Rod Balank Spine argument.

[Cor]

We recently had a thread on a topic that touched on this, re acid rods.

https://alantani.com/index.php?topic=22222.msg385273#msg385273

I have very seldom been aware of the effect of the spline on a rod or then the twisting it is supposed to cause.   I have used the spline to determine if I want to cast or pull fish with the stronger side which on a conventional rod are on the opposite side of the rod.

On very strong rods I have noticed a twisting with a bent blank.    If I remember correctly the bend had been to either the right or left.

Just a final point, using the technique of rolling the tip of the blank on the floor it is not always easy to find the  precise location of the spline as it often has two points where it jumps to.   I then try to find the softest side, but how come we have two spots?

The choosing of spine to determine priority for casting or pulling is perhaps the right analogy. I've used the softer aspect when building surf rods for ladies, making the rod easier to cast. A purely comfort issue.   .........

When I started Yellowtail fishing the standard rod was in the region of 10 to 11 ft and "as strong as you could cast"   The manne (Men) would pull a yellowtail on top of the water sometime with locked drag 60 lb line and not let it get its head down (Obviously not the NZ size)

Unfortunately in my case that was a long time ago and I now have to use weaker and easier rods to cast with, but pulling a fish I can still handle a strong rod as that only happens every now and then.

This is where I started to build my rods to cast with the weaker side and pull fish with the stronger, ie. using the spine to my advantage, same principle as Jeri says.   I would not be unhappy if there could be a bigger difference between the sides, though it may result in other issues.    If my rod building friends were still in business I would ask them if they could make a blank like that.

In my game it is more then simply a comfort issue as I now manage to fish max 2/7 days a week with difficulty, whereas 7/7 days was not unheard of 15 years ago.

[Midway Tommy]

Wow, thank you Jeri & Makule for saving me a bunch of typing! 

I always find it comical when someone says a certain faction is BS but provide no factual evidence that their opinion isn't just hypothetical BS, too.   

[JasonGotaProblem]

I'm still very much a novice when it comes to rod building. But I am not a novice when it comes to experience using cheap rods. So I've fished a lot of rods built off spine, and only a few built on spine. And to be clear my experience is 100% spinning. Ive never used a conventional. But it's been my experience that rods built off spine consistently cast off to that side. If the force required to bend an object varies by angle, logic says one should consider that angle when building something where bending is important. Could a curve to the rod make building on spine look funny? Sure. Could looking funny be a big deal to some paying customers, more so than actual performance? Absolutely. And if you do this for a living, of course happy customers are more important than pure performance. But i disagree with the notion that this means consideration of the spine's relative position is unimportant for discussion of pure performance. And I think that distinction needs to be made when discussing this topic.

I just struggle to understand how something so readily noticed if one bends and twists a blank is somehow completely irrelevant to the final performance of the built rod.

There may be types of fishing where a spine is less important (for example if you're using a short and heavy rod, dropping live bait down on a reef and never casting, etc.) But in general i find most blanket statements about tackle (_____ never matters, or ______ always matters, etc.) inaccurate, and generally a reflection of people overestimating the conclusiveness and applicability of their own experiences.

Just my 2c

[jurelometer]

I always find it comical when someone says a certain faction is BS but provide no factual evidence that their opinion isn't just hypothetical BS, too.   

Yeah.  The first argument was basically  "They keep telling me the earth is not flat, but they haven't proven the earth  is round to my satisfaction, therefore the earth is flat".  That kind of reasoning would probably get you  tossed off the high school debate team.

And the Rodmaker article made me laugh.  They broke 50 brand new blanks to "prove" that when you apply load to one end of a flexible tube, it will be strongest when  the load is aligned to the side where the wall is thickest. 

Jeri and Jason have  some good points. I would add that fly rods are cast back and forth, so there is a theory that the guides should go on the soft side of the spine to stiffen it. This might make the power of the rod closer to the same on the forward and back stroke.

-J

[Jeri]

I find that a lot of perceived wisdom that gets published is to cater for a series of 'rules', that become urban legend and set in stone, And any challenge to that way is often considered too radical, and must be wrong.

I'm in perhaps the fortunate position, that I can build on blanks, and experiment with various designs on rods, without penalty - apart from the obvious costs. I can try new ideas, or ideas contrary to common thinking and test to see just what the results are of that change. This leads me to continually look at options to improve, and challenge the norms. We found this with a recent change to our surf fishing, when we went over to using spinning reels with braid, and through deliberate work found a guide system that turns the public perception totally on its head. One client came to see my wife at the end of a competition - I was at home with a broken hip. He was resolute in what he wanted, but my wife offered to let him try our latest incarnation, which was a 14'-6" rod casting 5oz and bait. His immediate comment was that the guides were too small, and would be ripped off by the braid to braid leader knot- they were small, just size 6. She effectively challenged his casting abilities and he tried the rod down on the beach, with a big crowd of his buddies in tow. She gave him permission to cast as hard as he could, and no penalty for any damage.

He wound up into a huge cast, and away it went, and his mates just jeered that he had cast the sinker off or broken the leader. Then he looked down at the reel, and line was still flying off - attached still to the sinker!!! 6-7 seconds later it finally landed in the sea, and was duly wound in, and he asked if he could cast it again, because he had never cast a sinker that far before. We did get the order for his new rod, but the challenge to his and his mates thinking, by a woman, was perhaps the ultimate problem, but the performance issue against the 'rules' that the angling public at large hold dear and set in stone is perhaps the biggest issue.

A typical example might be the significant lack of factory made and promoted spiral wrapped rods. It looks wrong, it can't possibly work, there is no way that is going to cast as efficiently as a 'normal' rod. Sir Issac Newton and Leonardo Ca Vinci had similar problems.

[oc1]

spiral wrapped rods. It looks wrong, it can't possibly work, there is no way that is going to cast as efficiently as a 'normal' rod.

So Jeri, there is no loss of distance when a rod is spiral wrapped?  That would be a game changer for me.  I'm thinking it would eliminate some of the tip wrap problems.

[Jeri]

spiral wrapped rods. It looks wrong, it can't possibly work, there is no way that is going to cast as efficiently as a 'normal' rod.

So Jeri, there is no loss of distance when a rod is spiral wrapped?  That would be a game changer for me.  I'm thinking it would eliminate some of the tip wrap problems.

A few years back, we looked at the issues associated with spiral wrapping, and the benefits and applied them to a series of surf rods. Being longer (14'), we could do the transition more slowly and found no significant loss in distance when compared to the same blank being built in a conventional manner. The benefits were immediately felt when hooking something heavy, even 15kgs of floating weed, near no torsional twist at the handle. Published our findings and results in a surf magazine, and despite the date being August, they thought it was an April Fool. Built several for clients, and they are all still impressed with the concept.

[Swami805]

I pick a blank out of the pile to see if I could get a decent picture of what I was refer to.  Bear in mind I pretty much only build 2 brand of blanks so others might be different. I put it on the lathe to check and the small dip was about 3/8" which doesn't sound like much but would be huge if the guides were not lined up on that axis. Built this is an expensive rod that I could never sell if it doesn't look straight

[Midway Tommy]

I got to thinking (probably just a brain fart  ) that the only way to truly identify the spline, or spine as most call it, on rod blanks by using the bent in the palm hand rotation method would be to somehow sand or grind the butt of the blank at the edge perfectly round around the outside circumference. That same concept would also apply to inside circumference when rotating on a conical object. It seems to me that there is no possible way to get a precise spline location when either of the circumferences used for rotation are oval or oblong, which is what happens when the material is lapped.   

[Rivverrat]

   For a true fishing rod thats acid /spiral wrapped I agree with Jeri. I had 6 blanks from a well know builder.  Three I wrapped conventional the other three I acid wrapped. Someone who can cast better than me might be able to see some difference in casting distance. My longest cast was with one of the acid wrapped rods.

However if you have ever hit a baseball & felt the feeling when you really connect or punched someone or something there is a point when one can feel the power being delivered properly.

During this testing I felt this on my longest cast. I happened to be using one of the acid wrapped rods when my timing & release & the sun & moon were smiling on me. I believe it would have been the same thing if I had been using one of the conventional wrapped rods. Absolutely no reason for the average fisherman or better than average caster to worry about casting distance between the two.

  My personal thoughts are there is good reason for both of these styles of wrapping a rod. Those who knock the acid wrap, I believe have never used one. Or used a poorly wrapped one. Hard headed ideas are sometimes based on feelings & not facts... Jeff

[oc1]

the only way to truly identify the spline, or spine as most call it, on rod blanks by using the bent in the palm hand rotation method would be to somehow sand or grind the butt of the blank at the edge perfectly round around the outside circumference. That same concept would also apply to inside circumference when rotating on a conical object. It seems to me that there is no possible way to get a precise spline location when either of the circumferences used for rotation are oval or oblong, which is what happens when the material is lapped.  

Yeah, but Tommy, that assumes the overlap +1 spot is straight along the entire length of the rod.  They can design the flags so that the final loose edge is straight along the length of the rod.  But if the rolling process is the least bit off the spline would shift a lot.  If the circumference of the tip is 5-6 millimeters, being a millimeter off in tacking the mandrel to the flag and another millimeter tensioning the platen would make the cut edge of the flag to spiral around the length of the blank.

I mess around with old tobacco rods from the 1950's.  They may not be applicable since the whole blank making process has improved a lot since then.  But on the tobacco rods the weave of the fabric is visible and you can see the +1 edge.  It seldom/never forms a perfectly straight line from butt to tip.  You still feel a spine using the regular technique for locating it.  This makes me think that the line we call the spline may be just a path of least resistance.

Take a three- or four-piece blank, find and mark the spine on each section using the usual technique.  Then put the rod together aligning each section and check the spine over the entire rod length.  When I do that the spine of the whole blank is never exactly where I thought it would be based on the individual sections.  The caveat here is that the spine I feel using the usual technique always seems a little bit vague.  It's sort of right here but could be off a few degrees.in either direction.

In the factory, the sanding and finishing process covers up a lot of stuff.  One way to really understand a blank is to sand the finish off and expose the +1 edge.  But, you then understand a blank that you just ruined and will never use.

[gstours]

Thanks for everyone chiming in,     I,m not trying to be a know it all,  not even kinda....
   We can all learn things here and share opinions and facts,  The more I learn the more i find out i got more to learn.
     I,m liking this "argument topic" to a parallel with magnetism and the last presidential campain.......       gst

[jurelometer]

Regarding  Tommy and Steve's comments:  While it will be educational  to see for yourself by grinding down a blank,  we want to find the orientation that makes the rod that wants to twist the least when being bent.   This is a case where we care most about the effect and not so much the cause.   Using the tradional method, this will place the easiest to bend path  on the outside of the test bend, and will mimize rotational load when building  the rod with the guides on the outside or inside of this bend.  You don't have to believe that this is caused by having more of the wall being thinner where it matters most.  It can even be wrong.  It won't matter.

As Steve has noted, the stiffest and softest paths  are not  necessarily on opposite sides of the blank.  For folks that are willing to live with some twisting, they can build with the stiffest path on top, and have a theoretically minimally stronger (and stiffer) rod.  To find this for sure, you would have to hang a subtantial weight from the tip (mebbe enough to have it flex down about 1/3 of the length), and rotate the blank until the tip hangs down the least. I have read that if you find the orientation where the blank cups upward, this will usually be the stiffest  as well.

None of this is rocket surgery...

-J

[jurelometer]

Thanks for everyone chiming in,     I,m not trying to be a know it all,  not even kinda....
   We can all learn things here and share opinions and facts,  The more I learn the more i find out i got more to learn.
     I,m liking this "argument topic" to a parallel with magnetism and the last presidential campain.......       gat

Leaving politics aside, 

Jeri posted a good example of  challenging a commonly accepted belief leading  to an advancement.  But there is also the flip side that is a bit too common  for my taste.

There is a distinct difference between being Galileo and a member of the Flat Earth Society.   

-J

[oc1]

Sometimes I like the spine to be on the bottom of the rod.  When casting, it makes the rod load differently, and often load better.  99% of the time is spent fishing and 1% spent catching.  If an angry fish twists my rod and breaks it in half, I'll be as proud as punch.