Does anyone have any good techniques for rod dampening like Orvis or East Branch was doing? And are the techniques worth the extra effort?
I was thinking of glueing a thin sheet of sorbothane type rubber to the blank under the grip. The east branch rods looked like they used some type of ethafoam stuffed into the inside of the blank.
Where would one stuff the foam? just at or below the nodal points?
Any thoughts?

The technical term is Damping and the technical definition is any system that when set in motion creates a force that inhibits that same motion is said to damp.

Okay, in layman's terms we're talking about the damping force being the friction between the rod and air around it. That is what stops the rod from oscillating after you impart motion/energy to it.

Again we're trying to get the best compromise we can. A larger rod with more frontal and overall surface area will create lots of damping force by the very nature of how much more friction between it and air is created. That friction will try to slow and stop it from moving more quickly. But such a rod is also harder to cast as it is hard to get it up to speed. In all likelyhood it also weighs so much more, that the damping force, although greater, will take longer to stop it in the long run.

On the rods with internal devices such as foam or inerts, they are designed to hopefully create some resistance to movement, and thus bring oscillations to a stop more quickly. But they also add weight and tend to undermine the same performance they were intended to improve. There are several reasons why these systems didn't perform as well as might be hoped but we'll save that for another time.

Getting to the point, the best thing you can do to make a rod stop oscillating more quickly, is to make it lighter! By so doing you are setting less mass in motion and any damping force will bring it to a stop much more quickly. A rod which has less surface AND is lighter will start AND stop more quickly. This translates to a more efficient tool for our fishing/casting purposes.

I'm afraid that much of what many companies have done in a quest to create rods that stop oscillating more quickly only adds weight and also harms performance, if they create a stronger damping force at all. Not to throw off on Orvis or East Branch, as they at least tried. Personally I did not see either rod perform at the level of other rods which were built smaller and lighter and thus were more efficient without any "add-ons".

For the average rod builder, if you want to improve the damping charateristics of your rod, make it lighter. It's the easiest and most effective way to do it.

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If useful, i did put EVA paper, wrapped around the butt of the blank, then inserted a modified full-wells cork grip.-
Built another WithOUT the "SYSTEM", No difference that i can find. I think Epoxy&Cork Absorve the "shock" of casting strokes.

Tom, thanks for the science lesson. I had not really understood what the term actually meant. I know that some older rods and usually the bamboo ones had some type of foam pumped into a hollowed out area. I would guess the idea was to put something in there that would resist the movement of the rod and make it come to rest more quickly. But as you say it would also impair the movement to begin with. Tough compromise. I'd agree that lighter rods damp quicker. Just didn't really understand why.

By the way, in my book I wrote about "damping" and when the editors read it they apparently thought I had misspelled the word. They "corrected" it to read "dampen" and "dampening". I did not catch it on the final proof and thus am partly to blame for the continued misuse of the word/term.

Damping is described in my first post above. Dampening is what you do when you wet something. But as rod builders we tend to know what someone means when they use either word to describe the same thing.

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Yes, I did not mean "to make wet".
My first thought was to write "damping" but I thought it was wrong.
I do Pre press work in printing and the creatives are always calling because the editor changed the copy at the last minute to say the wrong thing, so I can sympathize.
Other common Misspelled words in the rodbuilding area: Spine & Striper.

I am not sure, but I think that E.F. Powell was the first to use a foam core in a hollow split bamboo rod in an effort to control oscillations. He was also the first, I believe, to create a hollow split bamboo rod.

I wouldn't stake my life on these statements, but I think they are accurate and just one more interesting part of the history of rod making.

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In my experience with fly rods, the damping effect is very dramatic with your casting technique. Test this observation on your rods, make a cast and complete the forward stroke with a tight grip on the cork. Now make a forward cast with very light hand tension, hold the rod just tight enough to maintain position.

The rod will dampen very quickly with a tight grip short speed-up-and-stop.

To minimize fatigue in long days of casting the rod should be gripped tightly only at the moment of short speed-up-and-stop. This applies to both back cast and forward cast. The rod should be griped very lightly through the remainder of casting stroke.

The caster's hand will have a far more efficient effect on stoping oscillations than some foam material under the cork grip.

Overpowering the rod will also induce oscillations and cause waves in the line, this commonly happens with the "power stroke" school of casting.

The engineers in Manchester, VT do not understand fly rod casting very well or possibly are pushing advertizing hype and technical black art. After all, they did name a rod series after a popular chewing gum and it is (the rod) now obsolete.

Regards,
Fred Krow