When doing my static load guide placement, I also do a CCS test for IP and AA, so I am hanging enough weight from the tip top, to constitute a fully loaded rod by CCS standards. I've hung as much as 1,015 grams from a tip top without causing any damage to the rod, or the tip top itself.

Lately I've started doing CCS tests on bare blanks when I receive them. I use the smallest size tubing that Mud Hole offers to use to hold guides on your rod for wrapping, and it works really well. Although I will say that I am very careful while sliding it on and taking it off the tip of the blank. Don't want to break the very tip of the blank

Aleks Maslov Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @ Harry - you are going to get A LOT of opinions
> on this. We will build on a curved blank, as long
> as the curve does not go in the opposite way of
> the spine.
>
> Aleks


Harry’s question is the one that I haven’t gotten over yet relative to buying NFC blanks. It doesn’t appear to me like it was directly answered. I know there are opinions, does NFC have a standard and QC process? How do these and the ultimate straightness of their blanks compare to the industry? Literally, every time I have gotten ready to place an order a complaint or comment about crooked NFC blanks comes forward. Then, I think about how much I both dislike crooked blanks and sending something back (there isn’t a pickup spot where I live for some carriers). I don’t know if a greater portion of noticeably “curved” NFC blanks are shipped or if for some reason complaints appear to be skewed. I do believe that trends and myths get magnified in the age we live.

I liken it to the reputation and nickname Lamiglas got for breakage where I believed for a few years that it was a lot of people moving into our region who weren’t used to fighting large fish on longer, lighter rods. As this persisted, though, I began to think that production related factors had to be driving it. Even if NFC bends are a myth, it’s one that hasn’t stopped getting fuel and oxygen over quite a few years. I can only speak as a dataset of one person who likes everything about what you are doing except for the much higher perceived risk of getting bent blanks. My intent here really is to be constructive, and your answer didn’t make me less concerned about NFC “straightness”.

This seems to have become an entrenched impasse where every time this comes up the summary of the discussion and unintentional message of the answers are; if you value straight rods, NFC probably isn’t your blank source. Maybe it’s an unsolvable and perfectly fine impasse where NFC is selling all the blanks they want to make, at the prices they want to charge, and anyone who is shying away because of this perception has suitable alternatives. If that’s not the case, maybe a different strategy should be considered as this feels a lot like “Groundhog Day”. I do wish you a great and successful Expo and NFC a successful future.

A straight rod blank will become drooped once you put the guides on it. I like a blank with a slight overall curve so that once I built it out on the straightest axis it will then be roughly straight in a fishing position. I've looked at plenty of NFC blanks and Edge rods made by them an d they do not appear any more or less straight than blanks from any other makers I have seen.

I'm not concerned about building on a curved blank, as it didn't take me long to figure out blanks aren't perfectly straight (you can tell simply by watching you tip rotate on the rod dryer). It's the blanks that have multiple curves (bends in different directions), and curled tip sections that I, regretfully (because I hate to have to go through the order wait process all over again), end up having to send back. I have seen curves that a little more "corkscrewed" too. Some people may not care, but I started building my own because I was too picky.