When you wrap a spiral wrap do you need to have a bumper guide in there? I just layed down some guides on a rod and used a 1/4" turn method that brought the 4th guide directly under the blank. Test cast were very smooth. If I look through the first guide I can see threw the holes of the next 3 guides at an angle leading to the bottom of the blank. From there I spaced out evenly the rest of the guides.

What is the need for placing guides at specific angle degrees if you can get a fluid line path with just some 1/4 turns of the rod? As long as I dont have line touching the blank and the rod casts well do I need to focus on anything else?

- I searched and didnt find a specific answer to this.
- I'm just asking to educate myself, not start a debate on who's method is better.

And as always. Thank you!

Adam,
Bottom line - if it works for you - go for it and enjoy the rod.

That is the wonderful thing about CUSTOM rod building.
You can build a rod in any fashion that you want. If the end result does the job for which it was intended, it is an excellent.

Good fishing.
Roger

The Bumper guide is unique to the Simple Spiral. Other spiral guide systems don't require it because they carry the line around the blank via a series of transition guides.

..........

So what about the specific degree angle some recipes call for. Why is this important?

Thank you for the responses!

The specific degrees is a starting point really. For the rod you are doing, they may need to be adjusted to get the best line flow.

Thanks Mike.

If line flow is the key I think I've got it.

Appreciate the help guys!

Adam, think of it as different ways to get to where you want. Early on some felt the line would go to the bottom and all that was needed was to prevent it touching the blank. They were offsetting the butt guide a few dgrees and going straight to the underneath of the balnk. Others felt it should be done with a few guides a fixed number of degrees apart in a short distance. Still others felt it should be done with a few guides over a longer distance. Then someone decide a bumper guide could be used and performance wouldn't suffer very mush.

IMHO the different camps are somewhat divided by the rods purpose. The heavy salt water crowd might simply offset the butt guide (to clear the blank) and go right to the bottom. The fresh water crowd might think in terms of a guides at 60 degree intervals over a short distance. The surf casting crowd might look to spread those guides over a longer interval for the straightest possible lne path. IMHO each felt justified because it seemed logical but didn't always back up that feeling with rigorous testing.

Then you have the lazy crowd like me who don't notice much degradation of performance with the bumper method and enjoy its ease. So, to me, it depends on the parameters that are most important to you and if you can feel a difference.

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Thank you Russ. I really appreciate the thought out response.

Totally makes sense what your saying about different techniques. Each one calling for a different setup to satisfy the application. That definitely helps for future builds.

Like Russell mentioned, choosing a method for the spiral depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Do you need a rod that absolutely minimizes torque, or is a little side loading acceptable? Are you concerned with the amount of energy lost by accelerating the line (after all, any time you change the direction of the line, it will experience an acceleration during the out cast)? Does it matter which direction the line goes around the blank?

In the end, I don't think you will see huge differences in performance with different techniques. Rather, like a lot of things in rod building, it is a matter of personal preference. Choose what seems logical to you. As a guy who focuses on bass and panfish rods, my preference is leaning very strongly toward a slow spiral that uses 3 or 4 guides to get the line around the blank and carries the spiral pretty far out on the rod. It seems the most logical placement when I consider what I want and need from a casting rod.

Many of my previous spirals have the butt guide at zero degrees, second guide at 90 degrees and the third guide at 180 degrees. I did run into some issues with the line wetting to the blank from using old mono on rare occasions. By slowing down the transition a bit, those problems should go away, and the line path looks better as well.

This is what works best for me, but your mileage may vary.

Joe

My experience has been similar to Jan's. When I was using conventionally-sized guides (i.e. 6-12), I did the simple spiral. I have an entire set of SCIII bass rods using this technique, and they are fantastic. Now that I've started using micro guides (i.e. 3-6), I've been using a slow spiral per the instructions of Duane Richards. Both set-ups work well, and I'd be hard-pressed to say which is better. For the micros, it seems that a slow spiral likely works best. But, there are those who've used the simple spiral with great success while using micros.

Ditto to Andrew. (Thanks again to Duane and Steve) I do find that the slow spiral casts better than the simple (bumper) setup when using micros.