Sure... I'll go look for them & post them up..... they're in a "left overs" box of random guides

The design wasn't great, but the idea had merit. And they worked fine.

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

Good Morning Ken,
Thank you for your comment about the nylon guide. I haven't seen those. could you post a picture of those guides? I would really like to see what such a guide would look like. Thanks.
Mike Blomme

ok - I found them & will post photos later on this afternoon. They're a nylon frame; ceramic inner ring with a metal band around the outside of the nylon. Actually better than I remember them being.

I've posted a few photos of the nylon guides under "miscellaneous" photos. This is a set of 6 guides from 25 down to 8
[www.rodbuilding.org]
[www.rodbuilding.org]
[www.rodbuilding.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/01/2011 01:32PM by Ken Preston.

Hello Ken.

Thanks Ken, they dont look too bad but I'm sure they could make something more sporty looking these days.

It would be nice to know you wont have any cracking problems.

Thanks again.

Bob,

New Bern, NC.

There is another version, much more lightly built than those. They featured the Daiwa Dynaflow ring (similar to what is now being used on the Pacific Bay Minima guides).

The frames on all the Daiwa nylon guides were very much overbuilt - they took the flexibility out of them so the ceramic rings wouldn't pop out should the frame flex. But again, it was at least a step towards a more modern guide frame material.

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

Thanks for the pictures Ken. My only comment is that they are not as ugly as I envisioned, but they are to my mind still pretty ugly. Tom mentioned that these were a first generation so hopefully something better could be produced today or in the near future.

However, I wondered if it is simply the inflexibility of the metal frame that causes these cracks. I searched around in my workshop and found some old and newer rods. the oldest rod was a 5 foot ultralight spinning rod built on a Harnell blank with chrome plated steel guides, wrapped with nylon thread, and coated with color preserver and three coats of Gudebrod rod varnish. A second rod was an 8 foot salmon mooching rod using a Lamiglas Fiberglass blank. Again I used nylon thread, color preserver, and varnish. A third rod was a graphite blank wrapped with nylon thread and coated with color preserver and one coat of epoxy. All of the aforementioned rods have cracks at the feet of the guides. I know that varnish becomes fairly inflexible hen it gets old. The question is just how flexible the epoxy is.

I then looked at three salmon trolling rods using Batson's graphite blanks. These were all spiral wrapped using Batson's 316 Stainless steel framed guides with nylon thread, covered with color preserver and four coats of PermaGloss. I also examined a surf spinning rod i rebuilt last year which has a 50 year old harnell blank. This rod was wrapped using Fuji Alconite guides with nylon thread and coated with two coats of color preserver and four coats of PermaGloss. There were no signs of any cracking on these rods coated with PermGloss. I know that Tom K. has said that PermaGloss is harder and more flexible than epoxy finishes. I would suggest that the epoxy finish may be part of the problem because it is less flexible than PermaGloss. This is at least an alternative hypothesis that ought to be tested.

Mike Blomme