Fishing rod guides

[Tavery5]

There was a little conversation in another thread about guides and the materials used in them. This is a nice article that covers the basic information very well.

http://www.bassfishingandcatching.co...od-guides.html

[Tavery5]

This is a table of common materials used for guides and its hardness as measured on a Rockwell scale.

It is subjective but is a good reference. It was borrowed from another popular fishing site.

Stainless Steel (SS): 400
Chrome: 800-1000
Carbaloy: 1000
Aluminum Oxide: 1200-1400
Alconite : 1300-1500
NanoLite : 1800
Zirconia: 1000-1400
Zirconia PVD: 1600
SiC: 2200-2400

[WaffleJaw]

Nice post Tavs...Thats the first Ive seen the Nanolite measurement...Thats wasnt off TT was it?

[Tavery5]

Yes, it was borrowed from an old TT post, I think it had been updated before the great crash.

[Bubba_Bruiser]

Now, the question is, where does it really matter? From a price perspective, I don't really want to buy SiC guides if the nanolite and alcolite will handle superlines when building my personal rods.

[TN_Bassin]

I think you have to balance the guides when selecting a blank. You wouldn't want to put 70 bucks worth of guides on a gator blank, and visaversa. As long as I feel the inserts arent going to groove when using braid and heavy mono/flouro I figure I'm ok.

[DVT Mike]

Alconite guides are probably one of the best values and capable of handling any bass fishing application. I use them regularly on my personal builds with no problem at all and I fish braid on almost every reel.

[Tall]

I have two rods with micro guides on them and have no reason not use them on all my rods in the future. They are rated for braid as well. At around $2.50 a guide they are as cheap as most. So much less rod tangle on the deck and when I carry them around together.

My buddy that has now retired off the Fire Department and builds rods that I fished with last week on Degray said that these are the only guides he will put on rods in the future unless a special request is made (but why would you). They are about like a golf club. They are no magic sticks out there. You haft to make a good swing are get lucky on a swing for good results. The micro guides are the same for me. They may help but I still have problems throwing where I am looking. LOL

They are so small they haft to help keep me from stepping on them with my big feet.

I just had a rod reguided (big foot broke a couple of old guides) and they seem much lighter.

I suspect most rods in the future will have micro guides on them. Well, the custom and high in rods. He sure is reguiding a lot of rods for folks.

My 1/2 cents worth.

[islandbass]

I look the looks of the micros, but I think I would need to have a few rods with regular guides for fishing winter conditions. Ice already can screw up regular guides, and they clog up micros even faster, if not more easily. Still, that is one minor condition.

[VadneyCustomRods]

In my opinion, the only way that micros will take off is if the average fisherman gets familiar with acid/spiral wrapped rods. I just took a look the other day at a skeet reese rod that was 7'3" with micros and it had 13 guides. Needing that many guides to keep the line off of the blank defeats the purpose of using micro guides. If I were to build that same rod, but spiral wrap it, it would probably have 9 guides.

The increased stability provided by this style of wrap is absolutely noticeable. Everyone of my buddies that I let fish my spiral wrapped rods wanted one immediately.

Common misconceptions about spiral wrapped rods:
"You lose casting distance". Yes you do, it's about 2-5% (ie: you aren't going to notice it)

"It twists the line". False. I've built probably 30-40 spiral wrapped rods and never once have I seen an issue with line twists because of it.

"It will cause the line to build up on one side of the reel". It doesn't do that on any of the rods I've built. The first guide is set at about 11 o'clock and then it rotates to the 180 degree axis over 3 guides.

Example of a spiral wrapped rod: