There are a lot of things you can do with any interactive type guide placement system. You can put more lines on a story pole if you want to use more guides. Or you can use fewer lines for fewer guides. The same is true of Don's chart. If you don't like the number of guides it places on your rod, use every other intersecting line for 1/2 the number of guides. Or draw your own set of lines, workin
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Yes, Jason will be there in the St. Croix booth. ...........
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No, once the finish has set, they're in the finish permanently. You can sand a bit and recoat, or strip and rewrap. But a hair dryer applied 24 hours after the finish has been applied isn't going to do anything other than increase your electric bill by a buck or two this month. ............
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Epoxy doesn't contain a solvent so it's doubtful that it would react in any way with that material. You might be onto a good idea. Let us know how it works out. ..................
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You would be disqualified. If I say 6'6", but allow "fudging" and let you in at 6 feet 6&1/4 inches, what about the guy who brings a rod that's 6 feet 6&3/8 inches? Or the guy with a rod that comes out to 6 feet 6&1/2 inches. Where does that sort of thing end? What is the limit to how long a 6 feet 6 inch rod can be? Pegging it at exactly 6 feet and 6 inches will e
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You're not wrong at all. The rod will always at least attempt to turn towards the direction the load is being applied from. Whether it becomes an issue that creates a problem over the long haul is another matter I think. Most good graphite rods will take a lot of hard use before any fatigue becomes noticeable. So I'm just not sure this is an issue we need to worry about. I do know a lot of sur
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You may be correct, I don't have tests nor data to say otherwise. Obviously every time you stress a rod blank in any way, even just a simple straight bend, you weaken it even if by a miniscule amount. Repeated twisting over the course of many fishing hours would certainly cause additional fatigue. But I can't say by how much, how soon or if it makes any practical difference - we didn't perform an
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The connection shouldn't slip and unless it slips, there is no wear in that regard. ...............
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Yes, and very easily to identify. In fact, even before they broke there were spiral lengthwise splits in the surface of the blanks. ..........
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The spine plays no role in torsion or twist. If the guides are on top of the rod, it will attempt to twist, or will twist, if it is loaded from below (a fish or snag). If the guides are on the bottom of the rod, there will be no twist (unless the load is coming from somewhere other than the water). This remains true no matter where you put the guides relative to the spine. One of the breakage
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It does reduce casting distance, but not by much. As lines have gotten smaller and more supple that sort of thing isn't as much of an issue as it was a couple or more decades ago. If you were to attend a distance casting contest, you'd find that most of the really serious contestants remove the level wind from their casting reels (if they chose a level wind reel to begin with). But they're foc
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Some earlier ones even flew open - so the line wasn't forced to come into a stationary guide from an extreme angle. I don't think they make those any more however. ...........
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You can also blend colors to obtain various shades of other colors. ................
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Right, I just mentioned it because many people forget that the level wind guide moves. I think you'll find that a reel without a level wind gives greater distance, but this is partly because on a level wind reel the spool has to turn the level wind mechanism through a set of small gears. Even then, modern reel parts have gotten so light that any difference is not nearly what it was a couple de
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Agreed. And it's possible to get that strength and rigidity without going to extremely heavy materials or bulk. I have 2 benches made with lightweight torsion box construction that you can walk around on without creating enough flex to easily measure. But one person can pick them up and move them about. Of course if you need the bulk/mass, such as when mounting a lathe that is expected to turn
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I think you'll find that Gudebrod NCP #330 is a perfect match. Not sure if they make that color any longer, but somebody should have some around. ............
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Lou, You're correct - the guide on the level wind acts as a guide of sorts, but it's very different from a standard line guide. It moves back and forth across the width of the reel spool. ................
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Bill, They don't deflect even that much. But I wouldn't call it "way too strong." They need to remain flat in order to do the jobs I perform on them. Same with a good woodworking bench - you don't want it to deflect by any easily measurable amount or the items you construct on them won't be square and true. ...............
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No sponsors are grilled here. Neither are non-sponsors. It's not allowed. .............
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Not that I'm aware of - I'm the only person that has bothered to publish it. .............
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I would think it's just a matter of taping on a set of guides and trying them. The chart does not place guides per the New Guide Concept System. It places Concept Guides. ...................
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I use hot melt on all my tiptops. But then I make a thread wrap just beyond the tiptop tube and wrap up and onto the tiptop tube. Carry your finish epoxy onto the thread and the tiptop will be locked in placed - a hot day or storage in a hot area won't move it. To remove, you slice the thread wrap, peel off the thread and epoxy and then gently heat the tiptop. ................
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Fuji coined the term "New Guide Concept" and it is their system. And, they do suggest a pretty good number of guides - a lot of guides, really. What I have modified in the system since I began working with it and writing on it in RodMaker are a more concrete means of locating the choker guide and a reduction in total guide number. On Don's chart, the part about locating "Conc
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I came up with it (just pulled it out of the air) as a stopgap measure until Dr. Hanneman could address the issue better in his Universal Rod Rating System. If you have RodMaker Volume 10 #4 you can find it in there. If not, it may be on the photo page here somewhere. If not there, I'll try to put it up tomorrow. The funny thing is that the figures he arrived at are very close to what my fo
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Not sure that was my tip, but it's a good one nonetheless. ...............
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I thought I might have misread that. Sorry. ..........
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Bobby, I have absolutely no idea, but I'm fairly certain it's not to help prevent breakage. ........... Joe, The angle between the line/guides changes as the flex in the rod changes/moves. That's not the point of the chart. The "Equal Angle" concept had to do with plotting the guide positions by means of a set of lines, an equal amount of degrees apart, to intersectio
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We just finished breaking 200 rod blanks by any and all manner of abuse and torture you can imagine. On those rods which were taken to failure either by a deadlift overload or by extreme high-sticking (butt pointed straight up, tip straight down) not a single blank broke anywhere near the tiptop. Even the high-stick failures occurred much farther back than that. The only way you'll get a fish
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I'm sure the Clemens book on custom rod thread art will have complete details on Tartan wraps. Not sure about Billy Vivona's book, but that one may have instructions as well. ..............
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Roger, This may not be anything at all close to what you're wanting to build, but if you can get any ideas from it I hope it proves helpful. Good luck. As you can see, it started life as a commercial industrial steel bench. ................
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