Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating - View Single Post

numbskull · 02-17-2017, 07:17 AM

By "design" I think you're talking aesthetics. For you that appears to lean towards subtlety. The wrap is nicely done, but not exactly simple. The silver in-lay and very presence of a butt wrap serve to elevate the work beyond that of bare function......albeit the result is a pleasing one. Certainly if you wanted "ugly" Billy D is not the guy to ask for it from.

I'd also suggest that under wraps are not entirely for show. They provide a softer bedding surface for the guide (which arguably is not necessary when guide feet are dressed carefully). I use them, however, in the theory that make it easier to strip and rebuild the rod....which I do a lot. But then I do not epoxy the underwrap before wrapping on the guide (like real builders do) and I could well be wrong on all this.

As for weight considerations, your guide choice has a lot more to do with that then your wrap selection. And this is still evolving. As most people know the old cone of flight layouts used to throw heavy mono (50-70mm collectors dropping stepwise to a 16 tip) are heavy, unnecessary, and don't work well with braid. They were superseded by NGC (new guide concept) layouts using a slightly smaller collector (usually a 40) and dropping stepwise to a "choke point" a few feet in from the tip then running guides covering the distance to the tip. This is the way most surf rods are now built but is also suboptimal.

It turns out that you don't need a 40mm collector guide.....what you actually need is the height it provides. Likewise you do not need a series of slowly diminishing ring sizes spread out over most of a rod's length, rather with the right guide heights you can compress this transition into a much shorter distance (say 1/2 way out rather than 3/4 the way out) which in turn lets you cover more of the distance to the tip with smaller and lighter guides.

So what is now developing is a guide layout that goes by the term "rapid reduction" layout. It starts with a high 25mm collector then drops quickly down through a 16 to an intermediate height 10 then down to small running guides on the outer 1/2 of the rod. You get better line flow, maybe a little better distance, and A LOT better blank performance (i.e., swing weight, reverberation, upper range). Presently the guide options to do this are limited to either economical single foot KL-H and m guides, or very expensive titanium RV guides (that cost $70-98 for just the first guide alone!). Everyone expects, however, that soon Fuji will release cheaper stainless frame versions of the latter. In the meantime, if you want to see what they look and feel like you can go wiggle a St Croix legend which uses them.

So that leaves single foot guides as a design choice. Turns out this is not as stupid for a surf rod as it sounds. Strength wise they fish just fine and don't tend to bend in use (when you put the rod down for example). Their real drawback is in rod transport where they are easy to bend. But if you are careful in transport and want a light rod that performs to the optimum ability of the blank they are worth considering.......I think.

02-17-2017, 07:17 AM	#4
numbskull Oblivious // Grunt, Grunt Master iTrader: (0) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: over the hill Posts: 6,682	By "design" I think you're talking aesthetics. For you that appears to lean towards subtlety. The wrap is nicely done, but not exactly simple. The silver in-lay and very presence of a butt wrap serve to elevate the work beyond that of bare function......albeit the result is a pleasing one. Certainly if you wanted "ugly" Billy D is not the guy to ask for it from. I'd also suggest that under wraps are not entirely for show. They provide a softer bedding surface for the guide (which arguably is not necessary when guide feet are dressed carefully). I use them, however, in the theory that make it easier to strip and rebuild the rod....which I do a lot. But then I do not epoxy the underwrap before wrapping on the guide (like real builders do) and I could well be wrong on all this. As for weight considerations, your guide choice has a lot more to do with that then your wrap selection. And this is still evolving. As most people know the old cone of flight layouts used to throw heavy mono (50-70mm collectors dropping stepwise to a 16 tip) are heavy, unnecessary, and don't work well with braid. They were superseded by NGC (new guide concept) layouts using a slightly smaller collector (usually a 40) and dropping stepwise to a "choke point" a few feet in from the tip then running guides covering the distance to the tip. This is the way most surf rods are now built but is also suboptimal. It turns out that you don't need a 40mm collector guide.....what you actually need is the height it provides. Likewise you do not need a series of slowly diminishing ring sizes spread out over most of a rod's length, rather with the right guide heights you can compress this transition into a much shorter distance (say 1/2 way out rather than 3/4 the way out) which in turn lets you cover more of the distance to the tip with smaller and lighter guides. So what is now developing is a guide layout that goes by the term "rapid reduction" layout. It starts with a high 25mm collector then drops quickly down through a 16 to an intermediate height 10 then down to small running guides on the outer 1/2 of the rod. You get better line flow, maybe a little better distance, and A LOT better blank performance (i.e., swing weight, reverberation, upper range). Presently the guide options to do this are limited to either economical single foot KL-H and m guides, or very expensive titanium RV guides (that cost $70-98 for just the first guide alone!). Everyone expects, however, that soon Fuji will release cheaper stainless frame versions of the latter. In the meantime, if you want to see what they look and feel like you can go wiggle a St Croix legend which uses them. So that leaves single foot guides as a design choice. Turns out this is not as stupid for a surf rod as it sounds. Strength wise they fish just fine and don't tend to bend in use (when you put the rod down for example). Their real drawback is in rod transport where they are easy to bend. But if you are careful in transport and want a light rod that performs to the optimum ability of the blank they are worth considering.......I think.