For Buddy Sanders

[nowindknots]

Buddy, you are the only person I have heard of who has conducted test to failure of rod blanks.

I find that most interesting and have a couple questions if you don't mind.

Did you write up the results? If so, are they available on-line or by email?

What types of rod material did you test? Fiberglass, IM6, IM8, etc?

Did you attempt to break one by pointing the tip at the truck and applying the load to just the reel/butt?

Thanks! and good fishing...

Jim

[Buddy Sanders]

Jim,

This 'project' was a 'dual project'. It started as part of a product test/review for a marketing firm I was doing such things for. It was also written into an 'article' for a fishing related publication here in Arizona.

The 'marketing' stuff is what they call 'proprietary' (all the data and it's distribution 'belongs' to the company). I did 'have' it, but I lost all of the hard data in a software failure a few years ago. I'm not 'allowed' to publish it, due to an agreement, but the company is since gone out o business, and if I still had it, I'd gladly share it here.

The article was done for a now defunct magazine, the Arizona Fishing News, for which I was a staff writer. It was deemed 'impolitic' to publish, so they didn't. I 'lost' the article in the same crash that took the raw data...

For the first part, we 'tested' (got to destroy!) about a dozen blanks. These were furnished to us with no 'identifying' information on them, just a 'number' and a rod weigth rating.

For the 'article' we used a variety of well known comercially available blanks, Sage, Loomis, Shakespeare, Cortland, BPS, Cabelas. All were 6 wts. All were 'midrange' as price was concerned.

As far as "Did you attempt to break one by pointing the tip at the truck and applying the load to just the reel/butt? ".

No. We weren't testing reel seats, which is what that would stress. Once the load is off the rod, the blank won't break at all, the line or the reel or the seat, but not the blank.

I can tell you this, from our 'tests', that the 'strongest' rod, by far, was the Shakespeare 'Ugly Stick' fly blank. Nothing else was even close (not advocating these, unless pure strength is an issue for you).

Good Luck!

Buddy




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[nowindknots]

Thanks Buddy. That must have been a fun study to conduct. Most fellows I know just love to break things.

You said:
"No. We weren't testing reel seats, which is what that would stress. Once the load is off the rod, the blank won't break at all, the line or the reel or the seat, but not the blank."

Amen.

Jim