I am planning on building a St. Croix 9' 7# 3 piece SC4 rod. I have chosen traditional snake guides and two strippers and am wondering about guide placement. Does anyone have a site where I might find a St. Croix chart? Thanks.

Ron

You can get that right off of St Croix's web site. Link is at left. They have "generic" guide spacing charts for different length blanks. A word of caution: all the spacing charts are very general and only take in to account rod length. If you have to use them, let them be a starting point only. With some expermentation you can improve the action of your blank alot more, compared to factory spacing. Personally, I don't even use their guide size recomondations.

Bill Doherty

I won't argue with Bill as what he says is very true. I do know that the chart on the St. Croix site is the same spacing as what they use on the factory rods they build. I would assume they have done some work to get their own rods to work well enough so if you wanted you could use that and have something that would certainly work just fine.

But I will also stand along with those who believe that your own static stress test will give you better spacing and maybe a bit better performance.

Kevin & Ron

Don't take my comments the wrong way. I like St. Croix blanks alot. I think they are a fantastic rod for the money. I own quire a few St. Croix Rods. But St. Croix has to generalize and average out it's charts. Graphite and the resin will vary from their supplier ever so slightly. The person cutting out the graphite cloth might hold the razor at a different angle than the person who cut out the cloth last month, adding a 64th to the width. Small differences are to be expected. All blanks from all manufacturers will preform slightly different. Then there is the people difference. Blank manufacturers can't taylor each blank to each person buying one for his or her physical characteristics or fishing style. They would go broke at their current prices. They work hard at finding a guide spacing that will work ok under alot of different situations. Finally it is in a manufacturers financial interest to use the least amount of guides and wraps. As custom rod builders we take their product to the next level.

Bill Doherty

Bill is on the money here and it is also worth noting that not all rod builders will choose to use the identical handle and handle length that St. Croix does. Handle length plays a large role in guide placement as well.

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