Question: Spinning Rod Build

[Rivverrat]

Jeri, again thanks !

Your post here had the exact info I was looking for... Jeff

[happyhooker]

Hope that all helps.

Cheers from sunny Africa.

Jeri, I too thank you for your valuable insights.  Hands on stuff to back up theoretical ideas.

Riverrat was curious, as am I, whether moving the stripper guide further out (toward the tip) on the blank will affect (reduce) the power of the blank, and I am wondering what your feeling would be on that.  Pardon me if you already expressed an opinion on this; I read your comments closely, but may have missed something.

This topic is a prime example of one person having a question and the discussion benefiting any larger number of the membership.  Thanks to all who are reading/participating.

Frank

[Jeri]

A little background to the whole story.

We build a lot of very long surf rods, and in recent years there has been a change over to using fixed spool reels (spinners, egg beaters, coffee grinders, etc) and braid, especially in our competition circuit, where now they are pretty much 100% using fixed spools and braid.

Beinga  custom rod builder the emphasis is always on ultimate performance and reliablility, so we investigated this system intensively and found that Fuji already had the answer with Low Rider guides, which are the complete opposite to everyones perconcieved ideas about rings on a spinning rod - they rely on very small eyes. We worked initially with the Fuji recommendations, and they 'sort of worked', but then we started to push the first guide further and further up the rod, and all that happened was that the action got sweeter and the distance went further and further out. Where Fuji recommended 120 cms to the first guide, we pretty much topped out at 210cms - nearly double!!!! And with absolutely no troubles at all. This became our trade mark or signature and we sold and still sell a lot of rods in thios configuration.

On a development rod that we were working on that was for much lighter surf use 2-3oz lures or sinker, we employed the same concept of design, but switched out the upper Low Riders for some single leg fly rod guides, just to reduce 'ring weight' at the tip area of the very slim rod. We did try various traditional and 'K' series guides, and found then severely wanting, and seriously short on distance. The little rod with just a 3oz sinker and the hybrid Low Riders was casting 130 metres.

Having settled into a regime of building heavy and light surf rods, we then looked at 'how can we improve'. By experimenting with the new KR Concept, but also taking our earlier experience of pushing out the first guide, we found that the KR Concept of small and then very small eyes worked like a dream. Further increases in distance and power from both the traditional 15' surf rods as well as from the surf spin rod - the little surf spin rod is now pushing 3oz sinkers on the test field out to 140 metres.

So, what we have personally found out is that there is a lot of mis-conception about power loss and line slap associated with pushing the first guide out well beyond the Fuji recommendation. I would see that recommendation from Fuji as an absolute minimum, and needs experimenting with being pushed out considerably.

Part of our work is also to refurbish factory rods, and we have seen that a number of manufacturers in our local surf competition market have taken the original 'K' series concept on board for their various models for the local market, and have failed considerably, because they are following the Fuji recommedations blindly, and using the old 'big eye' concepts. To this point we started offering to put our scheme of Low Riders on refurbished factory rods, and now it makes up a considerable part of our work load. We even get rods into the workshop that still have their price ticket on the rings - straight from another shop into our workshop for reworking, such is the distance and power benefits that we have seen from both the Low Rider and the newer KR Concept.

As said earlier, even on a relatively short spinning rod designed for Tigerfish on the Okavango River - a 9' 2oz lure rod, we set the first KR guide at about 30" up from the reel seat - certainly no loss of power, as the guy when he came to test drive the rod was dropping spoons 110 metres away.

Hope that all helps.

Cheers from sunny Africa.

Jeri

[oc1]

I too have wondered about the effect of moving the striper guide farther out.  Not for casting purposes, but to get power and strength for fighting a fish.  

Way back when a seven foot split bamboo rod may have had only one guide and a tip-top.  Before that, there were no guides, just a tip ring.  The rod material was more fragile and breaking rods was a common problem back then.  But, nobody worried about distributing the pressure by adding more guides.  Also, if you tie a string on the tip and pull, it looks like the rod bends the same way it would with line running through a series of guides.  Perhaps, the strength and power of the rod is not influenced at all by the guides.

Some of the older spinners are canted differently than modern reels.  The center line of the reel can point to a spot on the rod that is much closer or much farther out than the current norm and makes using the Fuji K Concept tricky.

I often use non-levelwind conventional reels on light casting rods.  One thing I notice is that placing the striper guide very close to the reel (maybe 20 inches on a 10 foot rod) makes it easier to level the line and makes me less likely to inadvertently let the line bunch up on one side.  Using a walk-the-dog retrieve the line will actually level itself.
-steve

[Rivverrat]

I too have wondered about the effect of moving the striper guide farther out.  Not for casting purposes, but to get power and strength for fighting a fish.  


-steve

 Yes, me to. This being the original context of my question.  

 Steve, I also have placed the first guide on some of my conventional builds low, under 20" from the center line of the reel. Main reason for this was I didn't wish to use the next heavier model blank. This would mean at times I would be fishing the rod at it's upper limit. Setting the guides lower I feel gained some power vs doing a more standard layout. I believe what I feel when doing this can be shown.

This was with an extremely fast taper blank. I do believe as the action of the rod gets slower or more  parabolic there would be diminishing returns doing as I describe.


I spent a short bit of time doing some initial testing on spinning rods & it appears that moving the stripper guide out further may reduce power to a little bit . But probably not enough to matter. My test were simply done with line tied to stationary object & simply pulling & watching the bend in the rod with stripper guide moved further out from reel. My testing certainly has not established any of this as fact.

All of this could & should be questioned.


This has turned out to be a good discussion... Jeff  

[oldmanjoe]

 Just to stir the pot, what kind of blank material dictates on how far you want to stretch the stripper .
  Fiber glass rod i will stretch the  stripper without hesitation .  Carbon fiber make me wonder when will hear snap.

[Rivverrat]

Just to stir the pot, what kind of blank material dictates on how far you want to stretch the stripper .
  Fiber glass rod i will stretch the  stripper without hesitation .  Carbon fiber make me wonder when will hear snap.

As long as the blank being used is of good quality & your not high sticking nothing discussed here should cause a rod to break... Jeff

[oc1]

I'm wouldn't be strong enough to break an ultra light St. Croix as long as it had not been hit on something and cracked first.

-steve

[Jeri]

Some of the older spinners are canted differently than modern reels.  The center line of the reel can point to a spot on the rod that is much closer or much farther out than the current norm and makes using the Fuji K Concept tricky.

-steve

From all the different rods that we have built with the 'KR' concept, and the fact that in the majority of cases we have no control over what reel or angle of main shaft offset is being used, we have never seen a problem with the 'KR' layouts that we have been using - mainly because we ignore the reeloffset angle in determining our layout.

There is a tendancy these days for folks to wish for definitive formulae to design a rod and the guide layout, taking as many as possible variables into the equation, making it seriously conplex and overburdened. Having had protracted e-discussions with folks representing Fuji discussing these various aspect and potential 'over complication'. The upshot was that the core concept on spinning rods with the NGC principle is to get the line out of the spiral/coil mode of movement to running straight - in reasonably quick time, so that the line exiting the rod's upper third is running dead straight and without any coiled influence.

With the 'KR' concept they have just introduced a more rapid transition from coiled/spiral to running straight. The complication of reel angle becomes void in settting the position of the first guide - IF the line then subsequently acts harmoniously.

This 'harmonious' line movement we saw first when we were working with small, but tall low rider guides, when the big coils of line approach the stripper guide, they are very quickly formed into a tapered funnel effect - squeezing down to the size of the eye. As the distance/time of the cast develops, the tunnel gets pulled further towards the reel, and a quite precise low diameter spiral starts to develop, which then travels back towards the reel. This we found was best viewed with a head light looking at the line, when casting at night.

When we changed from using low riders to the 'KR' guides, we found that we had reached perfection in the design, when we again replicated the low diameter spiral effect. This was only achieved when we pushed the position of the first guide right out. This effcet was seen repeatedly on the same rod, irrespective of the spool angle of the reel, or even the spool diameter, or even the strength of the braid we were using - it was purely a function of guide position on that blank.

Just to stir the pot, what kind of blank material dictates on how far you want to stretch the stripper .
 Fiber glass rod i will stretch the  stripper without hesitation .  Carbon fiber make me wonder when will hear snap.

I think that this might be a bit of a red herring, as on rods that we have tried this concept of moving the first guide well up the rod blank, have had a number of different glass+carbon, carbon or carbon+kevlar designs. On rods in the 14-15' long range we have pushed the first guide as far up as 82" from the reel seat, nearly half way, and never had any indication that the rod's integrity was even approaching being compromised in the cast, and this is with some really seriously heavy sinker and bait combinations applying the loads during the casting.

At the end of the day, we have found that by using the 'KR' concept of light weight, tall profile and small eyes, we have found an improvement in casting distance, smoothness of casting behaviour as well as an increase in core power of the rods both in casting and in fighting fish/sharks. I think that by reducing the overall weight of the total collection of rings that are mounted on the rod, there is significant reduction in the dampening effect that heavier ring systems would have. If the system had any weak points, our very brutal and powerful casting styles of surf casting with quite heavy weights would very soon highlight any short comings in the system. Even the fact that we are down to just size 8 single leg running guides when using 50lb braid and 150lb casting leader - no problems have been encountered. Sure, the very first casts we made when testing this theory, we had mental images of nearly all the guides being ripped from their whippings as the big leader knot and heavy braid travelled at speed through the very small eyes.

Previously when we built a lot of surf rods for multipliers, we also found that by reducing the total ring weight, there were performance gains to be had from any given blank.

Hope that this clarifies some of our thoughts on the matter, as we continue to launch heavy braids though small guides at approaching 100 miles per hour.

Cheers from sunny Africa

Jeri

[Rivverrat]

FANTASTIC STUFF !! Cant wait now for my Black Hole 10' surf to get here to start work on it... Jeff

[oldmanjoe]

  Are you using a under wrap under the guides ?      Is it still a safe practice or just more weight ?   I think about pounds per  linear inch that the foot is applying to the rod if the stripper is that far from the spool while in fight mode .      Joe

[Rivverrat]

I dont see the reason for using an under wrap for spinning rod builds... Jeff

[Jeri]

  Are you using a under wrap under the guides ?      Is it still a safe practice or just more weight ?   I think about pounds per  linear inch that the foot is applying to the rod if the stripper is that far from the spool while in fight mode .      Joe

Hi,

We don't bother with underwrapping on the heavy surf rods, even right up to the 7oz+bait versions that we build with these KL-H guides. The feet on the single leg are sufficiently flexible to take any load or strain from the flex of the underlying carbon blank. As for anchorage, well that in my mind is better with the resin bonding the foot to the blank, rather than adding another layer.

In fight mode, the guides have exhibited no problems to date, and some of the rods with these guides have been used on big sharks over 100kgs (220lbs), so not an issue worth investigating. Don't fix what isn't broken!!

Weight is not the biggest issue, though the ring weight load over the top third of the blank does have an effect of not inhibiting the blank so much, as heavier or double foot guides might have done with another design. Effectively bring power back to the blank, which is also a function of the fact that the line follows the curvature of the blank much closer when under load.

Just our thoughts.

Cheers from sunny Africa

Jeri

[oldmanjoe]

   I thank you for your incite ...            I will take another step or two on that " gang plank " and try the stripper further out .    joe

[gstours]

Lately I have broken several graphite spin rods at the guide area that were not first underwrapped.  This had me wondering.  Maybe scratches or 🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♂️ dunno.   And not really maxed out either.   Just wondering.
   Thanks again for sharing your thoughts Jeri and others.