Fast light rods more easily broken?

[ggh]

I have a beautiful custom-made rod on a Sage Z-axis blank, 5 weight, 4 piece. I was roll-casting with it, perhaps 25 to 30 feet of line off the reel, 5 weight floating weight forward line, a size 10 or 12 light weight floating fly on the tippet. As I roll-cast forward, the distal (the smallest) piece of the rod snapped completely in two, about 2 inches above the ferrule.
The rod maker has a "You break it, I repair it" policy, and when I phoned him to tell him about it, he said he was convinced a lot of breakage of light weight rods was due to rough handling of the package containing the rod during shipping, i.e., the rod would be cracked or etc. during shipping and then the strain on the rod during fishing would complete the job.
Which got me to wondering (always weird, sometimes dangerous). In order to make the rod as light as possible, the rods are made with thinner walls, and if it is a fast rod, then would that make the rod more "brittle"? So would a fast light rod (like the Sage Z-axis or Orvis Helios tip flex, etc.) be more apt to snap than a heavier medium or medium flex rod? Or am I a million miles off the mark? What do you engineers out there think? Just wondering.

[DaveP63]

In my opinion, and that's all it is, I would say yes. It doesn't necessarily need to be a "fast" rod either. Take a look on a bass fishing forum sometime and see how many high dollar (light weight, thin wall) rods are snapped on the hook set...It's ridiculous..

[DaleW]

I had a fast 5wt rod suddenly break but do recall having cast a heavy (for the rod weight) clouser minnow in a pinch and it coming back and hitting the rod ... about where it was to break. Had a rod maker tell me this was no doubt what had weakened that rod section.

[Jack Hise]

Tensil over Impact strength. I believe it was Al Campbell that stated that the biggest breaker of rods was the bead head fly! A sharp blow to the package during shipping could do the same thing.

[Bamboozle]

The second time I fished a brand new, REALLY SLOW 8'0" 4wt Winston Retro FIBERGLASS rod; it snapped completely in half on a forward cast with a dry fly.

No beadheads, no Clousers, no hard casting, no graphite, no fast rod.

The factory couldn't explain it either when I sent it in for the warranty repair.

Sometimes stuff just happens.

[jstraightj]

Ask Tom Kirkman @ http://rodbuilding.org. This topic would be right up his alley

[Max]

I have purchased 3 Z-axis rods in the past 3 years---a 5, 6, & 7 wt. No breakage problems thus far.

I think thinner walled, higher modules graphite rods will not take much side pressure or compression on the rods before damage is incurred. My unfortunate experience with this is with the higher wt. salty fly rods. A whack from an errant clouser minnow moving forward fast will more than do it.

I do not think they are brittle, just less tolerant of those side whacks with thinner walls.

[Silver Creek]

I have a beautiful custom-made rod on a Sage Z-axis blank, 5 weight, 4 piece. I was roll-casting with it, perhaps 25 to 30 feet of line off the reel, 5 weight floating weight forward line, a size 10 or 12 light weight floating fly on the tippet. As I roll-cast forward, the distal (the smallest) piece of the rod snapped completely in two, about 2 inches above the ferrule.

The break could be due to a loose ferrule. See #5 below.

http://americanangler.com/index.php?...d=766&Itemid=0