Roller guides acid spiral wrap

[MexicanGulf]

Spiral ring assembly was first patented by John Scanlan of Chicago in 1909 (nineteen hundred and nine). It was then popularized before World War II by Chuck Roberts, who had a "custom tackle store" in Kansas City. The "spiral srap" was called "Robert's wrap" by another famous rod builder, Joy Dunlap, who first wrote about it in the RodCrafter Journal and the name immediately caught on. After his there were other articles by Eric C. Stirrup and Bill Blount. Over the years since then the "spiral wrap" has had its ups and downs in popularity, but has recently had a resurgence in popularity among many freshwater and saltwater largemouth bass anglers. "Spiral wrap" on the west coast is known as "acid wrap." Regardless of the blank used, an ACID rig always increases sensitivity compared to a traditional rig, both with SIC rings (unfortunately the SIC rings heat up a lot when starting a large tuna for example) and with pulleys: with the line above the blank at every traction, unless it is perfectly perpendicular to the blank, a twisting moment will be produced and the rod will respond only when the twisting is finished, this involves dead times between traction and response of the rod which will however always be partly influenced by the twisting. Different when the force is in traction on the stem, once applied the response will be almost immediate.

[akfish]

Only somewhat off the subject: Are spiral wrap rods an advantage for casting? I think I understand why/how they work once a fish is hooked, but do they cast well?

[MexicanGulf]

I honestly think you should do some research in this direction. 

[MarkT]

I have 2 acid/roberts/revolver wrap rods. They were wrapped over 20 years ago by Jim Racela (J.Akuhed), the one who came up with the term acid wrap... like dude, were you on acid when you wrapped that?! The biggest down side is bundling up your rods... the guides get in the way!

[jurelometer]

If you get a spiral wrapped roller rod to work effectively and be durable enough, you are mostly proving that you didn't need rollers in the first place.

1. Roller guides are designed to handle radial load, which means that the line has to run perpendicular to the axis of roller.  If instead, the line pushes against the side of the roller, the load is transferred towards the sides of the bearings and any spacers used to keep the rollers centered.  In other words, the bearings on the guides involved in the transition are being twisted and pushed toward one side.  Think of driving your car on corner of the tires instead of the tread. It doesn't matter that much if your car has high quality wheel bearings. 

In addition to load issues, there might also be guide frame clearance issues.

2.  Roller guides are designed for the line to run on the side of the roller away from the blank.  Depending on the guide design, running the line  on the "wrong" side of the roller can cause more issues, especially with the tip.

3.  Roller guides were intended to be placed on top of the blank, causing the load to push the guide into the blank for support.  Hanging the guide under the blank causes the load to pull the guide away from the blank and is relying on just the strength of the thread wraps to keep the guide from pulling off the rod.

Regardless of the blank used, an ACID rig always increases sensitivity compared to a traditional rig
,(unfortunately the SIC rings heat up a lot when starting a large tuna for example) and with pulleys: with the line above the blank at every traction, unless it is perfectly perpendicular to the blank, a twisting moment will be produced and the rod will respond only when the twisting is finished, this involves dead times between traction and response of the rod which will however always be partly influenced by the twisting. Different when the force is in traction on the stem, once applied the response will be almost immediate.

While twisting might slightly inhibit unbending, the blank will both untwist and  unbend at the same time,  effectively simultaneous to the releasing of any load.  i don't  see how this would affect "sensitivity", which usually refers to the ability to transfer small light vibrations to the hand while the rod is lightly loaded.

Too long a topic, but "sensitivity" has to do with the compatibility of the frequency of the source vibration with the resonance of the blank,  which is in part a function of the stiffness and lightness of the blank.   Sort of like how acoustic guitar design and materials affects volume of low, mid, and/or high notes.

You might be able to make an argument that with typically fewer guides toward the tip, a spiral wrap might contribute to sensitivity on very light freshwater rods, sort of like like not gluing too much stuff onto the soundboard of an acoustic guitar.

I also don't believe that ceramic rings heat up much from friction with braided line.  The coefficient of friction between polished ceramics and UHMWPE is astonishingly tiny.  The force on the guide(force is the other component of friction) is  a small fraction of the drag setting, and spread out over all the guides.  A good amount of any heat that does get generated will transfer to long sections the line as it passes over the ring, and quickly dissipate. There is just not enough thermal energy generated. 

Ceramic guides are used with very high drag setting for large tuna out here in California/Mexico.  Roller guides are becoming exceedingly rare as Lee (Keta) has noted.  So it seems unlikely that there is a noticeable heat/friction issue.


Just an alternate viewpoint that I hope you might find useful.

-J

[jurelometer]

Only somewhat off the subject: Are spiral wrap rods an advantage for casting? I think I understand why/how they work once a fish is hooked, but do they cast well?

Don't think so, otherwise the tournament casters would use them.

Guides contribute to the distribution of the load on the blank  before the cast is released.  You should be able to get pretty much the same distribution of load with either style,  just with different guide placement. Maybe a bit lost to twisting load on the spiral.

Once the cast is released,  the guides do not contribute in a positive way.  If the guides just disappeared, you would have the longest cast.  Any line contact with the guides or blank is robbing kinetic energy, so having the guides in a straight line from the reel to the tip is an advantage.  The most that you can hope for is not to screw up casting distance noticeably  with a spiral wrap

I have 2 acid/roberts/revolver wrap rods. They were wrapped over 20 years ago by Jim Racela (J.Akuhed), the one who came up with the term acid wrap... like dude, were you on acid when you wrapped that?! The biggest down side is bundling up your rods... the guides get in the way!

Plus under gunnel horizontal rod holders. Or temporarily laying the rod down on a flat surface.  So many more ways to tangle and damage a rod that is spiral wrapped. For the types of fishing that I do, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.  I have one spiral wrapped rod still.  I wish it was zero.

I could see it being an advantage for the new styles of jigging (like slow pitch).  There should be less line wrapping around guides with vigorous  lifts and then slack.  Doesn't seem to be hugely popular on jigging rods at the moment.  Also for working big saltwater poppers with a jerking action, although almost everyone (except me  ) uses a spinner for this.

-J

[mikeysm]

I had a rod built several years with the titanium roller guides designed specifically for a acid rod. Once tension is put on the rod the line works perfectly.

Mike

[jurelometer]

I had a rod built several years with the titanium roller guides designed specifically for a acid rod. Once tension is put on the rod the line works perfectly.

Mike

Neat!  Had to look this up.

Could find only one manufacturer.  All American Roller Guides - office is a FED-Ex store mail box in Lake Havasu Az. Didn't see them for sale anywhere. made some noise in the early 2000's

Stainless with a titanium roller.  The bottom guides and tip are designed to work upside down, which eliminates one of the three issue that I noted.  The side load issue is mostly (partly?) addressed by requiring a specific guide layout with a very abrupt over to under transition (something like 30  degrees to 140 to 170 to 180), with a tight line clearance at the side of the blank. Otherwise the line doesn't stay in the bottom of the vee on the rollers. Didn't look like the transition guide had an angled axis ( which would cause other problems), but the photos are not very clear. 

Looks like spiral rollers pretty much died out.  I would be curious if you have found any advantages to this setup.

-J

[MarkT]

Acid rods cast fine. Mine are a Seeker g6470 and a g6480. Of course, no roller rod is going to cast well, that's not their forte. Aftco lite rollers cast pretty good. I had a couple 8'ers in the past and still have a Shimano Calcutta 70alr.

[MexicanGulf]

I had a rod built several years with the titanium roller guides designed specifically for a acid rod. Once tension is put on the rod the line works perfectly.

Mike

Neat!  Had to look this up.

Could find only one manufacturer.  All American Roller Guides - office is a FED-Ex store mail box in Lake Havasu Az. Didn't see them for sale anywhere. made some noise in the early 2000's

Stainless with a titanium roller.  The bottom guides and tip are designed to work upside down, which eliminates one of the three issue that I noted.  The side load issue is mostly (partly?) addressed by requiring a specific guide layout with a very abrupt over to under transition (something like 30  degrees to 140 to 170 to 180), with a tight line clearance at the side of the blank. Otherwise the line doesn't stay in the bottom of the vee on the rollers. Didn't look like the transition guide had an angled axis ( which would cause other problems), but the photos are not very clear. 

Looks like spiral rollers pretty much died out.  I would be curious if you have found any advantages to this setup.

-J

Everol produces roller guides for acid spiral wrap assembly

[jurelometer]

I had a rod built several years with the titanium roller guides designed specifically for a acid rod. Once tension is put on the rod the line works perfectly.

Mike

Neat!  Had to look this up.

Could find only one manufacturer.  All American Roller Guides - office is a FED-Ex store mail box in Lake Havasu Az. Didn't see them for sale anywhere. made some noise in the early 2000's

Stainless with a titanium roller.  The bottom guides and tip are designed to work upside down, which eliminates one of the three issue that I noted.  The side load issue is mostly (partly?) addressed by requiring a specific guide layout with a very abrupt over to under transition (something like 30  degrees to 140 to 170 to 180), with a tight line clearance at the side of the blank. Otherwise the line doesn't stay in the bottom of the vee on the rollers. Didn't look like the transition guide had an angled axis ( which would cause other problems), but the photos are not very clear. 

Looks like spiral rollers pretty much died out.  I would be curious if you have found any advantages to this setup.

-J

Everol produces roller guides for acid spiral wrap assembly

Ahh! Your photos at the start of the thread are of the Everol Vortex SP1. Unfortunately, that page is dead at the Everol site at the moment, so I can't read more.

Looks like the same rapid top to bottom transition problem. With the layout in the photo, the transition guide  is an over-the-roller feed, which means that it does not load the blank, but only serves to push the line away from the blank.  This helps minimize the issue of side loading the transition guide, but leaves a large part of the mid section of the rod without any load distribution from the guides. This imbalance in load is also a challenge for spiral wraps with ring guides, but more easily minimized for rings with the greater options for guides and  placement.

Rollers are just not a very mechanically compatible choice  when you have to change the axis plane. So there has to be some compromises if you want both spiral wrap and rollers.

I see no point, but I am willing to be enlightened.  I learn something new here every day!

-J

[MexicanGulf]

I had a rod built several years with the titanium roller guides designed specifically for a acid rod. Once tension is put on the rod the line works perfectly.

Mike

Neat!  Had to look this up.

Could find only one manufacturer.  All American Roller Guides - office is a FED-Ex store mail box in Lake Havasu Az. Didn't see them for sale anywhere. made some noise in the early 2000's

Stainless with a titanium roller.  The bottom guides and tip are designed to work upside down, which eliminates one of the three issue that I noted.  The side load issue is mostly (partly?) addressed by requiring a specific guide layout with a very abrupt over to under transition (something like 30  degrees to 140 to 170 to 180), with a tight line clearance at the side of the blank. Otherwise the line doesn't stay in the bottom of the vee on the rollers. Didn't look like the transition guide had an angled axis ( which would cause other problems), but the photos are not very clear. 

Looks like spiral rollers pretty much died out.  I would be curious if you have found any advantages to this setup.

-J

Everol produces roller guides for acid spiral wrap assembly

Ahh! Your photos at the start of the thread are of the Everol Vortex SP1. Unfortunately, that page is dead at the Everol site at the moment, so I can't read more.

Looks like the same rapid top to bottom transition problem. With the layout in the photo, the transition guide  is an over-the-roller feed, which means that it does not load the blank, but only serves to push the line away from the blank.  This helps minimize the issue of side loading the transition guide, but leaves a large part of the mid section of the rod without any load distribution from the guides. This imbalance in load is also a challenge for spiral wraps with ring guides, but more easily minimized for rings with the greater options for guides and  placement.

Rollers are just not a very mechanically compatible choice  when you have to change the axis plane. So there has to be some compromises if you want both spiral wrap and rollers.

I see no point, but I am willing to be enlightened.  I learn something new here every day!

-J

 The Everol Vortex SP1 are pulleys designed specifically for ACID assembly, they are made of aeronautical aluminum and each is milled from solid by very precise numerically controlled machinery, this type of processing allows you to obtain a piece that is very faithful to the project, in terms of dimensions , inclinations and tolerances. On each pulley a roller is mounted in the same material made with the same process, but before mounting them the rollers are treated with hard anodization which gives them the same characteristics as the ceramic materials of the best rings on the market. Each roller turns on a pair of double-shielded steel bearings with very high smoothness which allow an always perfect set-up and unparalleled silence. Particular attention deserves the tip designed not to offer sharp corners in any position of use and which ensures a much less accentuated angle of incidence with the line compared to traditional mountings. All these features make the SP1 a very technical and precise set, practically indestructible thanks to the easy replaceability of the bearings. The use of Everol Vortex SP1 on competition rods allows for minimizing the twisting that the blank would have with "traditional" setups, prolonging its life, the angler will have a greater sensation of contact with the fish throughout the fight which will allow him to exploit the characteristics of the blank to its fullest and, an absolutely non-secondary factor during the races, it allows you to recover the dead times of the twists, those handfuls of seconds which in the economy of a race can often make the difference in the ranking.

[MexicanGulf]

I found a video where you can see the rod in action during the Italian tuna drifting championship in the 30 lb class.

[JasonGotaProblem]

I think it's like everything else. People still fish roller rods because that's what they're used to. Or for the same reason that people fish vintage penns. They want to.

If efficiency were the only consideration when fishing we'd all be talking about nets.

[MexicanGulf]

however, the benefit of roller guides is to dissipate heat during the violent release of line when a large fish is hooked. Both nylon and braid heat up a lot. Even high-quality SIC ring guides are not immune to this overheating