I wanted to post a question to the brain trust, I have had a couple of rods break recently and someone told me I may be using to much tension on the thread while wrapping the guides. One was a northfork and the other a MHX. One broke really close to the 2nd guide from the tip of the rod. Would putting to much tension on the thread cause this to weaken the blank and break.
Thanks again for all your help.
Brian

Probably not! If you are breaking your rods in the tip section you may be high sticking. In other words, raising your rod tip straight up while under a load. You may be able to to use your warranties for these rods. MHX has an excellent warranty program which is very easy to use. You just have register the blank online using its serial number. Have not used the NFC warranty yet, so know nothing about it.
Norm

Brian, as long as you can adjust your guides for straightness, after wrapping them, you have no worries about thread tension. If you can't, cut the wrap off and try again.

Very sorry to hear that Brian , that will really put one in a sour mood. Only thing i can think of where excessive tension could cause rod failure is if the bottom of the guide you're wrapping has a sharp burr that can dig into the blank . The area you mention on the one rod that broke up toward the tip is the area where rods typically snap when high sticked as Norm suggested. Many anglers aren't even aware that they have a tendency to high stick unless a fellow angler points it out to them, the rods of our childhoods tended to be extremely flexible and would allow this type of treatment with no ill effects .


High performance lighter weight rods of today will let you know quickly that they aren't that type of rod , unfortunately for us they don't give us a warning , they just fail in spectacular fashion & usually in front of a whole bunch of spectators making it even more embarrassing.

To learn how not to use a fishing rod just watch a few bill dance shows..lol.

I expect most already know, but there is a good article in the library on proper treatment of rods.

Too much thread tension coupled with guide feet that do not sit flat or sport sharp edges or burrs can cause failure. Usually, however, the break will be right there at or under the guide when this is the cause.

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I see it all the time guys fishing from shore or a boat hauling a fish through the water and hosting it up to their hand flexing the rod at near 90 degrees as they get in to those habits from watching the bass guys compete on tv hauling big fish out of any kind of cover as fast as they can and over flex their rods as they have several on board if one fails they just grab another and keep on doing the same thing. they don't show on tv how many rods these guys break from that type of landing a fish unless it is a monster that would make the difference in win or loose the competition.
So if you fish like the pro's do expect to have your equipment fail because your doing all these things snap hook set ,high sticking ,ripping a lure off a snag, speed winching in a fish. using extra heavy line50-60 pound braid for bass 1- 10 pounds lol a tad bit over kill but if they get snagged on a log they can either pull it out of the water or straighten the hook out and get their lure back.
99 percent of rod failure is from angler abuse and being soooo excited when they hook a big trophy fish.

The best day to be alive is always tomorrow !!
Think out side the box when all else fails !!!
Wi.

Tom Kirkman Wrote:
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> Too much thread tension coupled with guide feet
> that do not sit flat or sport sharp edges or burrs
> can cause failure. Usually, however, the break
> will be right there at or under the guide when
> this is the cause.
>
> ................



"Usually, however, the break will be right there at or under the guide when this is the cause"



Now thats interesting , that would make it far easier to know if it's really a case of excessive thread tension that caused the break .

Brian

The short, direct answer to your question is yes. However, and as Tom K noted, it usually is in combination with and improperly prepared or out of square guide.

The more probable cause is the rods having been over stressed, thus the comments above related to high sticking.

And there is a third possibility where the rods were struck during transport or fishing. Glass and I think especially carbon fiber can be surprisingly fragile and intolerant of an impact with a hard object, such as a boat rail, truck tailgate, rock, tree limb, etc. Worse yet, the rod's failure might not be immediate, so it's sometimes difficult to connect the dots between a rod that was whacked against a metal vehicle corner, boat rail, etc. and the subsequent failure after hook-up with a nice fish.

Out of curiosity, how long were the blanks and how many guides were on the blanks?

Most modern carbon fiber rods will take a 90 degree bend, beyond that is very risky! I pre-test all blanks before building by flexing them 90 degrees in order to find if there are any defects. Have only had a couple fail the test, out of a couple hundred tested. in this manner, both were defective.

The MHX break surprises me.

Most of your tournament guys are "boat haulers" so I quit making rods for them because they break so many. It is useless to give someone that is going to do that to a HM rod blank. It is better to use a cheaper fiberglass scrim blank for tournament fishermen. You may be damaging your rods during transport especially if they both broke near the same spot. You can slightly fracture the outside hoop of the blank in an area by laying them in the boat, back of a truck or elsewhere (they vibrate or bounce) and not see that anything is wrong until enough pressure is on the rod for it to break in that spot. I always use PVC tubes to move my rods from place to place and always in a rod holder on the boat.

Lance Schreckenbach Wrote:
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I always use PVC tubes to move
> my rods from place to place and always in a rod
> holder on the boat.




I bought a bunch of lightweight flannel material and dropped it off at an alteration shop to have a few rod socks made , i told them 4 inches in width by 8 feet long and seal the bottom and it cost me about $15.00 for all three . I started doing that the day i was able to purchase my first real high end rod .

Hey all thank you for the feedback, both of these rods where broke by tourney fishermen so I bet abuse may have played a part in their breakage. I was curious if maybe it was something I was doing wrong when wrapping. Terry they were both 7’2 blanks and I used 9 guides plus the tip top.
Thank you all again for your help, I love this place!
Brian

One failure cause not yet detailed is having a rod strike a surface with the rod moving tip forward and moving parallel to its axis, jamming the tip. One boat rod locker I had did not prevent this type of movement and it broke two rods before I figured it out. Of course this can happen in a number of ways, but it's deadly on HM rods.

Brian,
Just to share the following information with you:

When I wrap, I tighten down the tension on the thread, so that after wrapping a guide - no matter the size, I need to use both hands to move the guide at all. i.e. I wrap with extremely heavy thread tension.

I have wrapped on all sorts of blanks but have never had a blank break - to my knowledge - as a result of wrapping with too much tension.

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Note:
When I prep guide feet that need prepping. (not all guide feet require prepping) - the final step in prepping is a few strokes of the underside of the guide foot across a fine grain flat arkansas stone to insure that any sharp burrs or edges have been smoothed off before being used and wrapped on a rod.

I would certainly agree that a bad burr on a guide foot could potentially cut into the blank and cause an issue with the blank.

But, the few strokes across the stone before using any blank insures that there is nothing on the underside of the guide foot to damage the blank.

Good luck

Wow, i thought i might be wrapping guides too tight but maybe not . If Roger needs both hands to move the guide after it's wrapped thats really really tight so i'm pretty sure that i'm OK lol.

Boat flipping breaks rods.