Rod Testing

[oldmanjoe]

The way I see it , you have a block and tackle effect "two part line " around the scale .
    You may have as much as 18-20 pounds of pull /load on the stick .    By the pictures , I am going to guess that the rod tip is about 28-30 inches from the floor .  Hang 10 pound on the line and I think you will see more distance from rod tip to floor .

I think so as well, some leverages at play here at a guess the actual pull will be double the reading?

well yes and no , change the tag end pull direction and the reading change . This is strange .
First two pictures tag end straight down with a reading of 22.04  pounds . 
    Third picture is a 90 degree tag end hold with 16.82 pounds .  Start lowering the the angle and the scale increases

[Bill B]

So maybe the angle is changing the direction of the pull, lessoning the dead drop weight. 

[ebnash]

Prepare to have your heart broken on several of your rods, LOL.  I went and saw Alan a couple months ago to get my reels filled for an upcoming trip and he asked me to bring all my rods.  I was not sure why, but I followed orders.

I watched him set up all my rods on his fixture and quickly realized those numbers printed on the rods mean jack ####, in reality.  As an example, I have a Calstar Grafighter 700XH, that shows 40-100 on the rod.  This does seem like a very wide range, but I would expect the max drag rating to at least fall inside the two numbers listed, and preferably, clsoer to the higher number.  It barely hit drag pressure that equates to max of 40lbs. 

Alan's system makes perfect sense to my engineering brain, but I quickly learned that my "full quiver" of LR rods that I thought spanned 20-80 line class, turned out to be 15-45lbs, with a ton of 30-40 lb rods.

Now, I know this does not mean I can't fish those rods heavier (I have plenty of times in the past), but it does reveal an inconcsistency of any standards in the line class rating for rod manufacturers.  I have main-lined the koolaid.  The problem is...you can't drag this setup to tackle stores and confirm what you are buying, so until we get some kind of database going, we are all still guessing when we choose a rod.

[UKChris1]

My rusty memory creaked into action and I remember being confused over the 'parallelogram of forces' in physics at school. Never quite worked it all out but it is why the apparent load on the scales varies when the angle of pull changes.

Indeed, dead lift is what you need. Bucket of water, get the 'fighting curve' you want from your rod and then weigh the bucket and water. Or load the bucket with lead weights.

Yup, rods generally don't pull as much as we are sometimes led to believe by the numbers put on them by manufacturers.

I tested a few of my rods and went as far as bending them to the 'it'll go bust' point. Maximum pull was well below what I expected in almost every case. (But still more than I could manage in real life fishing when on a rocking boat trying to maintain balance and fight a good fish, etc.)

Great thread and I love the set-up.

[Donnyboat]

Thank Bill, very interesting post, you started here, good value to all of us, cheers Don.