I've been trying to layout what I need for guides on a Rainshadow 6'6" Spinjig, matched up w/ a tennessee handle and Pflueger President 6735. The face measures 1.75" thus putting my choker guide at 47.25" from the face of the reel. After laying that out and then figuring out where my reel will be placed on the handle and where the center of the spool will be I made my measurements. I got guide height information and then started laying things out.
So here's my question. The only guides I have been able to get to fall within the range that Tom describes for the first Reducing guide (Volume 10 issue 4 of Rodmaker magazine) is from Batson, but they don't offer quite what I was looking for. But the American Tackle guides I'l like to use fall outside of the recommended range.

I plan on running 6's for the running guides, and reducing guides the jury is still out.

I don't know if I can get this photo thing to work but here goes.
[www.rodbuilding.org]

Sorry, but you're never going to do this by plotting numbers. You need to get some guides in hand - a few more sizes than you need, and start plugging them in. It works as advertised and will do so with almost anybody's guide offerings by moving up or down 1 size at a time.

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The top scenario looks good with the guides you circled. I bet it would work fine. But like Tom said this is much easier to do if you have some guides in hand and can just start fiddling around them. I would not even be sure the listed factory heights are totally correct.

I didn't know how big of a deal it is to fall outside of the 4" range for the first reducing guide. If you do which is better, closer or farther from reel or whichever is closer to the window.

Tom, I'm not trying to say that the system doesn't work. Just trying to find what style guide would "roughly" get me close or fall within the criteria you've described in your article. I think it's a GREAT concept and you've proven it out many times and hundreds of people have used it with tremendous results, so I'm convinced it works.

Please be patient with me, I always overanalyze things. It's part of being a geek.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2009 02:18PM by Wade White.

Most Y style guides will work

Hmmmm?

Your quote: "I got guide height information and then started laying things out".

The point on your drawing where you entered 2.4003 - I am assuming that is the bottom of the guide ring - I am elated that you only took it to four decimal places!

Most of this set up work is done to optimize casting performance -

When the spinning reel is in operation during a cast and the spool is spinning round and round where is the line?

Does the dynamic picture of the line in motion on the outbound cast resemble a straight line - casting rods possibly but spinning rods no -

You time has probably been well spent in establishing a range of different guides to buy - get em on the blank and chunk it and you will find the correct placement in a reasonalble time -

Thanks, Bill point well taken. Oh, I didn't reconfigure my dimensioner before I printed it.

I'm beginning to see that I'm thinking on this way too much. I need to just buy the darn guides and get it going and let the guides fall where they may along the line.

Wade

It will be a lot more fun!

Wade,

My point is simply that this is very easy to do with some guides in hand and much, much harder to do on a sheet of paper with height specs. I don't think you'll have any problem with either set of guides but you're going to have to make a decision on what to go with and then order one of each size and spend a few minutes playing with them.

I've seen guys plot this stuff out on paper and then get the guides and the height measurements were off to begin with. The thing is, "which is better - closer or farther from the reel" is something you can only determine by test casting and I don't think you can do that on paper. Unfortunately, custom rod building ends up being a "hands on" type of thing at some point.

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