I see two manufacturers,Orvis & Winston,have gone the Boron/Graphite route for flyrod blank material.Is this the future of flyrods?
Orvis went this route once B4 a long time ago. I have one downstairs somewhere. Never cared for it. Perhaps some new engineering has now produced a better rod with that combination of materials. If Mike_D see this perhaps he can tell you as he is assc. with Orvis.
If future rods behave, feel and weigh anything like the Winston BIIx, it should be!
I’ll second that Jackster…
Ron
i bet the people whove been fly fishing for a long time have seen a lot of change, from cane to boron/graphite. now i wonder what younger guys like me will see change
My opinion is that it will go to injected plastics in the years to come there are now some plastic materals that are light and stronger than what we are now useing. and This is fact THE LIGHTER THE BETTER! when buliding a rod of any kind. You can make any action you want out of any material The lighter the finshed product is the better the rod will preform in any action.
Rich
At some point I think rods will be “grown” with nanotech technology from carbon buckyball/tube molecules. Carbon is the most amazing element.
They will also incorporate dynamic compensation such that they will load easily for short casts yet turn stiff for long casts.
The guides will be room temperature superconductors and fly line will travel right through the middle without contact.
I hope to see these rods one day…
I did some lawn casting with a ZeroGravity 9’ 5wt last week. I was impressed with it, but it is not the rod for me.
It was more like casting a VERY light piece of steel than a flyrod. I think they are WAY to stiff and I casting fishing a mid-flex.
It does weigh almost nothing. I’d really like to try it out in an 8wt with a big salt water fly on it.
Ken
“The memory of a fisherman is more like fiction than journalism, that is, it doesn’t ignore the facts, but it is not entirely bound by them, either.”
John Gierach
One of the problems with boron is it is heavier than graphite so the manufacturers who use it do so sparingly (like just in the butt section of the B2)…
David, yes there are slower high mod graphite rods around. Sage has made a couple which are moderate not fast action, and we just had a Global Dorber rod here in a 2/3 weight which was purposely designed to feel like bamboo. It is very nice!
LadyFisher, Publisher of
FAOL
Fishyfranky, Right on with your thoughts
now that will be quite a rod to fish
with!
Take care!
Steve Molcsan
That’s the beautiful thing about bamboo, it’s been outdated for nearly fourty years! If you can come to grips with this fact, you never have to run out to get the new O***S catalog 
All kidding aside, when it comes to trout fishing I’m more impressed by a rod that can roll cast, mend, curve cast, slack line cast - the sort of qualities we trout fisherman actually use. Although, I’m not against airing out 90’ of line with a 3wt. just to see if can be done… It will be interesting to see if boron is the next “wonder” material, it’s definitely going to be SOMETHING new, that’s how they keep us shopping, and I’m not complaning, getting new stuff can be fun too!
Bill O.
[This message has been edited by oyster (edited 23 October 2005).]
If the boron is just in the butt section,is the majority of the blank made of a high modulus graphite like say a 57 million modulus?
i understand that winston is giving up on the boron rods–that’s the rumor anyway. i’ve cast the zero g in a 9 wt and found it extremely light in the hand (felt like i was casting a 5 wt) and very accurate. but that’s a lot coin for a rod!
Bought a 50 year old split cane fly rod for $100, and spent the last year fishing with it exclusively. Thinking that split cane, along with the Cortland Sylk Fly Line is the way to go, for the ultimate satisfaction on the water.
Yes the rod is heavier than Graphite, but there is something in the casting that Graphite will never be able to duplicate.
Steve, I think all of us will end up doing exactly what you did, and the sport will be better for it.
No, it’s not the future but it was a bit of the past. Boron/Graphite fly rods were introduced in the late 1970’s. Noteable models were the Fenwick Boron X and Browning Silaflex rods. They were certainly decent rods, but Boron is not well suited to use in fishing rods. It’s a large fiber, almost 5 mils diameter. The carbon filaments used in most rods is much smaller, perhaps 15 mirons or so. This is about 1/100th the size of the Boron filaments.
On top of that, Boron does not have nearly as good of a relationship between modulus and tensile strength as most graphites being used today in rod manufacturing.
Not to say that rods made from a Boron/Graphite composite aren’t any good - they certainly can be. But most of what makes them good is the overall design - not the Boron, which is going to be used in very small quanitities anyway.
Boron was phased out of use in fishing rods by the early 1980’s. It’s recent rebirth is more for marketing purposes than anything else.
…
[This message has been edited by Tom Kirkman (edited 25 October 2005).]
i remember the fenwick boron rods, i had one for a while and it was a different experience. In their interpretation it was a slower fuller working rod than what is the fashion with rod designers now. i heard through the grapevine that it was crankt to work with, required either glass or graphite to be used along with it as the fibers could not be crossed over each other.
My journey through FF led me back to cane as a better fishing tool than graphite. these days the plastic rods feel too light and they work me half to death to get them to work so i assume the transformation in retrograde to cane is complete. 
splinter
Don’t blame the material the rod is made from for the performance of the rod. Remember, rod action is independent of the material used to make it. You can make a fast action rod from bamboo just as easily as you can make a slow action rod from graphite. The overall design of the rod is what determines the action and power, and to at least some extent, the reaction and recovery time. Granted, higher modulus fibers allow you to achieve quicker reaction and recovery times, but how you design the taper/wall thickness remains extremely important.
Now why did those “plastic” rods work you to death while you were trying to get them to load? Simple - you had the wrong line on the rod for the distance you were casting/fishing. This is the greatest obstacle to today’s anglers in trying to get good performance from their rods. The weight of the line varies with the amount of line you have past the rod tip. 50 feet of 4-wt line weighs more than 25 feet of 4-weight line. A rod is going to load and cast differently, along with requiring different input from the angler, as you change the amount of line aerialized or past the tip.
Remember than the line number you see on the side of your rod is purely subjective - it is not based on any sort of industry standard. Most likely, the rod you had trouble with was rated for a very long length of the rated line to be held past the tip (although you would have had no way to know that). Had you moved up a line size you’d likely have found the rod very pleasant to load and use. But therein lies the problem - there is no industry standard for the intrinsic power of a rod labeled with a particular number.
If you’ll go to the rod building section on this site and check the Features part, you’ll see the info for the Common Cents System. It will explain how to make your graphite rods cast every bit as pleasantly as the bamboo rods you love so much. It’s all a matter of having the right amount of weight tugging on the rod.
…
I was checking out the zero g rods at Orvis/ Manchester the other day.
The 10 wt felt like a 4 or 5 wt. in the hand.
I did’t even wiggle it for fear it would break.
this, my friends, is the future of fly rods(from ebay):
“SAKURA”
WHALE-BONE Fly ROD
By Sakurai Fishing Supply Co., Ltd.
A very rare article is this WHALE BONE ROD!!!
“Material is Whale-Bone obtained from the mouth of extinct whale.”
This rod is in the original wood box with a label that reads(see picture below)
" Made in Japan
PO T.O.01-0-35607
Stock #1611-506
Fresh Water Fishing Set"
The rod has been used and is in very good condition. It has 4 pieces as shown below, there are two tips. The assembled length is about 9 feet. The only information that we can find on this is on the internet saying that whale bone was the best choice for the elite fisherman in the Victorian age.
We obtained this at an Estate Sale, the gentleman that owned it bought it just after WWII in Japan and brought it home. All of the collectors that we have talked to have never even heard of it.
[url=http://cgi.ebay.com/SAKURA-WHALE-BONE-Antique-FLY-ROD-Original-wood-box_W0QQitemZ7191063150QQcategoryZ11144QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem:a9b24]http://cgi.ebay.com/SAKURA-WHALE-BONE-Antique-FLY-ROD-Original-wood-box_W0QQitemZ7191063150QQcategoryZ11144QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem[/url:a9b24]
[This message has been edited by D. Micus (edited 27 October 2005).]