first build questions.

Started by ScottOz, May 28, 2018, 04:34:51 AM

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thorhammer

Thanks Bill, but I'm just a tinkerer compared to the other guys weighing in here. I just know what missteps I've made, and every rod teaches something new, especially a refurb job.

doradoben

Earlier in this thread, ScottOz asked about painting his blank.
This may help with an answer. (on page 2).    http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=7298.15 

ScottOz

Cheers.had a good read of that thread.makes it sound easy.will have to do more research and see what I can turn up.Did see somewhere that the paint used for car bumpers and plastics works.

GClev

Quote from: Jeri on May 29, 2018, 12:25:58 PM
Just a hypothetical question.

In the past heavy duty game rods were under whipped and then over whipped, sometimes even double overwhipped. Basically, historically this would have been for strength, as the strength of the varnish they were using for thread work was not that strong.

However, today we have seriously strong resins, like Flexcoat, where the strength of the resin is probably considerably stronger than the thread. To the point, that it is conceivably possible to actually just resin a ring or roller onto a blank - not very pretty, but certainly strong. Just a single wrapping of thread to reinforce the resin, should in theory be stronger than the double whipping and varnish of days or old.


So, why do we persist with double whipping, and what is the benefit of under whipping when rings or rollers are all on the top side of the rod??

Just a question - or am I missing some thing?

Jeri, your posts are a wealth of information.  Cheers from the Mojave Desert.

Deconstructed rods prove there is a mirror image bed under each guide foot, a hard knot of glue and thread that act as a socket for each foot, just like bedding a rifle.  The underwrap pads the gel coat and supports the bed.


Jeri

Quote from: GClev on December 21, 2018, 03:55:37 PM
Quote from: Jeri on May 29, 2018, 12:25:58 PM
Just a hypothetical question.

In the past heavy duty game rods were under whipped and then over whipped, sometimes even double overwhipped. Basically, historically this would have been for strength, as the strength of the varnish they were using for thread work was not that strong.

However, today we have seriously strong resins, like Flexcoat, where the strength of the resin is probably considerably stronger than the thread. To the point, that it is conceivably possible to actually just resin a ring or roller onto a blank - not very pretty, but certainly strong. Just a single wrapping of thread to reinforce the resin, should in theory be stronger than the double whipping and varnish of days or old.


So, why do we persist with double whipping, and what is the benefit of under whipping when rings or rollers are all on the top side of the rod??

Just a question - or am I missing some thing?

Jeri, your posts are a wealth of information.  Cheers from the Mojave Desert.

Deconstructed rods prove there is a mirror image bed under each guide foot, a hard knot of glue and thread that act as a socket for each foot, just like bedding a rifle.  The underwrap pads the gel coat and supports the bed.




The mirror image of resin is actually a sign of a well built rod, where the finishing resin has been fully and properly applied. The question now is that will the strengths of the resin in an adhesive manner, and a single wrap of thread over the top of the ring - this should be more than enough to hold any guide or roller in place. In the old days the thread did most of the work as we were only using the likes of varnish to protect and lock the threads in place. Now we have super strength resins, additional layers of threads become not only redundant, but will actually contribute a negative affect to the performance of the blank.

In recent months we have been doing a lot of development work on our very long surf rods, and found that by changing a lot of the upper guides to single leg guides, in place of double leg guides, we are gaining a huge amount of performance - up to 10% increase in distance or more. Though we are not looking at this as 'found' performance, but releasing the problem of 'hard points' of the double leg guides that were restricting the performance of the blank.

If we are liberating performance from our rods in this manner, how much can be liberated from other designs, by not over building??

Just a question to stimulate the little grey cells.

Cheers from sunny Africa.

Swami805

What kind of single foot guides are you using Jeri? I'd like to give it a try. I'm thinking you're going with a single foot from the point where the rod starts to bend?
Thanks for all your posts, you push the envelope there a lot more than us Yanks on this side of the planet.
Sheridan
Do what you can with that you have where you are

sdlehr

Quote from: happyhooker on May 28, 2018, 08:20:21 PMHard to wrap a finer thread over a coarser one because the finer thread tends to "fall" into the grooves of the underlying coarser one, leaving the underwrap to show through.
Wrap them in opposite directions and it's a lot easier.
Sid Lehr
Veterinarian, fishing enthusiast, custom rod builder, reel collector

Jeri

Quote from: Swami805 on December 22, 2018, 02:17:42 PM
What kind of single foot guides are you using Jeri? I'd like to give it a try. I'm thinking you're going with a single foot from the point where the rod starts to bend?
Thanks for all your posts, you push the envelope there a lot more than us Yanks on this side of the planet.
Sheridan

We only use Fuji, so KTAG or KTSG, depending on the application. We started with some KR Concept guides on the long surf rods, and they proved a little too fragile for some of our anglers, so we now have a hybrid combination of Low Riders and KT guides, to replicate the KR Concept, and still get the performance improvement - about +10% on distance. Makes rods with full KW guides look archaic on the performance scale - too heavy and restrictive on the casting action.

Jeri

Taking the discussion a stage further, we recently did a fairly definitive investigation into the effects of guides on surf rods. We had a couple of factory built rods that we also had the identical blank. The factory had followed the Fuji wisdom on spacing KW guides, and used a full set up the entire length of the long surf rods, which wasn't wrong as they were pretty much following what every other manufacturer is doing.

We took our own ideas on performance of the blank, and applied our Low Rider/KT hybrid guide system, and built the blanks to the same specification of other materials, like Fuji graphite reel seats and Winn Grip handles.

Then we weighed the completed rods, and found that our system offered a considerable saving on these 15' one piece rods, something in the region of 130 grams or 4oz in 'old money'. However, the real difference happened when we got to the casting field. Using the same 'more than competent' caster, same reel and braid, same sinker, we did a couple of test casts and then 3 serious 'all out' cast with both variations. The difference was staggering, while we were getting near 140 metres with the factory rod as an average, as soon as we started with the hybrid guide rods we saw a huge difference. Firstly the ease with which the rods loaded during the cast, and then the final results - the average for 3 casts was just over 175 metres - just over 100' further with the hybrid guides. Even to the point where one of our lady anglers took a couple of casts and managed to drop the 7oz sinker at 155 metres.


The conclusions were obvious, but the implications are more serious, in that rod manufacturing companies are now uniformly producing finished rods that are under achieving by 20% of their potential, even with an identical blank. And while the general purchasing public have been lead to believe that these new guides are the 'bee's knee', they are being mislead. But also, there is the aspect of the general purchasing public 'asking' or 'demanding' that these 'new components should be seen on the new products.

It is all a little like boat rods being built with acid wrap guides, very few manufacturers are brave enough to offer their buying public something that offers a dramatic improvement in performance, because of 'public perceptions'.

Just something to think about when embarking on a new rod build.

Cheers from sunny Africa

Swami805

Thanks for the detailed explanation  Jeri, I have a few blanks to build for next spring, a 10' glass graphite composite and a 13' all glass blank. I'll have to do a little load testing to get the spacing right I'm thinking since I'll get a little more flex in the blank. Should be fun, Thanks again Sheridan
Do what you can with that you have where you are

steelfish

really informative thread.
thanks guys.

The Baja Guy

steelfish

Quote from: Jeri on May 29, 2018, 04:38:18 PM
..................
In trying to answer the question why??? The only answer seemed to be that the reduction of stiff points around the curve of the rod was allowing the true power of the rod blank to come back into the equation. I'm certainly not suggesting single leg guides on a tuna rod, but more thought towards the strength of materials we have today, and how much potential power we are masking or losing with over building.
Just my idle thoughts.
Cheers from sunny Africa

glad I found this thread (again), I in the process to rebuild/restoring a short surf rod that came stock with 5+1 guides, its a Tica UGMA 7ft rod that I bought for cheap cuz it had 2 broken guides (1st and 3rd guide) and 1" from the tip, suposedly Tica company use their propietary TC2 graphite blank so, to take advantage of this blank my idea was to build it again using just the 5 stock guides, I was like my compadre Sheridan, I used to install 1 guide per foot and some time one more just to have a more "cosmetic" flow on the curve specially if it was for a casting rod.

Quote from: Swami805 on May 29, 2018, 12:48:51 PM
Old habits die hard for fisherman. If I build a 7' rod it better have 8 guides on it, doesn't matter that a static test shows it only needs 6. Same with wrapping, the under wrap isn't really nessecary but no ones buying it without it.

But this time I will follow Jeri advices and try it by myself on a personal rod, even when the static test shows that it might need at least 1 more guide to have a more smooth curve when loaded the blank lifting a 12# weights, the idea is to have the less stiff points on the blank and let it do the work on the fish and when casting lures, this is an spinning rod so, I think its not that critical than installing 1 guides less on a casting rod.
I will be installing some PacBay DP Ti guides that I already have to make the rod light and strong, since its 7ft long and pretty light I will use it from time to time as an inshore rod too,  more in another thread when I have it finished.

The Baja Guy

Rivverrat

Scott, or any one else looking for quality blanks in Australia I will reccomend United Composites.
The prior owner Peter Williams is from Australia & still resides there. Been a while but last time I checked he still is receiving shipments of UC Blanks.

  I make no claims of being an expert rod builder. That said some things I've noticed are many rods made by custom builders are over built. This is what many buyers expect. Regardless of how well you show or explain it not being necessary.

  Most rods maybe over half used for salt water would do just fine with Fugi MN's or a lesser strength guide.
Like Jerry has stated the heavier guides along with double wrapping  robs the blank of performance.

  I have an 8' CE Wahoo thats acid / spiral wrapped. First 3 guides are double foot all the rest are single foot guides. This is a slow parabolic blank. The performance of this rod casting & fighting fish is noticeably better than the same blank with all double foot guides.
This is the only instance where I've noticed a difference using Randy's blanks with an acid wrap. I believe it has more to do with the single foot guides than the acid wrap.

I've ran this rod with fish on at 20 lbs. of drag & slightly more. It's lite weight & a joy to use. However it needs more testing... Jeff

Swami805

I rebuilt one of my favorite 15-20lb rods, a Calstar GX9 and used all single foot guides for all the running guides. I used a single layer for A thread and light epoxy. The rod is paired with my trusty Calcutta TE300. Used it pretty much all day last Tuesday throwing 5/8 plastics. Much lighter and improved distance considerably from the way it was before. Thanks Jeri for taking the time to post, made one of my favorite rods even better
Do what you can with that you have where you are

Jeri

Thanks for the comments guys, but we have been 'playing' again.

With our Low Rider/KR hybrid system on the long surf rods, we started to question the validity of starting the train with a size 20 - yes the actual height of the guide was essential to make it all work with the spinners, but could we go smaller, and reduce the end train further? The thought of firing 35lb braid and 100lb braid leader through size 8 guides was a little troublesome, but let's try.

The results just further confirmed that further weight reduction on the working part of the blank, just liberated more suppressed performance that we had previously been losing or masking with heavier and stiffer guides. 100lb braid casting leader through size 8 guides - went like a dream - still near silent during power casts, which personally I take as a sign of least friction. So, getting the guide train to work properly with the format of reel and blank - and the results just knock the factory concepts out of the window.

Something else that we have found, is that by moving the starting point for the first guide further and further up the long surf rods, we seem to get more and more distance - up to as point! Starting off with the first guide at 72", then incrementally moving it 6" further up with each test design, we found that distance was improving, however what we also found was that the sheer power of the rod with fish on reduced slightly with each incremental movement up the rod. Basically a 'trombone' effect with power/backbone being offset against distance.


At the end of the day, it is all very interesting work and just builds on the mental database of how rod performance can be seriously enhanced but avoiding the more conventional thinking patterns.