rod splines

[goldrod]

How do I fine mine, what are the variations and what importance is it to me? How does the differrent variations effect performance?
teach all, tell all?

[BassFreak]

Very interesting topic, I for one am curious about the answers also..

[Mattman]

Spine is an effect, not a thing.

If you have a finished rod, finding the spine will do nothing for you other than telling you where it is. Once the rod is built, its built and you can't relocate the spine.

Factories do not consider the spine at all when building. The guy grabs a blank off the rack and smacks a handle on it and moves on to the next rod.

If you have a blank that you are going to build into a rod, then you can do something with the spine.

There are a number of ways to find the spine. Personally, I place the butt of the blank on my work bench. I place the tip in my right hand and hold it up at head height. With my free hand I push down on the middle of the blank and get a good flex in it. Then I roll the butt across the bench. The blank will become difficult to roll at some point and then suddenly jump into a new position. I just found the spine.

Typically, I put the relaxed curve to the top on rods for casting. I typically put the relaxed curve to the bottom on rods for feel presentations. The thought being that the blank flexes easiest towards the relaxed curve, so use that tendancy to your advantage.

Can the average angler tell the difference? I doubt it. If I handed you an identical pair of rods, one with the relaxed curve down and one with the relaxed curve up, I highly doubt you could ever pick out which one is which or which one perfoms better.


_________________
Matt Davis

Better to have and not need than to need and not have.

Otterods - High performance hand crafted fishing rods

[Thor]

Not a big deal on freshwater rods. A much bigger deal on saltwater rods, especially, the light tackle variety.

[Vladimir_Kazan]

You speak about spine in sence "seam", effect of a "seams" or about rod curves (splines) under working loads ?

[tonym]

I think Mattman gave an excellent example.
My preference is: spin rods; spine on bottom, casting rods w/ guides on top; spine on top(tip down presentations), casting rods w/ spiral guides; spine on bottom(tip up presentations).