Some of What I’ve Been Doing…
I’ve been putting in some time up at Gary Loomis’ new North Fork Composites (NFC) rod-blank project (blog is here). When the company was getting underway, there was a discussion about using Dr. Bill Hanneman’s Common Cents System (CCS) for providing additional (and “objective”) blank data, and NFC decided to run with it.
The CCS has expanded quite a bit from its origins (with all sorts of new acronyms like URRS), and NFC will be providing various values for rod-builders (and casting geeks) to peruse. But let me just say this for the CCS-initiated: If you try to get the Power Reservoir number on a heavy-power Mag Bass blank, I suggest that you use goggles…
![[join the e-list]](http://fishfliesandwater.com/wp-content/themes/plainscapeffw/images/join_the_elist.png)
I think this is so cool!
Hope more rod and blank manufacturer will follow your example.
Cheers,
Grunde
Grunde—Thanks m’friend. Gary and the rest of the crew at NFC liked the idea of the CCS as a way to both double-check blanks (along with their standard deflection tests), and to provide rod builders with useful data. While there may be some “history of mystery” in the rod world, NFC at least wanted to be direct about what people can expect in terms of certain blank characteristics. As for the mix that makes up their Next HM carbon material? Well… ;-)
Fly blanks are forthcoming, with the first series designed for everyday fishing. They should hit CCS numbers that are pretty close to center/above center in terms of ERN (for example, the 905 blank is currently coming in around a 5.5-5.6ERN, but it’s a little slow for what I’d like to see for the first series (its AA is 62, looking for more like 66). There will be more CCS info, too, like PR, the URRS, perhaps natural frequency, and so on. And of course, since I have an all-areas pass to a blank plant, I have a few little side-projects in mind, too… ;-)
Thanks for the feedback.
Like you I’ll probably want a bit higher AA’s and maybe a tad stiffer blanks for the line class. But you know “underlining” is always an option ;)
Looking forward to hear more about your side projects :)
By the way, do you know if you (NFC) have blank data which would enable me to compare my and Magnus’ simplistic MOI model to more realistic calculations?
Grunde
Grunde—Yeah, I Iike a finished “5″ rod that is more toward the bottom of the ERN6 range for my personal use (and something perhaps a bit “meatier” than that for distance work).
Side projects could be fun, as long as I can get all the details worked out on the back-end.
MOI/tip weight is definitely a subject of discussion at NFC. Am thinking of perhaps seeing if a production-finished blank can be sacrificed to the carbon saw, and then I could do your MOI test on say, 9 pieces (or more)…
Guess your engineers could dig up some CAD data or something? If the density of the material is known it should be straightforward to calculate the MOI :D
So probably no chopping needed…
Grunde
Yeah, but chopping is more fun. Density of material is known, as is the amount per length, so yeah, math should triumph (but still not as fun). I’ll shoot you an e-mail once I have a chance to mess around with this.