Mr. Jones you are highly intuitive and would quality as a High Class Sommelier Uf de Bayeaux!

Yes!

Specifically Dark Amber and Very Cold!

Tailgating has started - They play a day game tomorrow!

Passing the time while the Couchon de Lait is Roasting!

Sensitive You Know!

I will attempt to evade the "Sensitive Meter" utilized by the ones with uniforms and badges!

A clue to the "Kitty Kat Mystery" - the person who has made only three posts on this forum may be holding the keys!

The light bulb is on, and the curiosity sparked now, Mr. Stevens.

Joe

Joe! I have been missing you on this thread!!!

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Alex Dziengielewski Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That's pretty subjective. Sensitivity is a very
> hard claim to make.
>
> Typically the lighter blank will have the
> sensitvity edge. What would make the heavier rod
> more sensitive in this case?

Okay, Alex, I'll bite. The simple answer is everything! Most importantly, I believe, are the graphite fibers, resin system and scrim type. If you start with the best options in materials, you are more likely to be on your way to achieving a sensitive rod. Next up, comes the build techniques, including mass distribution of added parts, total weight added, materials used in construction, and fitting of parts. Finally come the blank design parameters, flag shape, mandrel design, geometry of the final blank, etc. Then there are variables beyond the builder's control, angler's grip location, tightness of grip, angle the rod is used, etc.

The fact of the matter is that everything affects the way a solid vibrates. I know we emphasize blank contact these days, but think of a casting rod with a typical non exposed blank seat. We are asking a signal created some 100' away to be carried to the rod by the line, through the water. For this signal to make it to the rod, it must be a longitudinal wave (variation in tension of the line) in the line, as the water will dissipate a transverse wave (moving of the line side to side). The amount vibration transmitted to the rod creating a transverse wave (we need the rod to move around in our hand to feel it) is determined by the angle of the line with the rod tip.

The signal will be primarily generated at the tip, but with limited amounts added by guides further down the guide train. Now we expect that signal to travel down the rod passing by each guide where the impedance (ability to transmit vibration) changes a bit, altering the signal a bit each time. Then the signal finally makes it to the seat, where we ask the vibration to transfer from the blank, to a layer of epoxy, to an arbor, to another layer of epoxy, to the reel seat, and finally to the anglers hand. At every junction (5 in total), vibrations are transmitted and reflected. Now think about what happens when your wife asks you a question from several rooms away with doors closed in between. It's impressive that we can feel much of anything with a fishing rod, but with good choice in materials, weight distribution, we can do what we can to be sure as much of that signal gets to the hand as possible.

There are a lot of studies that would be fun to conduct with Emory's set up or Bill's iSensometer, including signal attenuation/shape change due to various construction techniques, materials used, blank materials, blank designs, etc. I could entertain myself for a long long time, I'm sure.

When it comes to testing sensitivity qualitatively and subjectively, I like the carpet test, where you hold the rod like you are fishing and move the tip as lightly as possible across a textured surface. You will feel the difference between rods. My recent exercise of stripping and rebuilding a factory rod, where I had one rod that could remain in factory form, and the other rebuilt to my specs with a removable balancer, was a real eye opener on how build technique and weight distribution affect the final product.

Joe



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2011 11:23PM by Joe Vanfossen.

Joe it is time to go for the throat!

One of your "kind" caused a stir with e = M (C) to the second power!

At the time many called him a nut case!

There is an opportunity for you and your consorts to achieve like status with those who build fishing rods.

Request Federal Funding for grant money to evaluate all aspects of the items casually thrown down in your above post.

A crafty writer could tie the funding request to the economy, people being out of work, no money who will need improvements of fishing rods to feed themselves in the future. A hungry man is more sensititive and needs a better rod!

If you did it correctly you should get enough cash to house a new "observatory" on campus to house a large staff.

This would be more fun than achieving absolute zero and watching all molecular motion come to a stand still!

Gon Fishn

Joe, you seem to have a very analytical mind. I read your post and you piqued my interest, the vibrations that you are talking about are very similar to acoustics. In architecture they will use hard surfaces, angles and shapes to increase acoustics. They use this in opera houses and lecture rooms to eliminate the use of microphones and amplifiers to let the person in the back of the room hear the lecture as well as the person in the front row. How can we use this technology increase the transmission of vibrations of the common fishing rod? I'm not trying to cause a fight on this thread, I'm just curious. Thanks Mark

Mark,

Waves are waves regardless of their form, water, acoustic, etc. So much is governed by the boundary conditions, which is why they use all of those reflective surfaces and shapes in a concert hall. Yes the rod blank 'knows' about that big weight you hang off the back for balance. The effect is large enough to be detected by your hand in the carpet test. In our case, it is about determining what happens at the various boundaries encountered by the vibrations.

To answer your question, just as you can hear somebody singing in a room with padded walls, you can feel things with a poorly built fishing rod, but by applying the same attention to detail as is done in a concert hall, we can give the fishing rod better vibration transmission properties. By taking the time to understand how signals are affected by what is added to the blank, where it is added, how it is constructed, the impact of fiber orientation, blank design, etc., we can help to possibly bring better blanks to the market, and demonstrate how the finished product is altered by the builder.

Joe

Mark asks a good question. Joe mentions boundaries. We could look at the ed of the rod as a boundary and the tap of the fish taking the bait/lure as an incident impulse. It is not wihin our ability to alter the medium (water). I suppose a case could be made for temperature of the water and/or mineral content/salinity. Still, it is what it is.

It has been awhile but if IIRC.....on second thought forget trying to remember. I ask what is the difference....keeping everything else fixed.....if we alter the rod to be less dense than the water as opposed to more dense. Also, while it would seem clear max amplitude is the goal how does speed and wavelength effect our notion of "sensitivity"?

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Russell Brunt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mark asks a good question. Joe mentions
> boundaries. We could look at the ed of the rod as
> a boundary and the tap of the fish taking the
> bait/lure as an incident impulse. It is not wihin
> our ability to alter the medium (water). I
> suppose a case could be made for temperature of
> the water and/or mineral content/salinity. Still,
> it is what it is.
>
> It has been awhile but if IIRC.....on second
> thought forget trying to remember. I ask what is
> the difference....keeping everything else
> fixed.....if we alter the rod to be less dense
> than the water as opposed to more dense. Also,
> while it would seem clear max amplitude is the
> goal how does speed and wavelength effect our
> notion of "sensitivity"?

The signal is caused by the lure stopping under water creating a change in tension on the line. Nylon, fluoro, and spectra/dyneema all have densities comparable to water, give or take a few percent. Blanks have a density, likely in the neighborhood of a factor of 2 more dense than water. It's the steel components that have a density of say about a factor of 8 times more dense than water that provide one place to look for improvement. Nylon guides would be a good thing! I don't know a ball park density for the various epoxies/glues that we use in construction for comparison, but I'm sure it's lower than steel. It should be best to keep our materials as similar as possible in their properties.

The lighter we can make a blank that can stand up to the task the better.

The signal will be coming in as a wave packet, an addition of many wavelengths. The vibrations travel through the blank much faster than our nervous system can register them, so what we feel is the rods response to the wave packet during the time it takes to dissipate the signal.

If you give the carpet test to a rod with a removable balancer, the added inertia of the weight causes the rod to take longer to damp the signal. The result is noise transmitted to the hand. Remove the weight, and the rod will feel much more crisp. I was on the fence of whether the added weight would make a difference, but after doing some qualitative testing, I'm convinced. It doesn't mean that I don't think balancers should be used in some circumstances, but it does mean that I will carefully consider whether one is needed.

Hope this helps.

Joe

Rod sensitivity is determined by a couple of things. One is stiffness-to-weight ratio. A heavier rod could be more sensitive than a lighter one if it is stiffer to some degree.

The rod sensitivity tester Bill Stevens teases us with should be able to tell us what we need to know with some hard math numbers and science. Will it be ready for the show?

However, the big question is whether it will measure the sensitivity of the line and the reel also, the entire rig (Bill?). Baitcasters may be simply a matter of weight, since the line goes direct to the spool, but spinning reels are more complicated due to the rotor flex of different materials. There can be a big difference between metal and plastic reels. Even the type of spool can make a difference you can feel in the hand!

Line might be simpler... we know fluoro and braid rule... or do they? Did you know that mono stretch factors are well known by the manufacturers, and different ones can range from 16% - 30%? There can be big differences in the sensitivity of various monos. I can tell the difference between a mono that stretches 18% and one that stretches 23% with a very sensitive rod and reel. And some monos can get very close to the sensitivity of fluorocarbon lines.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2012 12:24PM by Gary Snyder.

Gary Snyder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rod sensitivity is determined by a couple of
> things. One is stiffness-to-weight ratio. A
> heavier rod could be more sensitive than a lighter
> one if it is stiffer to some degree.
>
> Velocity of vibration propagation also plays a
> part. Vibrations travel at different speeds
> through different materials, including rods,
> depending on what they are made out of and how
> they are assembled. A higher velocity may get more
> vibration to your hand.

The past may come back to bite us again. These issues have been on the table for a long time. [www.google.com] Take a look at the dates involved.

>
> The rod sensitivity tester Bill Stevens teases us
> with should be able to tell us what we need to
> know with some hard math numbers and science. Will
> it be ready for the show?

Bill may not have been teasing. Who knows what is cooking out there?

>
> However, the big question is whether it will
> measure the sensitivity of the line and the reel
> also, the entire rig (Bill?).

This is where study of the angle of the rod with relation to the line comes in. Point the rod toward the source of the signal, and you look at how the signal is transferred from the line through the reel to the rod. Have the rod and line perpendicular and you get to look at how the signal is transmitted from the line to the rod.

>Baitcasters may be
> simply a matter of weight, since the line goes
> direct to the spool, but spinning reels are more
> complicated due to the rotor flex of different
> materials. There can be a big difference between
> metal and plastic reels. Even the type of spool
> can make a difference you can feel in the hand!
>
> Line might be simpler... we know fluoro and braid
> rule... or do they? Did you know that mono stretch
> factors are well known by the manufacturers, and
> different ones can range from 16% - 30%? There can
> be big differences in the sensitivity of various
> monos. I can tell the difference between a mono
> that stretches 18% and one that stretches 23% with
> a very sensitive rod and reel. And some monos can
> get very close to the sensitivity of fluorocarbon
> lines.

Of course, the whole package should be considered. Line plays a big role, but no one line fits the bill for every task. The results of a systematic study of the physics involved could have far reaching effects.

Joe

Build it go fishin and have fun

Bill - willierods.com

Joe I have tried to resist posting but I can't. I find some of what you suggest seems counter to my line of reasoning. Just to be clear I'm in the keep it as "light and stiff as possible" camp.

If I understand you correctly you are suggesting that "dumbing down" the response (in the time domain) might net us an actual increase due to limitations in human senses. I understand I am phrasing this in a crude manner but I think it will suffice. Am I remotely getting your point?

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Russ,

Don't hold back. I wouldn't have said something publicly if I didn't want to discuss things. I'm also happy to discuss privately as well.

Anything I've done with the limited capabilities in my shop point to light and rigid as a good thing. Rather than dumbing things down in the time domain, my ideas are for attempting to clean up the signals traveling through our rods. Weight reduction, particularly in the tip section goes a long way to doing that. Beyond that a carful study of the physics of the rod blank, materials used in each step of construction, and construction techniques may all lend insight on how to get the most from our rods. When thinking about waves in objects with cylindrical symmetry, things aren't always as straight forward as they seem. For example, fluorocarbon has an index of refraction very close to that of water. The physics of light traveling through a slab say that fluoro should disappear underwater. The problem is that the cylindrical geometry of the line never allow the problem to become similar to light propagating through a slab, making fluoro just as visible under water as nylon mono.

Joe

Keep in mind also that a light-weight rod is a benefit by itself... a lighter rod will be more fun and reduce fatigue. All that's need to build a light rod is a common scale. Building a light rod is straightforward. It's not rocket science.

And because you are addressing one of the mothers of sensitivity, they tend to be very sensitive also.

When I got back into rod building after a long hiatus, I wanted the most sensitive rod I could build. Now, as I have gotten a little older and more experienced, my goals have changed; I now want the lightest rod/rig that will do the job. And like I said, it's really easy with one simple tool, a scale.

This year, I went from a spinning reel that weighs 8oz. to a Patriarch 9530 which is only 6.3oz. For the first time, I actually heard the rod vibrate on the hit on a still day. I had never experienced sensitivity like that before. It was a nice surprise.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2011 12:03PM by Gary Snyder.

At this point, I'll open the bean can a little, and hopefully don't spill the whole thing. As builders, (particularly the ones in business) we attempt to sell people on our knowledge of the fishing rod. We know that assembly techniques, materials used, total weight, mass distribution all affect the final build. Few people have a means to quantify how things are affected. Far too often, we take the 'that's good enough for me approach' in rodbuilding and call it a day. What my ideas involve is a quantification of how a signal is transmitted through the rod, where it is attenuated, where it is reflected, and the list goes on.

Joe