I am building a Batson RX7 9ft 7WT and would like to try to get by with nine guides. I need a nine guide spacing plan to use as a starting point. I will be casting short distance and would like only one stripper. Most of the charts on web call for 10 guides and two strippers. Thanks for any help.

Tom,
9 guides plus tip top
guide sizes
(3) #2 Recoil titanium light wire double foot ( snake )
(3) #3 hard chrome double foot (snake )
(2) #4 hard chrome double foot ( snake )
#12 Alox double foot
Guide locations from tip
3.8 8.4 13.9 20.3 28.0 37.2 48.0 61.0 76.4 distance in inches

Hi Eugene,
Why three different sizes of snake guides? Why not just one size? What ever you use near the tip top ought to work along the full length of the rod. I used to build my fly rods the way you suggested, but I didn't know why I did it that way except that everybody did it that way. At that time I also built all my spinning rods using the "Cone of Flight" guide size and spacing as well. Today I use the NGC for my spinning rods. Just my 0.02 dollars worth.
Mike Blomme

You will get a straighter and smoother line path, with some minor reduction in weight, by dumping the #3's and #4's and going right to the #2's.

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Mike,
I prefer to use as large a guide as possible but don't want the weight penalty of large guides at the tip. As the guides progresses closer to my hand their moment of inertia decreases allowing the use of larger and heavier guides. The concept of a straight line path on a bent rod escapes me entirely. It looks good on the bench but when the rod is in motion, it's always in a curve. When a fly rod is straight it's doing nothing.
That's the way I build. My build is based on the inertial effects of the guide train and their effect on the response frequency of the blank. Nothing to do with cone of flight whatever that's supposed to mean. I like a rod that swings lightly and responds quickly. This approach gives me these results.
The use of the large guides allow the coil memory of the line to go through guides with less contact so it shoots better.

Eugene Moore

Cone of Flight is a spinning rod system.

What both MIke and I were referring to, was the use of the size 4 and 3 guides. If your line and connections will pass through a size 2, then you can move right on down to that size once you're past the stripping guide. The line path is actually straighter if you do.

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Why don't you drop a note to Karry Batson. He'll send you a recipe.

Thanks for the replies gents. I will have # 2's most of the way up the rod and then #4's and one stripper. I have a custom sage XP that was built for me a few years back but found the rod to be way to fast for my casting style. The good thing about having it built for me is that it got me into rod building. That I will always cherish about the rod. I use it to gage my progress. The guy that built it could make epoxy work for him like a well trained air brusher. The outer epoxy line on the guides are as straight as I have ever seen and the depth of finish is even and perfect without any flaws. I am going to try Eugenes recipe and then static test. If all else will call Kerry.

I've often found the recipes found on the RS site call for more guides than I want to use as well. While I'm admittedly not a prolific or expert builder, the old length in feet plus one formula seems to work pretty well for those blanks as well. I must say Eugene has a point about the dynamic flex of a fly rod shooting line, and being conceptually different than a spinning or casting rod,

Brian

Fly rod blanks are really no different than casting or spinning blanks. They're all just tubular shafts and the blank has no idea if it's casting a fly line or a bass lure.

It's long been a popular notion among fly rodders that the blanks used for making fly rods are somehow inherently different than spinning or casting rods, but the fact is, they're not.

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