On Aug 15, 4:03 am, mdk77 wrote:
Another newbie question. Did the graphite rods progress from IM6 to
IM7 to the super-high modulus rods that are high-end models today? In
other words, was there a time when IM6 was the best graphite
available?

Just curious.

Basically, yes. Rods with carbon fibre of ever increasing modulus were
built, This has a downside, in that the thinner and lighter the blank
walls are, the less robust the blank. Also, very light rods are bad
windcutters, and have more or less zero intrinsic loading, so are
useless at short range. The older rods with lower modulus fibre were
better at this, the old fibre glass rods are still better, and cane
( bamboo) is usually better still. With a good cane rod, one can cast
only the leader, as the rod has sufficient intrinsic weight to load
itself. The older IM6 rods were usually pretty robust as well. many
new rods with very high modulus fibre are prone to easy breakage.

Very fast light rods (fast = stiff, in this context) will not load
very well with only a small amount of line out, and this makes them
less useful for short range. Also, it should be noted, that the
finished blank depends not only on the modulus of the fibres used, but
the type and thickness of pre-preg (Impregnated carbon fibre cloth),
mandrel design, epoxy resin, and manufacturing process.

It is possible to make rods with very soft actions, or very stiff
(fast) actions, form the same carbon fibre. Usually however, rods
using very high modulus carbon fibre are built lighter ( as that is
the main reason for using such a high modulus fibre), but wont stand
any rough usage.

--
Regards and tight lines!

Mike Connor

http://www.mike-connor.homepage.t-online.de/

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/Flycorner?hl=en