Home Made Fiberglass and Graphite Rod Blanks

Started by oc1, December 23, 2018, 09:33:49 AM

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Alto Mare

Your work is always impressive , Steve.
Thanks for sharing your skills with us.

Sal
Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.

David Hall

Impressive and ambitious.   CHallenging and looks like you are enjoying the process.
Keep it up I enjoy following your interests Steve.  Entertaining and educational.

broadway

Man, Steve, you're a wizard with things like this.  What college did you get your engineering skills cause you my friend are "scary smart!"
Thanks for the cool tutorial.  I'll have to read this one a few times just to attempt to grasp the process.
Neato,
Dom

gstours

#18
Wow Steve...  You are even more crazy than myself! ;D    Your desire, skills, ingenuity, and inventive ideas are amazing.  Thanks for the great post and the good pictures too!   You turn on the "what if " button for some of us,  I especially like how you made your drying tube tent.  Great idea im, saying.   I sincerely hope you find the time and health to continue these pursuits with your son by your side as well.
   Merry Christmas to you and the whole world.    Best of Health and a Happy New Year To All.....

oc1

Thank you Dom and Gary.  But, it is sort of the other way around.  I'm just a fish farmer.  My son is the educated engineer, composite wizard and my mentor when it comes to this kind of stuff.
-steve

xjchad

You gotta be kidding me Steve!  I'm blown away.  I can't fathom the level of patience and detail that you put into that.  Beautiful!

(So when are you taking orders???) ;)
Husband, Father, Fisherman

steelfish

can I say this is a further step for the meaning of  "rod building"?

this is the REAL rod building, what others do (myself included) is just glue some factory-made pieces together   ;D ;D easy peasy

you're one of a kind amigo Steve
The Baja Guy

oc1

#22
Thanks gentlemen.

It has taken me a while to realize it's all about the modulus.  Young's Modulus, also called Modulus of Elasticity or just Modulus in fishing rod lingo, is a measure of the stiffness of the fiber.  The higher the modulus rating, the stiffer the fiber will be once embedded in resin.  The lower the modulus the more elastic the fiber will be.  I was using a high modulus carbon fiber (Toray M40J) in the graphite rod above.  Glass fiber is much more elastic and stretchy by comparison.  

Higher modulus material is used to reduce rod weight because you use less material (fiber and resin) to get the same stiffness.  But, you still need flexibility to transfer the load from the tip down toward the butt to keep the tip from breaking.  To get enough flexibility and avoid breakage of high modulus material, the tip diameter and wall thickness must be very small.  A modern ultralight rod will have a hollow #4 tip (about 1.2 to 1.5 mm diameter) of high modulus material.  

The level of precision required to get a 1.5 mm tip seems to be beyond my abilities.  I'm good down to about 2.5 mm; maybe 2 mm with more practice.  Therefore, I had to start using carbon fiber with a lower modulus.  The rod on the left in the photo below is intermediate modulus carbon fiber (Hexcel IM7) with some high modulus material spiral wound in the butt section.  Length 9'3", 2.5 mm tip, less than 4 ounces before adding guides and counterbalance.  The rod would cast better if the mid section was a little stiffer, but I was afraid to stiffen the mid section more for fear of breaking the tip.  The rod on the right is standard (low) modulus carbon fiber (Toray T700)  in the tip section, transitioning to intermediate modulus in the mid section, and finally transitioning to high modulus material in the butt section.  Length 9'6", 2.5 mm tip, almost 5 ounces before adding guides and counterbalance.  This rod has a much better action and casts really well.  If the casting performance is not as good as a modern factory rod then it is at least very close.  But, the lower modulus added an extra ounce of weight.  A factory rod with similar length and power would only weigh about half as much (about 2.7 ounces).  Both of the rods below have a divinicell core in the butt and a balsa core in the tip.  The handle on the left feels too thin and the one on the right feels too thick.

Mixing tow of different modulus has some advantages, but there is an inherent problem too.  If a cross-section of the rod has fiber bundles of different modulus, then the high modulus material will take all the strain because it is stretching less.  As the strain on high modulus fibers approach their tensile strength and start to break or separate, the strain is suddenly transferred to remaining low modulus material and the rod snaps.  Putting the high modulus fiber inside by the core and the low modulus fibers on the outside should help because the outside must flex slightly more than the inside.  The rod on the right in the photo below was opposite with the low modulus fiber on the inside, but the next one will be different.

The reel on the right you have seen before above, the ABU Ambassadeur 2650.  Not a bad reel at all, although the clutch seems too delicate and fiddly so it may not last.  The reel on the left is a Shimano Demi Gold 3.  They are cheaply made and do not seem to have been sold in the U.S.  They were probably designed for small trout and panfish.  I do not know when they were made but suspect early 1980's.

   





-steve

Tiddlerbasher

Steve - forget all this old fashioned stuff and get going with carbon nanofibres or graphene ;D

Alto Mare

Steve, I always try to get everything you post , but this mixing of modulus and its reaction has my head spinning and that's just from reading.
I'm glad you have the knowledge and patience, so we could just sit back and enjoy your creations.


Sal
Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.

Donnyboat

Well Steve, I cant add anymore, every one has already said it, the only thing that I can add is & I have said it before, that brain of yours never sleeps, great stuff mate keep it coming, cheers Don.
Don, or donnyboat

oc1

Quote from: Alto Mare on January 12, 2019, 11:55:07 AM
Steve, I always try to get everything you post , but this mixing of modulus and its reaction has my head spinning and that's just from reading.
I'm glad you have the knowledge and patience, so we could just sit back and enjoy your creations.

It took me a while too Sal.  There's nothing like failure to make you study harder.

High modulus is stiff and brittle.  Low modulus is flexible and stretches.  When you bundle them together and then bend the bundle, the brittle pieces break first.

-steve

Darin Crofton

God, Family and Fishing, what else is there?

Keta

Hi, my name is Lee and I have a fishing gear problem.

I have all of the answers, yup, no, maybe.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Mark Twain

Jeri

Working closely with a professional blank manufacturing company, I've got to say I'm impressed at your venture. However, personally having seen all the equipment that the factories have at their disposal to achieve the finer elements of blank construction, I think you might come to a point where the lack of equipment will limit your development of blanks.

Having seen high pressure rolling tables, centre-less sanding machines all in action, as well as all the variables of resin loadings and then as mentioned nano-resins and graphene, or even woven Kevlar or Kevlar/carbon woven materials. Rod blank manufacture is a very complex business, and even some of the smallest changes to the composition of a blank can have quite extensive positive or negative effects.

So, I stick to making constructive engineering based observations to the factory, and let them work out the technicalities of how they are going to achieve the changes. A good number of our 'development' blanks have gone on to be mainline production models. I contend myself with the developments on the guides side of blanks, and that is complex enough.


We had one development blank, where we replaced a lot of the carbon content with a spiral wrap of woven Kevlar, and it came out exceptionally well, super light and highly reactive as a surf casting blank. However, it also took a lot of work to get the guide system right, because the rod was so slim and light; but once sorted it was a 'little Ferrari'.

Cheers from sunny Africa