Reel Repair by Alan Tani

Yesterday I purchased lot of rods from the widow of Bud Philips, a charter Capt in the 60's and 70's out of Sakonnet Point R.I.  I had met Bud as my father, also a licensed Capt fished as mate to Bud in the 1st Intl Swordfish Tourney out of Cuttyhunk in the mid  60's, and their charter did land a sword during the event.

There are 3 rods on the lot all labeled

C. ALTENKIRSCH & SON
    CUSTOM BUILT
  FISHING TACKLE
HAMPTON BAYS, L.I. (N.Y.)

All with Fin Nor Tycoon and AFTCO hardware.  The rod construction looks to be a narrow strip if fiberglass rolled in a corkscrew manner to form the blank.  This is a new to me technique, is anyone here knowledgeable on this construction, and am I looking at any collector value here?
Thanks,
Bob

Most rods are made that way.  Fiberglass (or graphite) cloth is wrapped around a steel mandrel.  Some use a cloth tape that makes those regularly spaced ridges.  Others use "flags" that are larger and irregular shape pieces of fabric that leave irregular ridges.  The difference is weather of not the ridges are sanded down after the resin hardens.  Using flags the ridges are always sanded. Using tape the ridges are either sanded or left in place.  I think it was Roddy rods that were mostly sanded but the ridges were left intact near the tip.

I can't help with prices.  Some people put more value on custom built rods. Personally, I would rather have a vintage factory-built rod from a quality company like Lamiglas or Harnell with the labels intact.

I suspected you'd be first Steve

Modern rod building is done by wrapping pre cut sheets of material around a mandrel.

https://youtu.be/cFboNgCnA2g?si=mT_QBb1k1wJUcg57

Just to add to the previous answers, a shaped fibreglass cloth is soaked in resin and wraped around a steel mandrel. To stop it coming unravelled, a layer of tape is wrapped over the top under tension. The whole lot is then baked in an oven to cure the resin and produce the blank.

At this stage, the mandrel is removed and the tape wrapping is ground off. If the wrap is only lightly ground away, you can see the spiral left in the surface of the blank but if the wrap is heavily ground the resultant blank has a smooth finish and the spiral effect is lost. The spiral is only where some of the resin has oozed out of the cloth and followed the lines of the tape wrap.

In this lot there were 3 from the same shop in NY all woth the TYCOON FIN NOR guides and all with the pronounced sprial effect, maybe this shop used it as a trademark of sorts

Steve,
There was a 7' Harnell, maybe 50 to 80 class in the lot with all AFTCO guides and Varmac seat.  The foregrip felt like cork but it is an injection molded piece with the Harnell logo in the mold, no decal on the glass.

Here is the lot as I found it, the 2 reels are Jiggy's 

Here is the logo in the grip, would this be a late production rod? The Harnell is the black one in the middle of the lot photo above

Those blanks showing the spiral ridges would be a typical attribute of the blank manufacturer from time frame they were produced. They may have cut corners on the final sanding steps or they may have actually finished them out that way on purpose as part of their signature and branding.

I have an early freshwater Shimano graphite Karate Stick that, although it is charcoal and graphite, has similar spiral ribbing, it's not smooth. That's because they cut a couple of steps when they sanded out the blank. I have also seen many early natural brown Conolon looking fiberglass rods that were smooth where you could see the spirals through the finish.

The Shakespear Wonderods had those ridges from the cellophane tape they wrapped the blank with before the resin set. It was a different process with no woven cloth.  It was a bundle of fiberglass fibers over a non-removable foam core or later over a removable steel mandrel.  It was called the Howald Process.  You can look up his patent or see a brief description HERE.

Quote from: Cuttyhunker on October 06, 2024, 08:04:04 PMSteve,
There was a 7' Harnell, maybe 50 to 80 class in the lot with all AFTCO guides and Varmac seat.  The foregrip felt like cork but it is an injection molded piece with the Harnell logo in the mold, no decal on the glass.

Bob, that is the famous Harnell marshmallow grip.  It was originally snow white and more squishy than it is now.  They had several shapes and sizes.  Another  popular shape was shorter and three of them were used on their surf rods (one above reel seat, one below reel seat and one at the butt end).  It looks like you also have a Harnell boat rod there with the traditional hardwood handles.

The Roddy rod mentioned above with lightly sanded ridges only near the tip was called a Gator Tail.

An exact dupe of this Harnell sold 2 weeks ago on ebay for 122.50 + 30, it is a model 2580 80 lb.  One of the rollers was missing, replaced it with a roller from a newer more triangular AFTCO guide, it fit perfectly.

Well, I did look up the Howald patent(s), and here are two:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US2571717A/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US2749643A/en

Interesting reading. 

For the TLDR crowd: as Steve noted, the Howald process used a set of bobbins to wind individual (resin impregnated) fibers onto a permanent core or  a temporary mandrel.  There was more than one layer, some being more longitudinally oriented and some more radial,

Those ridges are indeed from resin residue squeezed out by the temporary tape that binds the fibers during curing.

It should be noted that a spiral fiber strip only design would be less than ideal, so I would be surprised to see a blank with that design. Long longitudinal fibers provide the stiffness in a blank with very little weight and radial fibers provide hoop strength, so you need a mix of both.

In some ways, modern blank design is sort of going back and leveraging some of the Howald process by supplementing the rolled-flag design in some models with additional spiral wound fibers or strips, using marketing terms like "Dual Helix", and "X-Weave"

-J

Interesting bundle of rods.  Looked like the guy liked those plastic Fin Nor rollers - are they still functioning? 

The Fin Nor Tycoon guides, mostly all plastic, are new to me, I suspect that the material is ultra high molecular density poly, super tough stuff.  We had a machine shop fabricate scrap block into rollers for 4 and 5 inch snatch blocks used in commercial lobstering.  The rollers wore like stainless. Most of the guides are in working condition, a few siezed up that I am approaching with care as replacements are unobtainium.  They differ from the AFTCO internally as the axle is fabricated from the UHMD poly that displays self lubricating properties, and the roller sits directly on the axle with no sleeve.  Tim O'Brian, son of the Tycoon founder, has an antique big game group on here, I think I'll pick his brain prior to deploying the BFH on this project.

Good to know.  I've seen those Tycoon, but figured they must have metal rollers.

I've seen paddlewheel aerators with stainless shafts supported by a block of UHMWPE as a bearing.  The 3//4" stainless shaft would wear down and was eventually cut in half while the plastic bearing it was rubbing on was fine.

PEEK plastic is another good one but it is more expensive than UHMWPE.