk a tightrope. The slightest shift or movement of the load and suddenly you're off that 0 degree axis and the lever arm effect predominates.

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Ok,
Tom I just finished reading on the subject in your book. There you say that orientation of the spine on the rod is very much the builders own preference since the factors mentioned above and in the book really throws the school on spine out of the window.
So, on a spiral rod it seems better to locate the front guides on the inside curve?
And like stated by John, make the transition from the outside curve to the inside as soon as possible?

A spiral wrapped rod makes the rod inherently stable so spine is of absolutely no concern. I build on the straightest axis. You can do whatever you want.

The line will automatically transition to the bottom of the rod very quickly - if you'll let it. This is what the Simple Spiral does. It allows the line to quickly move to the bottom of the rod. Other spiral wrap systems attempt to keep the line up on top and then on the side of the rod for some distance rather than letting it quickly make its way to the bottom.

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