Conventional Guide Placement or Static Guide Placement

[Bryan Young]

Out of curiosity, how many of you use static guide placement?  This means, loading the rod, positioning the guides where the angle entering and exiting the guide are equal for all guides at full load and partial load (it's a balancing act)?  I used to wrap rods this way, it looks different, and not many people like the looks of the guide placement because it wasn't like what they were used to (conventional guide placement).  The comments I got even though I showed that this will make for a better fish fighting rod lead to me stop wrapping rods.  Has anyone else used static guide placement or were there versions from the conventional guide placement?

Conventional guide placement is where the guides were spread such that they were positioned progressively closer as guides were placed from the striper guide to the tip top.

[Swami805]

I know exactly what you're talking about Bryan. Most rods are "over guided" as well but that's gotten better over the last decade or so. I recently sold a factory high end 8' rod with 11 guides plus the tip, 8 would have been plenty. Old habits and ideas die hard especially with fishermen. If you want to sell a rod you need to give them what they want

[Benni3]

You know what you're doing,,,,, but there's always closet experts,,,,, you can't tell them nothing and there not going to be happy with what ever you do anyway,,,,but just keep doing what you doing because it's the right thing,,,,,,,

[Jeri]

We have a similar problem with all the 'closet experts', with our long surf rods. Conventional thinking is lots of the K series guides starting with a 40 or 50 - to cope with the big coils coming off the spinning reels.

Over the course of 6 years we have consistently proven that a radical placement of Low Rider guides and the a mixture of Low Rider guides and low single leg guides gives better performance with regards to all aspects of the rods' final use. We get no wind knots, better distance, more rod action and ultimately better control over the fish during the fight. But, the 'closet experts' still chatter that we are 'wrong'!!!

[oc1]

I was taught to lay out the guides so that the line will not touch the blank when it is bent (with conventional guides on top).  Static placement.  But, nobody ever explained how much bend or what angle the rod should be.  I would always end up needing a zillion guides and it looked funny.  Now I just use progressive placement with six guides and tip-top on a nine to eleven foot rod.

The number and weight of guides can have a big impact on balance and swing weight.  Fly fishermen are really into balance and reducing swing weight.  Look what they do.
-steve

[jurelometer]

I was taught to lay out the guides so that the line will not touch the blank when it is bent (with conventional guides on top).  Static placement.  But, nobody ever explained how much bend or what angle the rod should be.  I would always end up needing a zillion guides and it looked funny.  Now I just use progressive placement with six guides and tip-top on a nine to eleven foot rod.

The number and weight of guides can have a big impact on balance and swing weight.  Fly fishermen are really into balance and reducing swing weight.  Look what they do.
-steve

The rod butt held horizontal with the tip strait down (90 degrees).   That is the maximum non-insane bend.  As for number of guides,   modern braided line under tension will cut into the blank ( it happened to "this guy I know"), so it is more important nowadays for the line to clear the blank under load  [CORRECTION-  light  braid rubbing probably not a big deal under lighter loads - I changed my mind later in this thread -J ]


The spey/two hander fly rod maker Bob Meiser has a logical guide spacing  technique that I like to use:   Clamp the  butt against something and  bend the rod until the tip is pointing away at 90 degrees (the very final end of the blank will be nearly straight exactly at a 90 degrees angle from the blank at the butt).    Draw a set of equidistant lines parallel to the  butt (usually about 4 inches apart), starting at the tip.   Wherever a line crosses the blank is the center point of a guide, until you get to the point where the rod is not bending much.
 If you favor less guides, just use a larger spacing.  Meiser  built a special wall rack for this,  but I jut do it on the shop floor with some clamps and masking tape.

It sometimes  takes a bit of tweaking, but it  provides a pretty good starting point for both fly and conventional rods for me.  The bottom guides are usually the ones that need a bit of tweaking to accommodate the reel and guide height.

Compare the shape of the original blank while  doing the Meiser bend  to the bend with the line threaded from the reel through the guides.  Staying closer to the original bend  on the lower half of really improves the fish fighting ability of the rod, as it will load up sooner in the bend. If the guide placement shifts the load toward the tip, the rod will have less backbone.   Staying closer to the original shape on the top half improves the ability to load up the rod when casting.

I only build  a couple  conventional and /or fly rods per year for myself or friends, so you can take this with a grain of salt.   I don't do spinning rods, but the basic theory should be the same.  Spinning rods will always have some  difficulty loading the bottom part of the rod, due  to the extra guide height required to accommodate the distance from the spool to blank.

-J

[Fishy247]

I always start out with the conventional guide placement, then I check it with a static test. Usually, it's pretty close, but sometimes I'll have to add another guide so I don't get any sags in the carry. This method has worked fairly well for me.

[oc1]

The rod butt held horizontal with the tip strait down (90 degrees).   That is the maximum non-insane bend.  As for number of guides,   modern braided line under tension will cut into the blank ( it happened to "this guy I know"), so it is more important nowadays for the line to clear the blank under load.


The spey/two hander fly rod maker Bob Meiser has a logical guide spacing  technique that I like to use:   Clamp the  butt against something and  bend the rod until the tip is pointing away at 90 degrees (the very final end of the blank will be nearly straight exactly at a 90 degrees angle from the blank at the butt).    Draw a set of equidistant lines parallel to the  butt (usually about 4 inches apart), starting at the tip.   Wherever a line crosses the blank is the center point of a guide, until you get to the point where the rod is not bending much.
 If you favor less guides, just use a larger spacing.  Meiser  built a special wall rack for this,  but I jut do it on the shop floor with some clamps and masking tape.

It sometimes  takes a bit of tweaking, but it  provides a pretty good starting point for both fly and conventional rods for me.  The bottom guides are usually the ones that need a bit of tweaking to accommodate the reel and guide height.

Compare the shape of the original blank while  doing the Meiser bend  to the bend with the line threaded from the reel through the guides.  Staying closer to the original bend  on the lower half of really improves the fish fighting ability of the rod, as it will load up sooner in the bend. If the guide placement shifts the load toward the tip, the rod will have less backbone.   Staying closer to the original shape on the top half improves the ability to load up the rod when casting.

I only build  a couple  conventional and /or fly rods per year for myself or friends, so you can take this with a grain of salt.   I don't do spinning rods, but the basic theory should be the same.  Spinning rods will always have some  difficulty loading the bottom part of the rod, due  to the extra guide height required to accommodate the distance from the spool to blank.

-J

Thank you J.  That helps a lot.
-steve

[steelfish]

........ I used to wrap rods this way, it looks different, and not many people like the looks of the guide placement

Im with my compa Sheridan, if you want to sell the rod then you must offer them what they want, you might find a guy that is not like the 90% of them and would like to try something new specially if its better, on my experience that its 80% restoring old rods sometimes I find the rod Im working needs one or two more guides after doing a static test (factory rods tend to have less guides for economic reasons not for static test reasons), but only few of them accept to install them to make the rod better, the rest just say that the "engineers" (of the rod brand) made their homework to decide how many guides that specific rod needed no reason to change it so, just install the same numer of guides on the blank and well, I just install the same numbers of guides.
few of them give me "green light" to do whatever its needed on the rod to make it better.

[Cor]

I was taught to lay out the guides so that the line will not touch the blank when it is bent (with conventional guides on top).  Static placement.  But, nobody ever explained how much bend or what angle the rod should be.  I would always end up needing a zillion guides and it looked funny.  Now I just use progressive placement with six guides and tip-top on a nine to eleven foot rod.

The number and weight of guides can have a big impact on balance and swing weight.  Fly fishermen are really into balance and reducing swing weight.  Look what they do.
-steve

I have always worked in a similar manner, only use conventional setup with guides on top..     I use a little computer model  and some experience to initially place the guides and tape them to a rod.      Then bend the rod by hanging a 4 kg weight on it and then adjusting the spacing to achieve an nice even flow of the line along the blank.     That may mean adding an extra guide sometimes.

My objective is often to use fewer guides as they add weight and these days the rear guides are sometime problematic as with many of the more medium actioned rods you need to keep the line away from your hands and the rod.

Sometimes I then go and cast with the rod to still tweak the guide placement.

When I started most rods we used were the same, very strong fast action you wrapped 7 guides on it......end of story!    It worked well enough.

[jurelometer]

A couple more points.

1.  The 90 degree bend that I described in this thread is the shape of the bend of the blank when fully loaded for casting, not just fighting fish.  I like the Meiser method because it optimizes the spacing for when the rod is fully loaded.  When the rod is not bent, it does not matter where the guides are positioned,  but as  the load increases, the more important position becomes. 

2.  After some reading and thinking,  I may have been wrong about about spectra rubbing on the blank being a big deal in all situations.  I would not want any significant rubbing when hooked up to a  tuna with the drag at 15 lbs,  but at the other end of the spectrum,  with freshwater or inshore use, a bit of rubbing  may not be that significant.  For example,  putting a bunch of guides on a light freshwater noodle rod will be  more of a problem than a bit of light line rub when the rod is fully loaded.  So I am leaning back a bit toward Steve's position, at least in some situations.

3.   Getting back to Bryan's original comment/question,  I  have always  understood   static placement to mean that the blank is held in a bend while the guides are being placed to acheive some sort of goal.  Static placement can follow a fomula, or simply be a builder eyeballing how the line passes through the guides and adjusting.

In the end, the only way to tell if a placement is optimal is by testing the casting and lifting characteristics with a given placement.  The various formulas and methods are simply a way to approximate what that best position is going to be.   It seems that some builders treat their spacing algorithms like a religion,  so  arguments about which is better are usually fruitless. I would argue that any method that does not involve putting a significant bend in the blank to generate guide placement is unlikely to work for a wide variety of blank tapers and lengths.

Looking at this from a load distribution perspective:

I would assert  that any guide placement where the guides are not getting progressively closer is problematic.   The curve when loaded on all blanks is progressive.  When the constructed rod is loaded,  the line is pulling the guides closer together.   A set of loads are now applied, centered  at the apex of the arc between each pair of guides.  An overload fracture will eventually occur near the apex between two guides, or the apex between bottom guide and the reel seat/fulcrum.    So as the blank takes progressively less force to bend toward the tip,  the force on the apex between guide pairs should decrease  correspondingly, or you will be concentrating some of the load, and making strain required to break the rod lower than necessary, in addition to diminishing the casting and lifting capabilities. 

4.  While custom builders tend to be very good craftsmen, and often have practical experience that can usually direct  the customer to the right blank  for the job,  it is much harder to  find a builder that understands the mechanics and material science involved in fishing rods.   I think that customers sense this at some level and are reluctant to trust a builder's recommendation for spacing that strays too far from factory specs.   Can't say that I blame the customer.  I don't blame the builders either.  If custom building required an advanced degree in physics, they would have to charge more than a couple of bucks per guide in order to pay off the student loans .   

But it would be nice if more  rodbuilding threads  discussed performance vs. cosmetics,  so thanks to Bryan for starting this thread.

-J

[Rivverrat]

 I use static load to tell me where the guides are best placed. It's very important also, to me, that the line makes contact with bottom of stripper guide well before the rod is fully loaded.

This is of greater importance on rods used on the rail along with proper placement of stripper guide in relation to the reel. For this reason I very seldom use size 25 guides for most conventional reel set up.
 
Size 25 stripper guide is worthless for most conventional rods. I believe I can easily prove this. All prior stuff said goes out the window if guides aren't laid on the spine.

Regarding the size & number of guides. I like to get the the guides reduced in size quickly. I have no issue using more or less guides. Have a 7'6" Raptor I'm building for Paul "smols" above the first 2 guides I have two 12's above this is six 10's plus tip. More guides here with this set up because of the quick reduction in size. I have found this works very well for casting, stand up fishing with the ability to still go to the rail.

 Check with me in a year & I might have found a better way.
Dont be afraid to try new things & ideas when building a rod. .

A rod is a leveraging / shock absorbing tool it's as simple or as in depth as you wish to make it. What works best can only be found out with any certainty through testing. Just like J. mentioned prior This is just one part of rod building that I love so much.

With a basic understanding, after some research & study. One can build rods for fish that they've never fished for or caught.

For those that doubt this, I ask how did a furniture maker design the most prolific handgun of our
time? SOMETHING THAT IS FAR MORE INVOLVED than building a rod. It had to start with a strong DESIRE.


jurelometer, is spot on. His thinking agrees with the way I do things 95% of the time... Jeff

[Ron Jones]

J
We have discussed thi before, but your description strikes me a s a perfect point to show the differences in our preferences. In something as light as a bass rod or an inshore rod, I really want the tip and but to be able to bend parallel to each other, if not touch. Just the way I was taught to fish; with that much bend you can really put the brakes on a fish and let the reel hold the line. It does mean that a deck hand will try to keep you from lifting the rod, takes a long slow talk to get them to stop that.

Neither is wrong, just different.
The Man

[Rivverrat]

Ron, if I understand correctly what you described is high sticking.

When this is done, more so with graphite than glass the graphite is no longer bending but it is in fact trying to compress in on it's self & we get what is call blowing up a rod. Apologies if I miss understood... Jeff

[Rivverrat]

 Low Rider guides and the a mixture of Low Rider guides and low single leg guides gives better performance with regards to all aspects of the rods' final use. We get no wind knots, better distance, more rod action and ultimately better control over the fish during the fight. But, the 'closet experts' still chatter that we are 'wrong'!!!

Some of this holds true a bit for conventional also... Jeff