What - if any - is the advantage to rotating the guides to the right side of the rod as opposed to the left? For some unfounded reason it seems natural to me to go to the left but see many going right.
Burt

Not an advantage either way, unless you want to have the guides not touching the surface if the rod is laid down flat, will depend on the location of the reel handle/crank. If the crank is on the left, set the guides to the right.

I like to spiral the guides in the same direction as the side of the rod that has the reel handle on it.
Then, as Fred suggested, if the rod is laid on a surface, the guides will be primarily facing up, rather than rubbing on the surface.

Be safe

I do spirals differently depending on whether the rod will be used with a reel that has a levelwind. On levelwind-reel spirals, I put the guides on the same side of the rod as the reel handle, for the reasons that Roger and Fred mentioned.

On non-levelwind rods, though, I do the opposite: I put the guides on the OPPOSITE side of the reel handle. For a guy who cranks the reel with his right hand, the spiral would go around the blank on the left. I do this because (duh) with a non-levelwind reel, ya gotta level the line with your left thumb, and spiral the guides on the left side of the blank makes this task easier to do.

There's no right or wrong way, though: you can do whatever floats your boat. A spiral will work equally well with the guides on either side.

Thanks - how cool to get good feed back so quick
Burt

I do exactly what Chris described above.

Taking it one further step, if you are using a levelwind reel and there is a likelihood that large amounts of line will be removed from the reel during the normal course of usage, you may want to place your stripper guide a few degrees opposite the direction or rotation so that the line is centered down the middle of the blank. This will assure the line does not stack towards the side of the reel spool towards the direction of rotation. This really is only a concern when fishing for large predator fish that have the capability to nearly empty a reel as they make long runs stripping hundreds of yards of line from the reel.

these guys got it down...always the same side as the handle.....

What are the key reasons to do a spiral wrap? Ive heard a variety of things out here like the rod twisting in your hand, etc. I thought it helps keep the line off the blank and allows you to use the natural curve of the blank.


Best,
Danny Colville
Colville Outfitters and Custom Tackle

In short --- you don't fight the rod buy trying to keep it upright easyer to fish with just like a spinning rod

When the guides are placed on pull line out and put weight on as a heavy fish Retreve the line and do this many times to make sure the line does not stack on ONE side of the reel
If it does Adjust the guides so it does not

On heavy salt with no level wind it is better to have the line IF STACKING go on the center or slightly left if right handed so the user can - push --the line over with his left thumb

Bill - willierods.com

By the way,

After having built many many spiral wrapped rods, I never place the butt guide at 0 degrees to the reel. This is true of non level wind reels, as well as self leveling reels.

If I don't offset the first butt guide a few degrees - I always end up with the line stacking to one side of the reel.

However, by offsetting the butt guide that appropriate number of degrees in the direction that eliminates the stacking will resolve the issue. .

To check for this issue, after taping the guides in place - before wrapping, I put on the reel that will be used with the rod.

Then, I pull off about 100 to 200 feet of line and let it stack on the floor. Then, holding slight tension on the line after the tip of the rod, I reel in the line - noting how the line gets laid on the rod, with no thumb intervention. Especially for levling reels, my goal is to have the line end up lying equally across the full width of the reel spool. If I am finding that the line is stacking to one side or the other side of the spool, I will slightly rotate the butt guide, and continue testing and rotating the butt guide until I find that I get a perfectly level lay of the line on the spool.

This generally ends up with a butt guide offset of 5-10 degrees in the direction to reduce the line stacking. Depending on guide style and particular reel, you may find that you have to offset right, or offset left.

Be safe



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2013 11:52AM by roger wilson.

Weird. I wonder why the Forhan Revolver and Slow Spiral recommend 0 to -10 degrees offset to the first guide (i.e. away from the direction of spiral) if it would cause stacking.

rick sodke Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Weird. I wonder why the Forhan Revolver and Slow
> Spiral recommend 0 to -10 degrees offset to the
> first guide (i.e. away from the direction of
> spiral) if it would cause stacking.


On some rods where you are repeatedly removing and retrieving only a small amount of line, like on a bass casting rod, and there is little chance of ever emptying a reel and having to retrieve an entire spool of line, the small amount of stacking to one side is negligable, especially if the person who fills the reel pre-stacks it slightly to the opposite side when the reel is filled.

On the trolling rods I build, line stacking is a prime concern with levelwind reels because a large predator fish can strip 200-400 yards, not feet, of line from the reel. A few years back, I got a call from a charter captain looking for help because over the winter he made himself a set of spiral wrapped rods and he followed one of the plans that suggested about a 10 degree offset in the direction of the spiral. The first big fish of the season on one of these rods stripped off about 300 yards of line on its initial run. Later, when the customer had the fish about 40-50 feet from the transom of the boat, the customer told the captain he had a problem, he couldn't turn the reel handle. The Captain discovered the line had stacked to one side so severely that the line was binding on the inside of the frame crossbars. I ended up having to re-tie the first couple guides on every rod to correct the problem.

I think the topics of when, how, and why to vary away from the traditional spiral systems are topics that have not been well examined yet. There's also seems to be two schools of thought about whether the line path through the spiral should be as straight as possible or a second concept that the line should bend somewhat at the guide. The straight line approach probably works best with hand-held casting rods, and the latter seems better suited to rods that are heavily loaded while fighting fish. A third dichotomy seems to be with guide sizing for the actual reduction; some approach this from a gradual standpoint (16,12, 10, 8) while others might have just two guide sizes a larger stripper and then immediately go to running guides for all the rest of the guides.

I think what we should be taking from all this is that we should not be using any of the "systems" without forethought as to how the rod will be used. A lot of the systems were developed for casting rods and do not translate well to rods used for trolling or fighting large fish. The general concept of getting the guides underneath the blank is the key, how you get the line there is best dictated by what the rod is built to do. When I build a spiral trolling rod, I spend a LOT of time tinkering with the guide location and angles and I try to simulate the effect of loading a rod to take into consideration everything from landing a small undersized fish, to a "screamer" that nearly empties the reel. Just like every other rod build, spiral wrapped blanks have a story to tell - you just have to experiment from the traditional spiral "systems" to know what to look for, and which factors are important considerations for your particular build.

One last thought is how long the reel will be matched with the rods. If it's probably going to be a lifetime pairing, then running the line through the rod to see how the two work together as a team to either prevent stacking (or possibly cause stacking - for non-levelwinds) is probably a solid approach. For me, this sometimes is not a concern because some of the captains I build for have affiliations as pro-staffers with reel companies, and the reels sometimes change from year to year. If this is the case, I try to cover future reels by assuring that I place the stripper guide so that the line is centered above the blank. I'm doing more of that now, even with the non-charter customers as the guys who can afford custom rods tend to update their reels somewhat regularly as new models are introduced.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2013 12:19PM by John E Powell.