[Vidar Thomassen]

I think we need to have some of the post on the old forum over here on the new so I'll make a start

Right, considering the WSF thread about the longevity of the Tenryu rods, and the following discussions both here and on WSF, it is time to put few facts straight in regards to rod design and manufacturing.

First of all, it is very, very easy to design and manufacture a rod that is virtually indestructible. How is it done? Well, that is simple part; just use a high content of fibre glass in the blank, add low-modules carbon materials and use a bundle of resin to bind it all together. Fit the same rod with double legged guides all the way to the tip, and attach these guides with several layers of wrapping and heavy epoxy.

The problem is of course that a rod put together as described above will be heavy, unresponsive, have no inherent sensitivity and will be an awful casting tool due to the low achievable tip speed.

Even with today’s available material technologies rod design and manufacture will always be a compromise between longevity and performance.

Also, by the nature of the beast it is much easier to break a top-end rod built on high-modules blanks. High-modules carbon is extremely strong, but unfortunately very brittle so sometimes all it need is a knock in transport from factory to distributor, or from distributor to tackle shop, or from tackle shop to you and the first time you try to cast with it – snap – rod gone. Drop the rod on the rocks and again there is a good chance that all you hear on the next cast is the horrible sound of a rod breaking.

And then we have the discussion in regards to guide wrappings and the cracking. Well guys I have news for you all; as long as we continue to use single legged guides on our rods this is virtually unavoidable. Independent of make and the material used in the guides a single legged guide will flex / move and put a huge amount of strain on its fixing point, thus having the potential to cause future cracking. There are of course ways of minimizing the problem, but again this will have negative consequences for the rods overall performance.

Let me use an analogy from the car world. You have Mercedes, which is (or used to be at least) solid, extremely well engineered and even better put together. Then you have Ferrari with their quirkiness, somewhat less than excellent reliability but with breathtaking performance and driving pleasure. I'm sure that for many the Mercedes would be just the ticket but for me personally, given the choice, the Ferrari would win every time.

 

[dai56]

I'm going to cheat now
back soon dai

 

[dai56]

Very true and well thought out Vidar
The nearest i have found to be unbreakable are the ugly sticks but as you say they are pretty horible to fish with the 7' is the exception and the only one i would buy but that would be for bubble floating not using with lures
Running a very close second for me would be the 8' stiffy spin [Ann has one and abused it horrendlessly]
There's another range of lure rods out there made in more or less the same way as the ugly sticks but the make exscapes me at the moment not sure but think it may be Rhino

 

[Andy B]

Interested to read your obs Vidar, what I can’t understand is why don’t rod manufacturers reinforce the spigots on their rods, this is where, in my experience something as brittle as carbon fibre gets damaged. I noticed a crack in my fabulous Bushwhacker after a good year of use.
I think I caught it before anything terminal by sleeving it with a 6.5mm cartridge case and epoxy.
It seemed to do the trick but I have succumbed to Sakura Rookie. Again, although beautifully light, responsive and well balanced the wall thickness at the spigot is not particularly thick and potentially vulnerable ,makes me extremely conscious when travelling without it being in a tube. Surely a sliding sleeve could be easily built in?

 

[Vidar Thomassen]

Interested to read your obs Vidar, what I can’t understand is why don’t rod manufacturers reinforce the spigots on their rods, this is where, in my experience something as brittle as carbon fibre gets damaged. I noticed a crack in my fabulous Bushwhacker after a good year of use.
I think I caught it before anything terminal by sleeving it with a 6.5mm cartridge case and epoxy.
It seemed to do the trick but I have succumbed to Sakura Rookie. Again, although beautifully light, responsive and well balanced the wall thickness at the spigot is not particularly thick and potentially vulnerable ,makes me extremely conscious when travelling without it being in a tube. Surely a sliding sleeve could be easily built in?

I agree in much of your assessment

On my custom rods I have the builder putting a band of wrapping around female part of the spigot in order to strengthen it.

 

[Iestyn Jones]

re: the tenryu rods, does the supermix suffer with this also? only reason i ask is its on my wish list and the spigot design is reversed?

 

[Mike Kennard]

I think there seems to be some misapprehension about rod spigots and re-inforcing. On a rod that isn't painted it is usually pretty easy to see where a rod has been re-inforced and most are. If you look either side of the spigot or any other joint you can normally see either some extra wraps of carbon created by adding a roughly triangle shaped piece of carbon to the blank when wrapping the carbon around the mandrel. Some times this is hidden inside the outer layers of carbon but can still be seen by looking along the blank near the spigot where you can see 'layers'.

Just to clear up another point, a spigot joint (as far as I am aware) is where the blank is made in one piece and cut, or two seperate pieces that work in the same way and are then joined by a seperate internal 'sleeve' of carbon or glass depending on blank that is fixed in the lower section. The internal sleeve is the spigot. The Supermix does NOT have a spigot but a joint commonly referred to as 'push in'. The part that pushed into is the butt section is not a spigot but the tip itself.

The types of join are commonly called overfit, spigot and push-in. The overfit is where the tip section is the female, the butt is the male but no seperate piece is used for the connector, the tip just fits over the butt. The spigot and pushin are explained above.

As far a blank wall thickness goes and its inherent joint strength, most blanks are literally paper thin and the thickness you see at the joint is the result of re-inforcing using extra layers of material and much thicker than the main shaft of the blank.

One last point, all rod joints will wear. If you think lure rods wear out quickly you should see how fast a pole joint wears, they are joined and seperated sometimes hundreds of times in one match. The key to stopping the wear is to keep them clean. If it starts to wear a light coating of candle wax can reduce it.