alignment dots, eye sore??

just curious why ALL 3 piece or more rods do not have alignment dots, do people consider them an eye sore and take away the beauty of a fine rod? i myself love them as i fish from a conoe and i am always setting up in low light conditions.

IMO, line up dots are a personal choice for many folks. For the big manufacturing rod companies it's likely an added cost which they don't wish to have. Some anglers like them, while others hate them.......not sure why?
I prefer to place them on all of the custom rods I build (unless a customer wishes not to have them), for they can be done in many variations other than painted dots on a rod blank. On a custom built rod, I feel they add an extra touch of individuality.
Mine are usually done in the form of a pair of feather inlays using Jungle Cock eye feathers indicating the dots. When properly finished, they are not only functional in quick rod blank alignment, but can be quite an eye catching attraction to a beautiful fishing rod.
Once again though, it's a personal choice much the same as having a hook keeper on a rod.

David, could you post a couple pic's of your work? would love to see it!

I would love to do so, but so far have been unable to post ANY PICTURES OF ANYTHING on this site. I've been a member for a long time and can't figure out why I cannot post any pics other than my avatar??????

I could take-or-leave alignment dots. I will put them on a rod I an building, if the owner wants them.

I think that I've been partially put off by them because: 1) I've seen some poorly aligned dots that were far enough off to be obvious. 2) It doesn't take too long to put a multi-piece rod together. Even if a rod has alignment dots that I've used to put the thing together, I am still going to check the alignment myself.

I have seen some very nice inlays for alignment "dots", like David spoke of. They're not really dots at that point, but rather, nice custom artwork.

Brian

Personally, I do not pay any attention to alignment dots, can't even think if any of my rods have them, as I use the alignment of the guides to 'guide' me in getting the rod put together.

Larry ---sagefisher---

I use them. Usually i am so excited when i am rigging up in the early dawn light i need all the help i can get.

To answer Admountainken i think 3 piece rods in general were more common before the 4 piece generation of rods and alignment dots were not in vogue

If I did not have dots on my rod blanks, I would have no idea what to do. Using guides to line up the pieces is for serfs. Or spin-fishermen.

<rolling eyes>

David email me pictures to kmowrey001@nycap.rr.com and I will post them for you.

When I join up a rod I lightly grasp the adjacent guides on each side of the ferrule in my finger tips and align them by feel as I twist the ferrule together. Never had a problem with the alignment and could do it with my eyes closed or in complete darkness. IMHO the dots are unnecessary.

For many years, all the rods I owned did NOT have alignment dots, and I'd see where others did and wonder why all the manufacturers wouldn't include such an obvious convenience. Once I did wind up with a couple that had them, I found myself not using them like I thought I would. I guess I initially rotate the sections to roughly line up the dots, but I invariably wind up eyeballing the guides to settle on the final position. Weird, but I guess I don't trust relying on the dots alone.

The "normal" way to line up the guides is by sighting down the guides, reel seat up. Try this experiment. Line up the guides on your fly rod in that way or if you have alignment dots, match them up.

While building rods, I found that the most accurate way to make sure the guides on the rod were perfectly aligned was to flip the rod over and line up the guides with the guides on the under side of the rod.

Take the rod you just put together. Flip the rod over so the guides are on the bottom and sight down the top side of rod blank. Reline up the guides so you can sight down the top side of the rod blank and see an equal amount of guide projecting out on each side (edge) of the blank. If the same amount of the guides project on each side of the rod, the rod has to be perfectly lined up.

If there are two guides on a rod section and that section of rod blank does not exactly bisect the guides, the builder messed up.

Check the alignment dots and see how accurate they are.

I find the alignment dots quite helpful, particularly on my four or even five piece rods!

Agree with Byron, a little faster and easier.

None of my rods have alignment dots, but I can see their usefulness. A quick way to align your rod I found is to connect the top two sections then the bottom two sections and then join and align the two sections. I find this fast and easy to align the rod sections as you only need to focus on two sections at a time.

There you have it...........a number of different opinions pro and con and that's what makes this site interesting wouldn't you say?
As fishermen/women, we all have our likes and dislikes and preferences and that IMO is a good thing, for it shows individuality. All being said about line-up dots, the feather in-lays I add to my custom rods are really met as dual purpose..........line up dots as well as a custom touch of art on someone's personal rod. With or w/o dots, I feel one should always use the guide line up method for true alignment, for I have also seen unaligned lineup dots on certain rods.