Hi All,
I recently broke a MHX rod (that was just finished) while flexing it.
the blank was the L905-2-MHX in 7'6".
It broke right onder a guide wrap and it really surprised me.
Is it possible that too much tension on the thread can cause blank breakage?
I do wrap my guides really tight but now I think maybe I should not do this...
Thanks in advance,
greetz,
Jeroen

The proper tension will snugly hold your guide in place but allow you to adjust it's position without overly twisting the blank. Keep in mind that unless your talking about a really heavy duty offshore rod, most guides see no more than a lb or two of pressure in use (often less than that).

Since none of us can actually pull on your thread to feel the tension, only you can be the judge on that. But to me, from what you wrote, I would guess you might be wrapping with too much tension. As to the matter if this was a cause or contributing factor to your blank's failure, nobody can really say for sure. All we could do is guess.

Make sure your guide feet are very, very flat and possess no burrs or otherwise sharp edges than can fracture the blank. It is very important that they sit flat upon the blank. Guides that sit on their outer feet (toes) or inner area (heels) only can exert a tremendous amount of pressure on the blank, concentrated in a very small spot.

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

Hi,

Sorry to read about the break especially after all the time you put into it.

I had a very good blank break while doing flexing the blank looking for the spine. A manufacturing defect. If your build was a brand new blank I would suspect that also.

Call the company who made the blank. Hopefully you have a warrantee. Send it back to them to analyze and tell you what happened.

Capt Neil Faulkner

Look at the ends of the break and see if there is any evidence of crushing.

Jeroen,
A good idea if you don't already do this is to test the rod before building the rod.
Take the blank that you are going to build and do some deep flexes starting at the tip, working down to the butt of the rod. Insure that you can flex the blank to 90 degrees - all of the way from the tip of the rod to the butt to be sure that any defects are disclosed by having the blank break before you spend any time or materials on the rod.

Be safe

As Roger suggests above, it is always best to test flex the blank before starting your build. By doing this, you should discover any problems from either a manufacturing defect or an even more likely shipping damage. It is also good to closely examine the entire surface of the blank at this time, especially looking for nicks or scrapes!

Also as John states above, there isn't any reason to wrap guides "really tight."

Jeroen,
It would be interesting to contact blank manufacturers to find out if they have any reported cases of blank breakage that can be attributed to winding a guide on the blank too tightly.

I tend to doubt that this is possible, but of course I may be wrong. However, as was pointed out earlier, a scratch, or a guide that was improperly prepped or manufactured and created a gouge in the blank, or a guide with a hook on the end that was rotated after wrapping, gouging the guide could potentially cause sufficient damage to allow the blank to fail.

Good luck

Roger it is possible to crush the blank with too much tension on the thread!! I did it once about 40 years ago. I was in a hurry for the gudebrod nitro-cellulose CP to dry, so I put the rod in a window sill with the sun shining through and started working on another rod. I heard a snap and looked at the rod in the window and it had been crushed right at the wrap. I don't think that this would have happened with current water based CP's though.
But it is possible. It was a light spinning blank.

Randolph, the cause for you experience was more likely due to the heat from the sun through glass and the nylon thread constricting as it tried to revert to it's unextruded form. Of course if it was looser it might not have happened. Another words....the "perfect storm" of errors!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2015 10:01PM by Phil Erickson.

I use 35-40 pennies as a starting tension weight for my bass rods and have been happy with that so far. Once I get up to or past the choker I pay attention to my rod to see if I should slacken it up some.

Thank you very much everybody for the replies!
I am 99 % sure that there were no Sharp edges on the guides as I grinded and even polished the edges myself!
I also flexed the blank multiple times before building it so I don't think there was a real defect...
I must admit that I wrapped them as thight as possible...any thighter and the thread (gudebrod A) would brake...
I realise now that I probably should not do this!
Thank you again... You guys are a real help!
Kind regards,
Jeroen

I do realise now that the guide where the breakage took place might have sat on its outer point as Mr Kirkman said...

Like Tom said Guide prep is VERY IMPORTAINT

Bill - willierods.com

happened to me a few years ago, i experimented and put some heavy duty double foot guides on a reasonably light blank, first flex broke at a ring guide, i put it down to the guide feet were to strong and stopped the blank from flexing, so it broke where the flex stopped.
"just a thought"