Carbon tow

[JasonGotaProblem]

So this carbon stuff is supposedly pretty strong. And takes epoxy well.

Has anyone tried wrapping guides with it?

[jurelometer]

Haven't tried it, don't think it would work well.  Wrong properties.

Nylon thread stretches and does not stick that well to epoxy.  Nylon won't affect the action much and can be removed without much drama when you need to replace a guide. Also easy to do the actual wrapping process.

Epoxying in carbon fiber tow is effectively building a lumpy blank with exaggerated stiff spots, and good luck replacing a guide. You will have locked in chunks of steel into the blank.

I vote no. 

-J

[thrasher]

Never heard of the stuff but seems like it would be overkill to me. I've never had a failure with nylon thread and flex-coat. If you decide to try it I'd use foul proof guides.

[oc1]

I built rods from scratch using tow similar to that.  It's here on AT somewhere.

The gripe/problem will be getting the tow to wet out.  They put a sizing material on the tow to keep it from falling apart and the sizing makes it resist soaking up resin.  Without vacuum bagging or binding you'll have to really work the resin in with your fingers or brush.  The worse case scenario is that the bottom of the tow doesn't absorb resin and you do not realize it until it's dry and everything is loose.  It's safer to soak the tow in resin and run it between your fingers to make sure it is wet. Then wrap the soaked tow around the rod and cinch it off with a half-hitch.  If you can get it to look good without having to sand it and apply a finish coat of resin then you're a whole lot better at it than I.

[boon]

I'm like 90% sure I have a rod that is bound with carbon. It looks super cool and the action is just fine, I suspect they use much less than you would use of cotton? Haven't had to replace a guide on it yet so who knows how that'll go.

[jurelometer]

There are rod builds that wrap the guides the normal way with nylon, and then slip a sleeve of carbon fiber weave tubing over the top for cosmetic/marketing purposes.

I read that Penn was selling some rods like this, but haven't seen any myself.

Come to think of it, if you restrict the CF to just over the guide foot, the extra stiffness probably  won't be noticeable, as anything lashing the steel foot to the blank is already making a fairly stiff spot. So this should not be as big a deal as I earlier stated if the use is limited to immediately over the guide feet.  Having these extra rings of improved hoop strength might do something good or bad to the action and/or durability.  You are functionally changing the performance of the blank with CF only wraps, but I suspect that the effect might be minimal.

As Steve noted, working with the tow is a bit tricky.  Carbon  fiber has essentially zero stretch, so you are using the adhesion from the wet epoxy to hold the wraps in place as you wind.  No fun.

The ideal thread material for wrapping a guide is one that is strong for it's diameter  (no cotton, sorry Boon), stretches a little to help hold down the guide until the epoxy is applied, and allows for a bit of position tweaking. It also needs to adhere a bit to epoxy, but not too well, so that it will stay in places when encased in epoxy, but will release when you cut in and unwind it to replace a guide.

Nylon is a pretty good choice.  Good strength to diameter, right amount of stretch, not much fuzzing. Sticks to/releases from epoxy just the right amount.  It does absorb more water than ideal, and is not great for UV resistance, but since the wraps are encased, not such a big deal. Polyester thread is becoming more popular.  It does not stretch as much as nylon and fuzzes more.  Better UV and water resistance. I don't know how it sticks to epoxy.  Haven't tried polyester myself.

Can't see any advantage to carbon fiber, other than claiming that you are using high tech (albeit less suitable) materials. Those cosmetic woven sleeves look fancy, but matching a sleeve on a guide replacement is going to be a PITA.

At some point, rod decoration gets in the way of its usefulness as a tool.

-J

[JasonGotaProblem]

Thanks guys. My brain pretty much lives in left field at all times. But sometimes it finds good stuff out there. Turns out this wasn't one of those times.