Free spool question

Started by Crow, October 02, 2019, 01:08:25 PM

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Crow

OK, I see this a lot....45 seconds of free spool.....2 minutes of free spool...whatever the "time" happens to be. So, my question is...is this giving the spool a "flick" with the thumb ? Or, are we winding a chunk of line around it, and yanking like we're trying to start an old outboard ?
There's nothing wrong with a few "F's" on your record....Food, Fun, Flowers, Fishing, Friends, and Fun....to name just a few !

Tunacious

You can use your thumb to get the spool moving...with or without line. I most often check my free spool after cleaning/repairing/modifying a reel and re-assembling it.

The method I use most often is to place the back of the reel in my right hand (I'm right handed) and have my thumb on or near the jack handle. My left hand is slightly underneath the reel using my thumb (on top of left plate) and forefinger (underneath the reel seat). I then start to move both hands up and down in order to get the handle to move (make sure you have some drag pressure).  As you get the reel handle moving faster, use your right thumb to disengage the jack handle.. The spool should be spinning pretty well at this point.

The purpose of getting great free spool is to ensure your live bait or jig is not inhibited in any way. A properly aligned spool and good bearings, oiled properly, will create next to no friction while the bait is swimming or the jig is sailing through the air. The less work your bait has to do, the livelier it will be.

oc1

For a while I would obsess about getting a long freespool time and would pull it with a string like spinning a top just to make me feel better.  Now, I wonder what it all means.

Good freespool time means you have good alignment, good spool bearings and good lubrication.  But, good freespool time also means the reel will be too "hot" for casting and you will need to add braking to slow it down. 

With proportional braking the braking pressure increases or decreases with the rotational speed.  Centrifugal brakes and magnetic brakes are proportional.  Friction braking, like using the spool tension knob or one of the old adjustable friction brake pads, is not proportional.  It is applying the same (or nearly the same) braking pressure when the spool is spinning fast or slow.  We can demonstrate that proportional braking will result in longer casts than friction braking.

A long freespool time indicates that there is very little inherent friction to slow the spool down.  We still need enough braking to make it possible to cast, but we can use more proportional braking since there is little inherent friction braking.

Here's that part that confuses me....  All else being equal, a heavy spool will tend to spin longer than a light weight spool because it has more inertia.  Imagine the difference in using a child's spinning top made of styrofoam versus one make of wood.  The styrofoam top does not have enough inertia to keep it going so we would want the top to be made of wood or something heavier.  A heavy brass spool will have more inertia than an aluminum or plastic spool so, all else being equal, the heavy spool will spin longer.  But, we can easily demonstrate that a light weight spool will allow us to cast much farther than a heavy spool.  This is attributed to faster start-up speeds because there is less inertia to overcome when getting the spool moving.

So, what does it all mean?  Does a long freespool time indicate that we have little inherent frictional braking or does it indicate that the spool is heavier than it needs to be?  It seems that measuring the freespool time is only useful when it is being compared to another reel with the exact same spool inertia, meaning the spool weight and dimensions are exactly the same and any difference in freespool time can only be attributed to inherent friction (alignment, bearings and lubrication).

-steve

mo65

Quote from: oc1 on October 02, 2019, 08:57:11 PM
For a while I would obsess about getting a long freespool time and would pull it with a string like spinning a top just to make me feel better.  Now, I wonder what it all means.

   I think this is me too Steve. I doubt that more thought and effort have ever been spent on a reel function...from users and manufacturers alike. At first I found it perplexing that the reels that cast best for me only had a few seconds of freespool, but I continued to go out and backlash some freespool monster I built. I did develope a better casting thumb during that time...HA!! 8)
~YOU CAN TUNA GEETAR...BUT YOU CAN'T TUNA FEESH~


jurelometer

Quote from: oc1 on October 02, 2019, 08:57:11 PM
For a while I would obsess about getting a long freespool time and would pull it with a string like spinning a top just to make me feel better.  Now, I wonder what it all means.

Good freespool time means you have good alignment, good spool bearings and good lubrication.  But, good freespool time also means the reel will be too "hot" for casting and you will need to add braking to slow it down. 

With proportional braking the braking pressure increases or decreases with the rotational speed.  Centrifugal brakes and magnetic brakes are proportional.  Friction braking, like using the spool tension knob or one of the old adjustable friction brake pads, is not proportional.  It is applying the same (or nearly the same) braking pressure when the spool is spinning fast or slow.  We can demonstrate that proportional braking will result in longer casts than friction braking.

A long freespool time indicates that there is very little inherent friction to slow the spool down.  We still need enough braking to make it possible to cast, but we can use more proportional braking since there is little inherent friction braking.

Here's that part that confuses me....  All else being equal, a heavy spool will tend to spin longer than a light weight spool because it has more inertia.  Imagine the difference in using a child's spinning top made of styrofoam versus one make of wood.  The styrofoam top does not have enough inertia to keep it going so we would want the top to be made of wood or something heavier.  A heavy brass spool will have more inertia than an aluminum or plastic spool so, all else being equal, the heavy spool will spin longer.  But, we can easily demonstrate that a light weight spool will allow us to cast much farther than a heavy spool.  This is attributed to faster start-up speeds because there is less inertia to overcome when getting the spool moving.

So, what does it all mean?  Does a long freespool time indicate that we have little inherent frictional braking or does it indicate that the spool is heavier than it needs to be?  It seems that measuring the freespool time is only useful when it is being compared to another reel with the exact same spool inertia, meaning the spool weight and dimensions are exactly the same and any difference in freespool time can only be attributed to inherent friction (alignment, bearings and lubrication).

-steve
Quote from: mo65 on October 02, 2019, 09:13:13 PM
Quote from: oc1 on October 02, 2019, 08:57:11 PM
For a while I would obsess about getting a long freespool time and would pull it with a string like spinning a top just to make me feel better.  Now, I wonder what it all means.

   I think this is me too Steve. I doubt that more thought and effort have ever been spent on a reel function...from users and manufacturers alike. At first I found it perplexing that the reels that cast best for me only had a few seconds of freespool, but I continued to go out and backlash some freespool monster I built. I did develope a better casting thumb during that time...HA!! 8)


I think Steve mostly hit the nail on the head, except that I think that the startup resistance is just a portion of the inertia problem.

It works like this:

The ideal conventional casting spool  would have zero friction and zero inertia.  The cast would pull line off the spool without resistance.  As the lure slowed down and stopped during the cast, the spool would slow and stop proportionately.  This ideal spool would have zero rotation time after you pulled the string in the spin test.  A  zero inertia spool could not backlash.

I think that most of us understand the idea of friction, and how to minimize friction on a casting reel.

Inertia can be a bit more confusing.  Inertia refers to the resistance to change in velocity (speeding up AND slowing down), not just resistance to change from stationary to moving.  A  flywheel is designed to maximize inertia by being heavy, with most of weight as far as practical from the axis. That is why flywheels are tall and narrow.  A casting spool has the exact the exact opposite design goal as a flywheel.

To minimize inertia on a cast, we need to minimize the rotating weight, and minimize the distance of any weight from the axle/spindle.   First of all the spool needs to be as light as is practical. Secondly, the spool should have as small a diameter as practical - this of course means the spool has to by wider as opposed to taller for a given volume of line.   

It is not possible to build an ideal casting spool -there will always be some friction and inertia,  but the better casting reel will be closer to this ideal.

A reel that has low friction but high inertia will be tricky to cast.  It will be capable of reaching very high RPMs with enough effort,  but will resist slowing down. Maybe this is what Mo is experiencing with his "freespool monster".

A spin time test on the same reel before/after maintenance will give you good feedback on changes in friction.   BUT with the same reel, replacing a heavier spool with a lighter one should decrease spin test time, but should also increase casting distance. When comparing two different reels, the reel with the shorter spin time could very possibly have a lower level of inertia, and could actually be better for casting.  (just rehashing what Steve said)

Cast control systems attempt to approximate the low inertia goal by restricting rotation at times during the cast when the spool is more likely to be rotating too fast due to inertia, but allowing the spool to spin more freely otherwise.   Magnetic and centrifugal systems work by creating more resistance at the higher RPM portion of the cast.  There are are also some alternate designs.   Winding down on the spool tension knob is simply adding friction to decrease inertia- blech.

-J


sabaman1

My take on great freespool on a conventional reel fishing small livebaits to boat shy large gamefish, is to cast the bait away from boat then
freespooling the line with the least amount of friction on the small livebait to look as natural as possible and swim out farther from the boat .
In order to coerce the large gamefish to eat your bait, then its game on and you go home happy with your quarry and a good dinner.

JIM