Tom's reply to a post by Kim Norblad on spine location was an eye opener. I know that spine location has been hashed an rehashed, but what Tom appears to say is that the curve of the blank has more to do with casting accuracy than spine location. It would be nice if we had a precise method of testing a lot of the commonly held beliefs in rod building. What size should the stripper on a spinning rod be, how do line characteristics affect the choice? What happens when the choke guide is moved closer to or farther from the reel? The list goes on and on. I think a good deal of the wisdom that we accept needs to be tested.

Jim,
Very true.
Final test casting reveals the satisfaction of the individual custom rod that is built. There will always be variables based on each blank characteristcs. That is why custom builders work within a guideline of using the component and blank characteristics for best performance, but also taking into account a good deal of appearance qualities.
Changing a guide posisiton or size certainly can affect casting by either improvement or taking away. How you quantify this might be an interesting comparative study.
For example, the guideline for size of spinning rod butt guide is 1/2 the spool diameter of the reel. So you can see that other factors like the reel and line used will influence the rod performance as well. Moving the choke guide to accomodate stress distribution may be a necessity that slightly affects performance that maybe using a different size or type of guide can accomodate. That joy of rodbuilding is in adjusting these factors and skills developed in component usage that builds you a better rod.

Rich Garbowski
Richard's Rod & Reel

I agree that test casting is the bottom line for each individual rod, but I still believe that there are certain things that can be tested quanitatively. The cone of flight theory was accepted as gospel for a long time, and it sure sounded good. Tom's comment on spine and accuracy brought back memories of some heated discussions on one of the previous boards. Maybe the guys at Sage that put guides on the straightest axis aren't so for off. Ralph O'Quinn helped dispell a lot of the myths that surround bonding and I think there is room for testing of some of the other commonly held beliefs. God bless Rodmaker and this board for provideing such a great way to share info.

Jim,
Many of the variables in building rods can be tested. In fact quite a few of them have been scientifically tested and there are some excellent papers that have been written.
But as Rich implys the problem with testing is often holding all the variable but one constant so that the one can be tested. The example that Rich uses is a good one. We can move the first guide in an attempt to reduce the amount of energy lost to the friction of the line going through the guide but at the same time we are changing the distribution of the weight which affects the resonant frequency which also affects how far and easily the rod will cast.

There is an old adage that says that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. That might be a bit harsh here but I think there's some wisdom in it. If you get something going that nobody ever bothers to check for accuracy, at some point it just becomes accepted as fact. Then somebody comes along and says, wait a minute, I actually did some tests and this didn't turn out as I thought it was supposed to.

In rod building we can do most of the test ourselves with some time and effort.

Rodbuilding isn't the only discipline where experience and hearsay (though valuable) are sometimes proved drastically different when the scientific method is applied. Happens all the time in medicine and surgery. Like plastic surgery, rodbuilding is part art and part science, but the more the science (or scientific method) is applied, the better it gets. Had a chance to meet and visit with Dr. Hanneman in Charlotte--quantitation in action--what a pleasure. I couldn't agree more with Jim, and I'm forever indebted to those on the board who test the theories and share the knowledge.