Shaking off some rust

[JasonGotaProblem]

This is, i think, only my 3rd rod build of the year. The last one I wasn't thrilled with my wraps at all. Abd I have another build in mind that i wanna do, but I didn't wanna be disappointed in that one too, so I wanted to build a lower expectations rod to get a bit more practice. But I ended up being pretty happy with it.

I also wanted to experiment with stiffening a floppy blank without screwing up something fancy. And I wanted a 2 piece baitcast rod for traveling. So I got another shakespeare reverb (5'-6") from wallyworld, stripped it, and rewrapped it. But before i did i cross-wrapped the bottom section above the reel seat. Doing so definitely sped up the action and decreased the floppiness did it do enough? That remains to be seen. I'll know when I go cast it.

I used a size 17 trigger seat, a size 12 fuji KW for the stripper, and ( fuji LDB guides for runners. The first is a 6 the rest are size 5. The butt cap is a champagne cork.

I wasnt gonna do any marbling but decided to do a subtle red n blue at the base.

[steelfish]

looking good Jason, that x-wrap looks like it will work wonders, it looks pretty much as the Carbon wrapped blanks from rainshadow.
CARBON WRAPPED BLANKS
Rainshadow Carbon Wrapped Blank
Carbon Matrix Wrap on bottom 1/3 of Blank
Adds lifting power and break strength

let us know how it performs on the battlefield

[jurelometer]

Interesting exercise on the cross wrap!  Better than the filling with resin idea.  What did you wrap with?

It would be fun to try with carbon fiber tow (yarn) and some proper epoxy for composites.  The tighter the spiral, the more you add hoop strength.  The longer the spiral, the more you add longitudinal stiffness.

looking good Jason, that x-wrap looks like it will work wonders, it looks pretty much as the Carbon wrapped blanks from rainshadow.
CARBON WRAPPED BLANKS
Rainshadow Carbon Wrapped Blank
Carbon Matrix Wrap on bottom 1/3 of Blank
Adds lifting power and break strength

let us know how it performs on the battlefield

This is getting to be a pretty common feature now for many brands with lots of marketing babblespeak ("X-Weave", "Double Helix", etc.) Cross wrapping primarily provides extra hoop strength.  It doesn't do as  much to resist bending as it does to prevent the blank from ovalling  out  and failing while being bent.  It is a waste of carbon and epoxy to cross-wrap for extra stiffness.  So the marketing claims seem  kinda exaggerated (shocking, I know ). 

Carbon fibers are stiffer than glass, so the same performance can be achieved with thinner walls.  But thinner walls means weaker walls, so carbon fiber rods tend to break more easily than glass.  Addressing this weakness by cross wrapping with CF tape  makes it hard to make a nice smooth blank, makes the blank heavier, and adds manufacturing expense.

As demand increased for more durable CF rods, somebody came up with the bright idea of not hiding cross wraps and using it as a marketing feature.

Not really suitable for all types of blanks, especially toward the tip, but still a very useful feature.  A fly rod needs to be very stiff for its weight, especially  near the tip to minimize oscillation when casting- so typically little to no cross wrapping.  At the other extreme,  slow pitch jigging rods don't really cast much but need to support deep bending, so  benefit greatly from the hoop strength from cross-wrapping.  I would expect that general purpose rods fall somewhere in between.

-J

[boon]

Interesting solution to the floppyness, and can I just say I absolutely love the champagne cork for the butt.

[JasonGotaProblem]

Thanks Alex I'm looking forward to getting a fish to put a bend on it. I still haven't done any test casting I was crazy busy yesterday.

Believe it or not that champagne cork butt cap is deceptively simple to do. The only difficulty is getting it centered, and thats not so hard. It's also very dense cork, so I'm tempted to hope it'll hold up well. And if it shreds i got a whole bag of em to make replacements.

I never considered carbon fiber wraps I didn't know that was a thing. I just used black A-size pacbay winding thread. I now wonder if I used C size would it have been stiffer, but it was extremely difficult to put a clean wrap over those ridges anyway. Now I gotta research carbon wraps that can be added after the fact(ory).

[JasonGotaProblem]

I realized i never updated this. I used the rod last weekend with my calcutta 250 to throw freeline shrimp and i was pretty happy with performance. The crosswrap absolutely achieved its intended purpose. I don't think I threw any of them further than about 50' but that was fine for the type of fishing i was doing. The bite was slow that day but I managed to use this to catch a snapper and half a trout (a blacktip shark ate the other half, but half that shark is currently in my freezer because i caught him a bit later on a different rod)

I also just ordered a spool of 3k CF tow that I'll crosswrap with on my next build.

[jurelometer]

I realized i never updated this. I used the rod last weekend with my calcutta 250 to throw freeline shrimp and i was pretty happy with performance. The crosswrap absolutely achieved its intended purpose. I don't think I threw any of them further than about 50' but that was fine for the type of fishing i was doing. The bite was slow that day but I managed to use this to catch a snapper and half a trout (a blacktip shark ate the other half, but half that shark is currently in my freezer because i caught him a bit later on a different rod)

I also just ordered a spool of 3k CF tow that I'll crosswrap with on my next build.

Interesting that thread alone would make a difference.  Looking forward to hearing about the results with CF.  On a side note, the bond onto previously cured epoxy is only mechanical, so I am not sure how well this would work for heavy loads on bigger rods.    Also, roughing up the blank area with a bit of sanding aids the mechanical bond.

-J

[Paul Roberts]

Just seeing this. Very cool experiment. Like champagne cork idea too.

[JasonGotaProblem]

Well I appreciate you reviving this thread, because i got rusty again. So I very generously offered to modify a rod for a friend.

"6th sense" baitcast rod. The rod has a really nice action. 7'-8" very fast taper. So it boggled my mind that my rewrapped 5' walmart rod (original subject of this thread) was blowing it out of the water, in terms of casting distance.

So I started looking closer. For one, this rod came from the factory with fuji guides but it's using a size 7 LW guide as the stripper. Yeah I guess it'll still cast, but this is a classic example in my opinion of making a less functional rod in favor of a fancier looking rod. Logically they want to sell rods. I get it. But i can't tolerate that crap.

So I went to a size 12 LC (short version) first guide, used the original size 7 LW as the 2nd guide, a size 6 LAG 3rd guide, and lept the size 4.5 running guides as they were.

Using the same reel and same lure I was getting at least 50% more distance. In fact i threw my first cast into the trees across the lake. I guess I underestimated how much a difference it would make.

[Donnyboat]

Interesting Jason, I used a cork on the butt once & coated it with colour preserver 2 coats, but I think it looked better with the one coat, & the cork will last longer, cheers Don.