Stupid lesson learned

[steelfish]

..........But I'll make sure I test bend that one first. Ideally with an audience.

if you NEED to have an audience to convince your friend it wasnt your fault if the rod broke while testing it, I would find new friends or at least dont work on his rods.
(I know that,  I have friends I will never work on any of his rods, just to keep our friendship in good shape, not a secret I already told them LOL)

dont need to make the other one FOR FREE, only if that was the original plan.
just tell him the true, just like that.
The rod was damaged at some point before getting to your hands

[jurelometer]

There is a great article on identifying the cause of a broken rod from Rodmaker magazine, complete with sample photos:

https://tforods.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tom-kirkman-rod-failure-rodmaker-magazine.pdf

Useful for rodbuilders to have on hand to show to clients with broken product.

But a couple caveats.

1.  This article was written before the spiral wraps of unidirectional tape (x-weave, double-helix, etc.), became more common.  Perhaps breaks might look a little different on these blanks.  Dunno.

2.  The majority  of failures that I have seen are crush failures.  It takes the least amount of force, can happen easily (just step on the blank, have a tackle box  bump into it hard, etc.).  The rod can appear sound and fish for a short while, and the actual breakage event might happen when fish fighting, high-sticking, etc., but the cause was the crush.

The blank can get stepped on before the builder gets it, so a crush failure is not always the customer's fault.

As noted in the article, it doesn't take too long before a damage or defects will cause a break.  If a rod has been fished for awhile, and then breaks, it pretty much has to be  post-build damage.


I have had only one factory defect rod in my life.  On the only premium boutique brand fly rod that I ever bought.  Broke a foot up from the cork the first day testing it out at the casting pond.  A clean break, and the wall thickness was slightly uneven.  Probably not a roll problem, just over sanding, since it was a fancy sanded matte finish on a thin walled rod -  too much material was removed.  It was replaced under warranty, but it took over three months.  Last premium botique fly rod that I ever bought.

On this particular break: I agree with Jason.   Based on the photo, age of the rod and the description, sounds like a fracture failure when the guide got whacked.  It was going to go kablooie on the next full bend or two.

-J

[JasonGotaProblem]

if you NEED to have an audience to convince your friend it wasnt your fault if the rod broke while testing it...

Nah he was cool about it. He wasnt surprised as I was, he was the one that beat up the rod for 20 years.

[thorhammer]

Color of the graphite has no effect on strength. Cheap crap or damaged blanks will break. 

All this time I thought the different colors of graphite blank were caused by pigments added to the resin. I didn't think it implied anything structural about the blank. Still learning every day.

If anyone was wondering, it was a 20 yr old hurricane redbone blank.

NOT suggesting causality...  just, a coloring trend:

ballpark 15-25 years ago, many BAD budget blanks were made, and whoever made them
just happened to choose shades of charcoal as the color for the graphite or composite

conversely, there were GOOD budget blanks from same period/price-point
in my personal experience, NONE of those were colored shades of charcoal

YUP. done that. We had a batch of Berkeley Lightnin rods back in the day all snapped in the same spot,,,,,about four of them.

YUP, old matte black Lightnin' ML -- snapped upper middle, UNREASONABLY 
later translucent brown Lightnin' 1-6# -- great UL blank w/ trash components

Yup....upper middle, all within three inches of the others...