QUESTION : How are Rod Blanks made ?

I'm not talking about current Graphite blanks that use "Pre-Preg" materials and are then baked in an oven . . .

I 'm asking about "Old School" Fiberglass blanks, before "Pre-Preg" was used . . .

The "Old School" blanks like the Harnell's, Harrington's, and Gator Glass blanks are where my interests lie and I'd like to try making blanks for my own use.

Thanks !

Dave

"Fishing is our Handshake, our Language. A Heritage that binds us together. A Passage our fathers took. A Journey that lasts a lifetime, that we have begun again with our sons and daughters." George "Gowge" Pope

Tubular glass blanks are made pretty much the same way as tubular graphite blanks are made, albeit with a different resin system.

There have been several different processes for many well known, older glass blanks. You can find some history in the Original Clemens book and most any of the Pfeiffer books.

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

Tom Kirkman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Tubular glass blanks are made pretty much the same
> way as tubular graphite blanks are made, albeit
> with a different resin system.
>
> There have been several different processes for
> many well known, older glass blanks. You can find
> some history in the Original Clemens book and most
> any of the Pfeiffer books.
>
> ............


Do you know of any "how-to" tutorials ?

I'm looking to do this for myself, rather than just reading about the history of it being done.

Thanks !

"Fishing is our Handshake, our Language. A Heritage that binds us together. A Passage our fathers took. A Journey that lasts a lifetime, that we have begun again with our sons and daughters." George "Gowge" Pope



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2014 04:28PM by Dave Fitch.

No, sorry. Even the earliest methods are pretty involved. Without a good deal of machinery and materials, you'd be hard to pressed to duplicate it.

The histories I mentioned explain the processes that were used.

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

You can do a google search for "rod blank making" and come up with a bunch of videos...

You will see pretty quickly that the process for making high quality parts is pretty invilved and requires some specialized tools...

Dave,
To put it simply, generally rods are made "very well".

Basically a shape. Put glass cloth over the shape. Coat it with glass resin and then vacuum cure the shape.

Be safe

roger wilson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dave,
> To put it simply, generally rods are made "very
> well".
>
> Basically a shape. Put glass cloth over the
> shape. Coat it with glass resin and then vacuum
> cure the shape.
>
> Be safe

I understand that a tapered mandrel is used and that triangular, tapered cloth segments ("flags") are wound around them . . .

I am puzzling several other things :

Fiberglass Cloth

(1) What weight is used ?

(2) Applied "dry" or "wetted out" in advance ?

(3) All layers applied in "one step" or "one at a time" ?

(4) Use a "vacuum bag" technique, using a vacuum pump & "vacuum bag / sleeve" ? ( I have a -30" Hg Vacuum Pump )

(6) Necessary to "spiral wrap" the blank before using vacuum bag / sleeve ?

Design of Blanks

(1) What processes and formulas are used in designing a rod blank from scratch to meet specific desired performance numbers ?

etc, etc, etc.

"Fishing is our Handshake, our Language. A Heritage that binds us together. A Passage our fathers took. A Journey that lasts a lifetime, that we have begun again with our sons and daughters." George "Gowge" Pope

A fiberglass blank isn't made the same way that say, a glass boat hull is made.

As far as "what processes and formulas are used in designing a rod blank from scratch to meet specific desired performance numbers," those are mostly engineering formulas related to diameter/wall thickness to stiffness per material. Otherwise you'd be talking trial and error, although quite a bit of that went on at one time.

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

Thanks for all the help, so far !

"Fishing is our Handshake, our Language. A Heritage that binds us together. A Passage our fathers took. A Journey that lasts a lifetime, that we have begun again with our sons and daughters." George "Gowge" Pope

A vacuum bag will not provide enough pressure! The processes that I am familiar with use 50 to 200 PSI.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2014 05:28PM by Phil Erickson.

Phil,
Actually, if you use the term, "50-200 psi," you are essentially referring to some sort of clamping pressure.

When a person uses a vacuum bag to apply force to the object, one uses the term "inches of mercury, or inches of vacuum".
This will range from 0-about 19 or 20 inches of vacuum.

A simple vacuum pump and vacuum bag can supply the equivalent of several hundreds lbs of force on the object, when looking at the force on a per square inch basis.

Here is a very good video from West Systems on the basics of vacuum bagging.

[www.westsystem.com]

Be safe

Over the years I have toured the old Sabre factory, Calstar and Seeker ( most recently ). The processes used to make a blank is far too complex for one to fully describe... even though I did the tours. I do not remember a vacuum process. It was more like cellephane wrap tightly wound onto the blank prior to going into the oven. It may have been some sort of shrink wrap but I do not remember the details. The removal of the blank from the mandrels was quite interesting and they had machinery to do it. Unfortunately, not all the processes were in operation at the last Seeker tour so I did not see the entire process. Needless to say, much too complicated for the do it yourself and tooling and machines are much too large for the home ( furnace etc).

A lot of equipment is needed to make a rod blank. you not only need the mandrel, the pre-preg cloth, the plastic wrap that is spiraled around the cloth and mandrel, you need an oven to cook it in, but you also need a ram type puller to remove the mandrel from the blank, then you need to strip the plastic spiral wrap off, sand the blank and finish it. That is a totally simplified description.

Years ago, Lamiglas developed a procedure where they could pull a straight non-tapered mandrel from a graphite or glass tube. No one else had ever been able to figure out how to do it. Some Boeing engineers heard about it and visited Lamiglas factory and were shown the process, Lamiglas did not know what they had and how useful it would be to the Aero-space industry.

In other words, you are looking at quite an investment to make your own blanks.

I'm not sure when prepreg was first used/invented/etc. I would suspect it wasn't used for fishing rods immediately. So we have to ask how were rods built before prepreg....back when polyester resin was used instead of epoxy. Some companies were little more than "basement" operations. The 70's weren't all that long ago and the rods weren't terrible. While I don't personally see the point I do think it would be possible to make your own. The mandrel would likely be the tough thing to source.

Lamiglas is one of the few that are still around and certainly were making rods before prepreg and epoxy.

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Russell, Lamiglas was using prepreg in the 70's. It came on rolls that were drawn out onto a cutting table and then cut to fit the design of the blank being made.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2014 07:31PM by Randolph Ruwe.

Randy, you likely have a much better idea of time lines than I do (I suffer from can't remembernothing syndrome). I would "guess" prepreg and epoxy resin was introduced in the early 1970's for rod building. Do you have any knowledge on just when prepreg was first used? I do know some were still using polyester resin in the early 70's.

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Russ, I am sorry, I don't have knowledge of the exact dates when it was first used. I know that blanks made in the early 70's were prepreg though. The Phillipson and Browning Silaflex rods were made differently. They used an autoclave system to make their blanks
Fenwick also used prepreg at this time as well. .

Roger, you better reread the West Systems piece! It states the realistic PSI that can be achieved with the vacuum process is 6-12.5 PSI.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2014 08:52PM by Phil Erickson.

Phil,
Thanks for your comments.
Actually, West system is referring to inches of vacuum or mercury - by using the term of 6-12.5 psi. But, actually in this context, they are referring to negative pressure.

i.e. a negative 6 psi is equivalent to about 12 inches of vacuum.
In the case of a negative 12.5 psi - it is equivalent to about 25 inches of vacuum.

But, as West states in their literature. The actual total clamping pressure on a relatively small object can range up to thousands of lbs of pressure by only using modest vacuum. Thus, the big advantage of using a vacuum bag.

I built a vacuum pump many years ago, which I still use now and then today. I used it for model building and I have built many many foam core skinned airplane wings using the vacuum bag process.

I did some calculations and found that when I was pulling 18 inches of vacuum on a 500 square inch wing, I would need the equivalent of having my car parked on top of the wing to have the same clamping pressure. Hence, another example of the extreme efficiency of a vacuum bagging system.

But in any event, whether it is negative or positive pressure, you can use a system to do an excellent job of clamping a skin to an object for a great shape with few to no defects.

Be safe

Garcia Conolon
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Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2014 10:17PM by Ladd Flock.