I'm rebuilding 4 old glass rods, 6 1/2 - 7 foot, for Wisconsin laker trolling with 30 - 40 pound wire. Tips are between size 8 - 11 and all have old roller tips. Customer wants new roller tips, any favorites? Also, are carbide and silicon nitride boat guides the way to go? These rods will done "retro" style and the guy will be using some really nice vintage Penn and Pfleuger levelwinds.
Thanks,
Tom

Tom White
Rod & Reel Restoration

Tom,
If I was going to redo a wire rod - I would go with roller guides and tips all of the way.
Tough to beat the rollers to reduce friction.

Take care
Roger

Silicon Nitride was introduced for wire line rods. They work well and hold up just fine.

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

And they are nicely priced.

Bill - willierods.com

I build about 30 wireline trolling rods for great lakes salmon guys every year. The Silicon Nitride guides are fine for fishermen that fish occasionally. For charter or serious sportfishermen, go rollers, the SN guides will at some point groove. I have a pair of them running on a charter boat out of Ludington. This particular charter runs about 200 trips a year and his wire rods are the first in and last out every day. After two seasons, you can see and feel damage to the rings. They may fail this year, or three from now, but they will fail. I guessing that they will last somewheres between 300-500 fish caught before needing replacement, which is similiar to some longline fishermen's feedback I got a while back on them. Most of us sportfishermen will never catch 300 fish on any single trolling rod in a lifetime, so if that is the intended frequency of usage, don't hesitate to use them. My own personal wire line rods are SN in a spiral and twilly tip. I do about 20 salmon trips a year and have fished these rods for three seasons now and see no abrasion on mine, yet.

I have found that the "Twilly" tip is actually better for wire than even the very expensive swivel tips. With roller tips and roller guides, the rod's twist will cause the wire to come out of the roller groove and make short work of the roller tips frame, not to mention curling the wire line like a ribbon and scissors. Guide up rods with wire really torque due to the no stretch thing. The Twilly isn't much to look at, but it is cheap and is the most effective way to tame wire line. The Twilly also works equally well with a spiral configuration. Wire line is a huge part of Great Lakes weaponry, thus I have spent lots of time and money experimenting with this application.

Tony,
After the post, I did further research and learned about the Twilly tip.
I can see where the twilly tip - with its abilty to avoid wire line tangles at the tip, and its ability to keep sharp bends from happenning to the wire really make sense to me to use on a wire rod.

Thanks for the updates.
Roger

Take a look at these: [www.aarollerguides.com]

Some builders even combine ring guides with rollers.

Bill - willierods.com



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2010 08:23AM by bill boettcher.

Tom, Our Carbide guides and tops are made especially for wire line. [www.americantackle.us]

I have used the American Roller spiral tip with some success by utilizing a couple of single foot 6mm sic guides wrapped right onto the tube. It does imitate the twilly by funneling the wire and having some impact on not allowing the wire to get into the hardware on the frames of such guides. Here is the kicker for me. At $7, the twilly gets it done effectively. Spending $20 or more for a roller tip, then adding $15 in SIC guides, more wraps and finish, it just doesn't make sense. Now, on a high end, top dollar rod where absolute asthetics are implied, the extra money is probably warranted. The "Twilly" is as ugly as it gets for a custom rod. Performance is equal. It ends up being a personal decision based on what type of value the customer is looking for-practical or asthetic. I have a spec rod for wire that I will be using myself this next season. I have tried to combine the best of both worlds. I will spiral the wire around the blank using SN boat rod guides, then use American 180 degree rollers to finish out the rod. I haven't seen a SN wire line rod with any damage on the transition guides yet, just the high stress guides. Haven't decided, but will probably put a twilly on it. One other sidenote is that you need to make very sure that you use high enough framed transition guides to GUARANTEE that the wire cannot touch the blank under maximum stress. If it even scuffs the blank, it will cut it like butter.

building a wire rod rated 40 to 80 its an 8ft for striped bass will pull bunker spoons can anyone help roller guides or sic i don't mind the extra work thanks

building a wire rod rated 40 to 80 its an 8ft for striped bass will pull bunker spoons can anyone help roller guides or sic i don't mind the extra work thanks