The odd thing about nearly all roller tops is that they're tapered and tapered vastly different than the tips of most rod blanks. Typically I'll measure about an inch back and use that to order the top. From there you're going to find that the top won't fully seat on the blank unless you grind/taper the first half inch or so of the blank tip. This is a pretty standard practice, although I've neve
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Ask for Bryan and see if you can get him on the phone. He has been very forthcoming with custom rod builders and even attended the Expo back in 2020. .............
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I might suggest that you contact REC and ask them if they believe those guides are suitable for the type application you propose. I suspect they're going to say no, but on the chance that they may say otherwise, I'd spend the two minutes to knock out a brief email to them. ..............
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That is entirely possible. For me, Brittle equates to something that shatters easily from hard impact. Carbon fiber doesn't shatter. .............
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Mark, Everything it relative. "Brittle" compared to what? One of the reasons we use carbon fiber to edge our rudders and boards is because it is so very, very durable and not at all subject to fracturing upon hard impacts. Depending on the particular lay-up for a given application, you can beat it with a hammer and it won't incur damage. Drop it from a great height and it will not f
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It may well disappear once mixed - I was simply mentioning that looking through a much, much thicker "layer" of epoxy will greatly enhance the slight blue tint, just as it usually does any slight amber tint. ...........
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You're looking at a great thickness when you view through the bottle. Sort of like beer, which appears amber in a clear bottle, but in a thin layer it's clear. It won't be blue. Don't worry about it. ............
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Carbon's not brittle in the least. Very durable and capable of withstanding tremendous impact and abuse. But it has such a high stiffness to weight ratio that most structures made with it aren't very substantial - they don't have to be depending on the goal at hand. But don't mistake that for brittleness. ........
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It's probably worth mentioning that epoxies don't "dry," they cure as the result of a chemical process. So the set time and the cure time are two different things. Few epoxies are going to cure in a few hours, but they will certainly set in a couple or three hours (most anyway). By "set" I am talking about that point where they will no longer sag, drip, run, etc. Cure is when
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The design of the guide frame has more to do with things than the material. Simply making a guide frame out of carbon doesn't automatically make it a superior guide. Ultimately, frames made of some sort of nylon composite should be the very best thing to look forward to. The trick has often been mating a ceramic or steel ring to a frame. If the frame design allows it to flex where the ring is fas
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Filling with epoxy will only add weight. If you were going to fill it with anything I'd use cork, brick-foam or similar. However, I doubt you need to do anything else if you simply have a bit of unsupported overhang on the ends where no pressure will be brought to bear. ............
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I'd do it, particularly for saltwater applications. .............
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The vast majority of sponsors to this forum stay with us for years. Some have been here for 20 years now. They benefit from being here and stay put. A very small handful do not renew for reasons of their own. I can only suspect that they did not feel they received appropriate benefit for the cost of a sponsorship (although it's not much at all). But other than sending them a reminder, I don't pre
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Humidity will have no effect on set and cure time. Temperature does. For every 20F above or below about 70F, you will see a halving or doubling of the set and cure time. ..........
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The thickness of the epoxy, other than a large contained mass producing more exothermic heat, which itself causes a faster set time, doesn't really have anything to do with overall set and cure time on our guide wraps. An epoxy thread coating on one guide of perhaps 1/32nd inch thickness will set and cure at the same rate as the same coating on another guide at 1/16th inch thick. The difference i
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At normal room temperature, most epoxies will be set in 2 hours. For that reason, I'd go 3 hours to provide some margin for error. .............
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You would only need 3 guide sizes on this rod. The first running guide is the choke guide. So a butt guide, one intermediate and then your smallest guides on out. Let the line path determine the guide sizes. It's never wrong. ..............
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I did this on my own when the Mimima guides came out in the various heights. It allowed stacking smaller guides in the center of larger guides, something that no other frame series would allow. It was from there that I heard from Doug and learned about his experiments over the years with similar, his patents and attempts to have the MicroWave system manufactured and marketed. American Tackle saw
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Chris, Here you go: ...........
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I believe "Butt" guide is the correct term (stripper is the butt guide on a fly rod). But this is semantics. I knew Doug Hannon and we had many conversations about the MicroWave guide concept before it ever came to market. I had cooked up something similar when the first PacBay Minima guides arrived and stacked a 25 and a 12 on top of each other. There are pictures of this on the ph
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Here's the thing about patents, I know because I have had two (expired now) and there is a difference between a good patent and a bad patent. The reason it is advised to have a good patent attorney write your "claims" is that they know the ins and outs of how to word things. Patent claims (at one time you could make 14 claims per patent, if I recall correctly) and thus you would expand
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Kent, No, there is no line overshoot on a standard cast with the MicroWave guides. The video is in slow motion and you can clearly see the tangle (bird's nest) come off the reel. This was done intentionally so that you could see how the Microwave butt guide handles such bird's nesst. If you watch videos of standard casts there is never any overshoot. Read the caption on your photo link "
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Yeah, that's always a consideration. A 20 and 16 won't cost much. Buy both and set them up and see how things look. ...........
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Find out what the customer is going to be fishing for and how. Length is generally shorter if the target is short casts for large fish. You don't want to hand the fish a long lever unless you have to (for casting). .............
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I'd probably go with 16 and then 8's on out. If you put a rub prevention guide (bumper) on, use whatever sits closest to the blank but permits free line flow. .............
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Kent Griffith Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I always use standard guides because the microwave > is an extreme severe choke point causing line to > overrun the microwave guide because line can not > flow through it as fast as it comes off the reel > causing the line to fly past the microwave guide > and having to do not 1 but 2 U-turns t
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Then there is really very little reason to apply epoxy over the varnish. Just go with the varnish. ..........
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If you have separation it'll be between the thread and the varnish, which then lifts whatever is attached to the top of the varnish. What condition is your varnish in? ............
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At some point you reach a place of diminishing returns. If you take all the modern guide systems and set up each one correctly for any given rod, you are unlikely to find more than a 1% to 2% difference between any of them. So you have to take your pick as to what appeals to you and the particular task your type of fishing entails. On the MicroWave stripping guide - simply using a very high fr
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I beileve Batson uses 8lb foam, not 18. .............
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