Kevlar vs Carbonfibre drag washer

[Ron Jones]

But the higher coefficient in itself won't mean more heat. It just means that you need less force to reach the same level of drag as with a lower coefficient.

That is technically true, but who here do you think won't horse down on the star in order to get a 30% ratio on bigger braid? Men will be men.

If this works and it is rigid enough to be used as hex washers? Watch out, Alan Tani and his boys are coming to pull down the Empire State Building!!

Ron

[jonathan.han]

I hope it is something better, but in certain applications. In some reels, the higher drag numbers bend spool shafts and frames. Everyone wants bigger drag numbers from a smaller reel. I noticed when I was deckhanding that people would run a high drag and forget the hook's embedment strength. You can pull a lot of hooks from running a high drag, you can break levelwind assemblies, and cause issues with AR bearings (if the reel has them i.e. Calcutta 400s, 965s, bass reels, etc.). I am not saying that it won't work because that wouldn't be the proper mindset of any scientific approach. A hypothesis is one thing, a declaration that the world is not flat is another. The world is flat!

Another critical point that I would like to add is that Kevlar brakes in cars have shown that they are more susceptible to brake fade, they generate a lot of dust, and I would imagine that reel manufacturer's R&D guys have spent a fair bit of time playing with drag materials. Not to say that they always get it right, but they do spend a lot of money and that has to account for some of the things that are found in reel's today. We, here, on this board just pick up the things that they couldn't always foresee. It would be nice to find something that much better than CF. It really would. I'd have no shame in using it. Then again, I might just stick with the CF. The same argument goes for the ceramic bearing hype; there is a point of diminishing returns.

If the kevlar works well, let's say a great amount of heat and metal dust is created by the increase in friction. Would we want to add titanium washers to dissipate the heat faster than steel? I think what it boils down to is creating a new drag system.

[Mandelstam]

But the higher coefficient in itself won't mean more heat. It just means that you need less force to reach the same level of drag as with a lower coefficient.

That is technically true, but who here do you think won't horse down on the star in order to get a 30% ratio on bigger braid? Men will be men.

If this works and it is rigid enough to be used as hex washers? Watch out, Alan Tani and his boys are coming to pull down the Empire State Building!!

Ron

I hear you. I was just trying to clear things up regarding the coefficient. More drag - more heat, no matter what the coefficient is.

I'm a bit cautiously sceptical to Kevlar myself. Mostly for the reason that if it were o much better than CF we would have known by now... I'd be surprised if someone hasn't tried it out before.

But I'm looking forward to the results and please prove me wrong!

/Karl

[Keta]

I'm lazy and it seems like a lot of work. I'll stick to the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't..."

With that kind of thinking we would still be using the old asbestos washers.

That is technically true, but who here do you think won't horse down on the star in order to get a 30% ratio on bigger braid? Men will be men.

I'm not going to change out my Spectra (mostly 60/65 anyway) or buy new rods so I'll be fishing my reels just slightly higher than factory spec.  What I want is a extremely smooth reliable drag.

[jonathan.han]

Asbestos was an inferior drag media. Won't disagree with you there. Kevlar has been used in other types of braking/friction applications in other industries. It does not perform well in high-performance applications.

[Ron Jones]

A new drag system?
Some of us have reels with only half the metal washers and laminated CF washers taking their place...

We here are all about new drag systems!!

WHY HAVEN"T I THOUGHT OF TITANIUM WASHERS???!!!

Ron

[jonathan.han]

A new drag system means creating a completely different mechanism; one that can cool faster than current designs in order to address the issue of heat recovery. I'm not talking about slapping a new set of metal and drag washers. Though after thinking about it some more, titanium washers with fiber backed kevlar drag washers (since Kevlar is a poor choice for rigid applications) might work. But, you'd still need to find someone to produce titanium washers and good luck with that. Titanium happens to be one of the hardest materials to cut, mill, and cast. This makes it very expensive to produce low-volume/prototype units.

[jonathan.han]

Titanium is tough to use as well, I forgot about treated titanium