I have two rods in front me. The first rod is a shelf rod it's a Cumara 6' 10" mh. The other rod is one I just built a few weeks ago it's a 7' mh with micros. I built this rod as light as possible and it is. When I weighed the two rods I was glad to see my rod weighs slightly less yet the Cumara feels alot lighter then mine. I'm thinking the Cumara is weighted in the butt cap but I`m not sure.

What's are your thoughts on this? Should I try adding weight? I realy don't want to make my rod heavier.

It could be where you have your reel seat, i know that on my rods, one reel seat is at like 11 inches on a 7'3", and the othe is at like 9 inches, and it made the rod feel heavier, then the one with the reel seat at 11". this is just my guess. I've only been building for like a year now, so I am sure that you will get some other builders to give their input on this subject, tight lines.

How the rod balances determines how heavy or light it may "feel." But the scales don't lie. If your rod weighs less, then it's less.

I don't like adding unnecessary weight. Some will do it, however, to achieve the balance they want. This comes down to a matter of personal preference.

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

Are you comparing apples to apples? Compare the two rods with the reels installed. A rod can feel heavier than it actually is if it is not balanced properly. The added stress on the wrist can seem like the rod is heavier because you constantly need to apply force to compensate. A balanced rod will seem lighter, even if it is actually slightly heavier, than an unbalanced rod.

Hope this helps,
Andres Perez
Miami, FL

What you are feeling is the difference between weight and swing weight. Weight is simple the static measurement of the overall weight of the rod, however, what you feel when you cast the rod is swing weight, which is a dynamic measurement of inertia. Swing weight is affected by where the actual weight is located on the rod (how it is balanced) and the balance point on the rod. In golfing, there is actually a method of measuring swing weight on any particular rod. I don't know if anything actually exists that measures it on fishing rods.

Tom Kirkman Wrote:
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> I don't like adding unnecessary weight. Some will
> do it, however, to achieve the balance they want.
> This comes down to a matter of personal
> preference.
>
> ................

It also depends on how much weight you have to add to achieve balance. If you can do it with a small amount of weight, one would be a fool not to do it, as balanced rods are much less tiring to fish with. If you're talking about a 12-foot Harnell surf rod, where I think you'd have to put an anvil inside the butt cap to counteract the tip-heaviness and to achieve good balance, then the tradeoff between balance and overall weight is probably not worth making.

I virtually never add any weight to a finished rod, because A) doing so runs counter to my belief that less weight = better rods, and B) because the types of rods that I build (surf rods, mostly) are naturally tip-heavy, and require too much added weight to counteract this. But on any rod I build, if I could achieve perfect balance by adding an ounce or two somewhere, I'd do it, becasue the 1 or 2 oz. of overall added weight is a small price to pay for a rod that is perfectly balanced in the hand.

Steven,
Did you use a heavier tip top ?
Did you use more guides closer to the tip ?
Are you comparing wire guides to insert guides ?
Did the bare blank "feel" tip heavy ?
Does the new blank have a smaller butt dia or a larger tip dia ?
You are feeling the effect of dynamic inertia based on how the rod mass is distributed.
You can remove 10 grams of static weight to a reelseat but the addition of .1 gram to a tip top will be felt when the rod is moved.

Eugene Moore

I guess it's the blanks. My real seat is 1/2" furthrr up. The tip of my rod is 2.27 and the cumara is 2.02. The butt on mine is 14.50 the other 12.50. I have 10 american tackle micro's with matching top.