Yesterday, ,my ISJ781 broke. This was our second custom rod and It broke in almost the same place as the first one. My son Sam took it from me to clear a snarl in the reel because I did not have my glasses. I turned away for minute and when I looked back at him he was holding the 14 inches of the tip in one hand and the rest in his other. I asked what happened and he said that after clearing the line he just gave it tug to flex the rod to see how it loaded or something and it just snapped. The first one we built met a similar fate. It was an ISB 780. Does anyone know if these light action RX7's are notoriously fragile? How about warranties and replacements from the company? Anybody had any experience with that? I am not interested in splicing it back together. I want to just salvage my guides and build again. I bought three of these blanks at the same time . The one that is left is a ISB 841 I believe but I am now reluctant to go to the trouble of building it .We were on a camping ,fishing trip and had stopped at the base of Fontanna Dam when the rod broke. We went on to Calderwood and fished The Cheoah River until this evening . The only back up rod I had with me was a 6weight fly rod. We still managed to catch a lot of fish but I really liked the action of that rod.

Nope, not fragile at all! I have several ISJ781s, and ISB780 & 781s out there. I used an ISB781 as a dock skipper with 20lb braid for several years and high-sticked it on purpose to see how it behaved because I know how bass fisherman really do it. How was he holding the rod when he "gave it a tug"? Maybe the guides are wrapped too tight or the guide feet were not prepped properly? Not accusing, just looking for answers.


Chuck

Was he holding the line or lure in hand - was the blank pointed away from him when he pulled back on the line or lure to check the action?

That rod has a limited lifetime warranty on it , and when you bought the blank, it should have had the warranty tag included with it.
You might contact Batson direct and talk to them regarding the breakage. Unhide you email, and I will send you my contact person at Batson

Ron Weber

He showed me what he did on his falcon lfs692 .While holding the handle with one hand and pulling the line with the other ,he severely bent the rod. The falcon was unaffected by this treatment. I asked him about three times why he would do that. I still don't know. He is 15. I unhid my e-mail.

The rod was broken by missuse.

He esentially high sticked the rod.

Hollow graphite blanks will fail in compression when improperly loaded. See Library at top of this page - article on proper rod use.

If the terms of the warranty were properly enforced you would not be entitled to a new rod blank in this instance.

Certainly not the second time - the 15 years old need some help.

Ed,
As Bill pointed out, most of todays rods will take a bend up to about 90 degrees.
If you bend the blank past 90 degrees, all bets are off as to whether the blank will survive.

Good luck and enjoy the hobby.

If it were my rod, I would splice the rod and go back to fishing.

With a good repair job, you will lose little if any of the action and with a good repair job, the repair will be barly noticable.

Do and inner, and outersleeve, and a short wrap at each end of the outer sleeve after you have used 5 minute epoxy to glue the 4 pieces together all at the same time. Then, to a finish wrap overcoat for the thread wrap at each end of the outersleeve to prevent splitting and you will be good to go.

The actual repair should take you less than 30 minutes, including the rod coating.

Tough to build a rod in 30 minutes.

Take care
Roger

That was the magic words , Severly Bent. Hate to say it but that was misuse and shouldn't even be considered for warranty replacement.

Aha, now the story comes out after I defend their warranty policy.

Ron Weber

Thanks for your comments. I am not trying to beat anybody out of anything and have not misrepresented the facts at any time. I am going to get my son to read this stuff so hopefully he will learn from the experience. Some rod companies have unconditional warranties though .Redington ,for example replaces damaged rods without warranty registration or chastisement in any form .Have a good day .

I have watched family members severely bend their ISJ781 walleye rods and they did not break. It is possible that the rod was damaged earlier - banged against something or nicked, etc. and then it failed during the deep bend.

One of the things we discovered while researching the article on rod breakage was that most graphite rods can withstand a pretty severe bend, even well beyond 90 degrees (still not a good idea and never necessary) provided it is in sound condition. We high sticked one blank model with 11 or 12 pounds of total load and had no problems. The butt was pointing straight up, the tip straight down. But when we created a small nick on the tip area and repeated the test, the same model then failed at less than 3 pounds each and every time. This is exactly what Chuck is describing above.

Ed,

What you want to do is return the blank to the manufacturer. Even if they won't replace it outright they will often provide you with a new one at a nominal fee.


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Thanks Tom. Sam insists he did not put very much pressure on the rod at all and I am not aware of it getting nicked after we got it. It should not have broken as easily as it did. That being said , I am not ready to give up on this brand. Stuff happens.

Ed you remarked it was your second custom rod. Is it fair to assume you are new to building rods? If so, that is even more reason to contact the Baston's. You will have the chance to get a valued second opinion as to why your build failed.

If you are doing something wrong in the build better to find out early on. If the blanks were damaged in shipment better to get them replaced before you spend time building the third one. If it turns out to be your son's fault then you can deal with him having just cause.

In any case it is free advice and chances are good that you will come out way ahead of the game with this approach. When people freely admit their (possible) wrong doings most humans are very quick to forgive:)

P.S. I was interested in dead lift abilities of some of the rainshadow blanks. I was asked to email and was shown pictures of rods loaded past (the bottom end of) their ratings in a worst possible high stick condition, i.e. tips brought down beyond the butts in a 180+ degree bend. These were salt water blanks and I was told "If we built fresh water blanks to handle this they would weigh too much and nobody would buy them". I didn't take to mean they couldn't handle the high sticking just that they wouldn't do it at the rods line rating. So I suspect something wasn't right in your case and I hope you can get to the bottom of it and restore your confidence in the brand and your abilities (if there remains any doubt of either).

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

What a lot of people don't understand about graphite rods/blanks from all makers is this. One day during the course of using this rod it may be hit by somebody elses rod, lure, sharp corner on a boat or some other object (use your imagination) and you see no apparant damage, "nick" and you continue to fish with the rod for a fair amount of time and that moment is forgotton. That "knock" could have fractured some of the graphite fibers and during further use, more fibers in that spot could break until one day you are playing a fish, a small one at that or casting the rod and all of a sudden the rod breaks. The fisherman/woman says hey, I was hardly putting any pressure on that fish and it just broke, there must have been something wrong with that rod/blank. Nope the problem happened a long time ago.
Kerry

So everybody is convinced that there is no way any rods come from the factory with defects that cause them to fail within the first few times they are used. It is always the fault of the person using the rod .No way the manufacturer should ever be held responsible . Custom builders should never care or do anything when a customer brings a rod back that they say just broke for no good reason..Just tell the customer it was their fault and tell them they should be more careful,Right?

No - I had a bad run of rod blanks from (withheld company) a few years back. I ordered 6 all the same rod blanks. Three of the six broke in the same place under the same conditions. The company replaced 3 of the 6 blanks. Since you seem to have three different blanks it is unlikely that it is a bad run from the manufacturer

Ed,

Almost. If you read the in-depth article in RodMaker on how to spot the causes of various breakage, then you know that 95+% of the time a breakage is due to misuse or abuse by the angler.

Bad blanks do slip out once in a while, but it's a fairly rare thing. It does happen of course, but those type breaks are easy to spot as well. Typically if there is a defect, the blank will fail within the first few times it's flexed. They don't become defective later down the road after having given good service for awhile.

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Or.......you could just send the broken blanks back to the manufactuter and let THEM determine why it broke. If it was defective they will replace it at no charge. You can talk and guess all you want but if it was me I would just SEND IT BACK and see what they say.

Tom's article on broken rods is a educational and informative to all. It shows the difference between a factory failure and customer failure. I had a warranty guy demonstrate why a fish does. It is generally the user who causes a rod to fail not break rods. Now how close was the break to a guide. Not saying it was a guide but if the feet were incorrectly prep and there was a rough edge. That edge could have scratch the blank and caused a failure. Also Kerry's explanation is well worth looking into.

Good Wraps Bob