Question about ferrules

[jw healy]

After having finished my second graphite rod a few weeks ago, I started sniffing around cane rods and noticed that the female ferrules go on the bottom whereas on graphite they go on top. Is there any reason other than tradition why this is so?

[kengore]

I'm kind of new to the rod building world but I will try and make a guess as to why ferrules are different in graphite and cane...

On graphite rods the ferrule is built into the blank by adjusting the size of the mandrel on which it is built. When the male ferrule is part of the butt end the mandrel is a continous taper, thick at one end thin on the other. The mandrel is wrapped with graphite and cured in an oven. The finished blank is then slipped off the tapered mandrel. If the female ferrule was on the butt section the mandrel would need to swell near the jointed connection, this bulge would prevent you from removing the finished blank.

On cane rods, in particular ones with step down ferrules, you need to remove some of the cane to fit the inside diameter (I.D.) of the nickel silver ferrule. For an SD ferrule the I.D. of the male is slightly smaller than the I.D. of the female end. By placing the male on the tip side less material needs to be removed, since the tip end is slightly smaller than the butt end. Some modern super Z style ferrules are the same I.D. on both male and female ends, I suppose it wouldn't matter which direction they were installed.

[aged_sage]

Kengore:

There is more than one answer to the question relative to fiberglass and graphite. The ORIGINAL glass rods, made by Shakespeare, were ferruled like cane rods; female ferrule on the tip end of the butt and mid-sections and male ferrules on the butt end of mid- and tip sections. This resulted in maintaining the taper that had been designed into the blank. Jim Green, one of the founders of Fenwick rods, is apparently responsible for the change, as a direct result of his broken rod experience, which led to the development of the Ferrulite Ferrule; characteristic of the Fenwick rods. Though it apparently has been abandoned by many rod makers, the spigot/ferrule seemed to go both ways, though most, as I recall, had the spigot "fixed" in the butt portion.

With respect to cane rods, the placement order is driven more by keeping removal of the cane's "power fibers" to a bare-bones minumum, and, again, to maintain the design taper. The thinking has apparently been that by "maintaing" the taper, the integrity of energy transfer along the shaft will be maintained, i.e., there is only one major "hurdle" to overcome, the lack of flexibility of the ferrule itself; whereas, reversing the ferrules would create more "hurdles". (This latter is supposition on my part based on my extensive reading of the cane rod building literature.)

aged_sage

[Shaky Wadr]

There are many reasons that the female ferrule is on the bottom on cane rods and the reasons mentioned are valid. Here are a couple more.

Traditionally, cane rods are often supplied with two tips. The metal ferrule halves must be hand fitted to each other by carefully abrading the male spigot until you have a nice slide fit with the female and fitting two males to the same female is much easier than vice versa.

Cost. The female is the heavier, longer part and providing two of them versus two males would be more expensive.