[youtu.be]

9:44 starts droppin knowledge, 22:03 is fun, 38:46 droppin knowledge, lots in between worth watching if you like seeing blood and guts.

@David Baylor I couldn't find that clip about grip material, but I'm pretty sure it was Mr Loomis explaining how cork is an insulator and carbon fiber a conductor - thus cork dampens the sensitivity and CF transmits it.

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"Damps" not "dampens." But that's beside the point. The word here is "conductor." What is it that a fishing rod conducts? If it's some sort of electrical current (it's not) then cork would insulate such current, carbon not so much.But that's not what we feel when fishing. What Gary was most likely talking about is stiffness to weight ratio - cork is lower in that regard and "gives" more in the hand than a rigid carbon grip will. So yes, it would not allow you to feel vibrations as well as a carbon grip would.

But of course, lures don't vibrate - open your tackle box and see for yourself. Not a single lure will be vibrating. To make the lure move you have to pull it through the water, which we do from the end of a lever. It will resist your efforts and offer a cadenced resistance. The longer the lever the stronger that resistance is felt.

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Does anybody really hold the rod by the grips?? I know that spinning or casting one of my hands is on the reel/reel seat and the other is on the reel handle. I might grab the foregrip when fighting a fish and I might grab the rod butt when casting but in the use where sensitivity would be a factor my rod hand is on the reel/reel seat. So what the grip is made of would make no difference as far as I can tell.

Stiffness to weight ratio is going to reflect more on rod efficiency - speed, reaction, recovery, etc. than sensitivity.

I've told this story before but newcomers may not have heard it. A tackle shop I used to do some work for was owned by a guy that loved to show customers how sensitive a rod was by placing the tiptop on his Adam's apple and the rod handle in their hand. He'd speak a few words and they'd go crazy over how they could actually feel him speaking! One day I had had enough of the charade and picked up a broom, unscrewed the wood handle and replaced the graphite rod in the fisherman's hand with the wood handle and performed the same test. He exclaimed, "This is even MORE sensitive than the graphite rod!"

Of course, that "test" isn't what we're dealing with on the water in a real world fishing situation, and neither are any of these other sensitivity tests of which I'm aware. They don't replicate what happens when we retrieve something through the water.

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I agree with Mike B. My hand and my rod grip are distant relatives.

Back 3rd of my hand is on the grip at least, there's never a time 0% of my hand is on the grip.

Did any of you watch the video?

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I’m pretty evenly invested in both dogs in this fight. My older freshwater rods are cork gripped and most of what I’ve built over the last five or six years are with carbon. I doubt this choice is ever going to put or take a fish out of the boat. Carbon with the right connection to the blank might be more sensitive, if you buy into vibration transmission. If you buy into a rod mostly being a lever arm, it’s going to be virtually a wash.

Tap your baitcasting rod with it gripped the way you fish. I just did on two and felt the vibrations in my fingers on the reel seat and in my palm over the aluminum framed reels, and not much against the heel of my hand touching the CFX grips. One was with an SCV blank and one was with a Point Blank blank (redundancy intended). I can’t see it making a lot of difference if you are in the vibration transmission camp. The rigid, carbon infused foam has to transmit better than the two rubber washers in the hard, hollow carbon handles.

This is a great video! Thanks for posting it.

Mike Ballard Wrote:
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> Does anybody really hold the rod by the grips?...

Not much with baitcasting....but some with spinning.
On a Tennessee handle the reel seat and grip are the same.
Some people use an extended foregrip on spinning rods.
Pro Brian Latimer has a set of Falcon Rods built like this.
Some crappie rods also will have an extended foregrip.

So if one wanted to build a rod that would transmit feel from lure to hand, we would just want to minimize weight and maximize stiffness? That simple?

I watched about 1/3 of this video so far, and I was amused by the explanation of where the resin ends up after the material is squeezed around the mandrel. Yes, it ends up at the surface. Then immediately, Gary explains that the resin is now nothing more than extra weight, a "cast" so to speak over the blank, and is the reason they then sand the blank to get rid of the cast and the extra weight. So why does NFC not sand all of their blanks?

Maybe this will help. From their website on the main X-Ray page:

· HMx-ray comes with in un-sanded, flat matte-black finish, almost pear-like. Sanding blanks makes them softer, the action of these blanks is crisp.
· HMx-ray Mirror Black blanks are in a satin black glass smooth finish. We achieve  this finish by “buffing” the blanks retaining their action and crispness.

The video is at least eight years old.

I don't know if the Xray blanks were out then or if that's the new material Gary has that smile about.

I think one of the changes with the Xray is that it has a lot less resin. I forgot where I saw that. But on the Facebook group now owned by NFC, Alex mentioned that they don't recommend sanding the Xray because the resin layer is thin and it's a lot easier to sand into the carbon layer than the Delta blanks.

But that's a good question for Aleks



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2024 10:02AM by Ray Morrison.

Kendall and Ernie... yyoouuu tttwwwoooo ????

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