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I think you have missed the point completely, just how many straight tapers have you made and what are their tip and station values? It's been my experience that a straight taper can be a very nice rod when designed correctly; for example a 4wt with a tip of 0.068 and a station rise of 0.013. Of course a SLT is never a SLT unless it's a one piece no Varnish & Guides rod, once we add things we change the effective taper. If you want a rod that feels like a SLT then you must compensate for the ferrules and varnish and guides by adding the proper amount of bamboo at the correct points on the taper. If you like I can send you a compensated SLT and you will see what I mean. (Bob Norwood) The point, whether you like it or not, is that you cannot design a rod that much exceeds mediocrity by using straight tapers. This is because the laws of physics don't tend to change much. It might depend, but only a bit, on what you call "very nice" and I see that your figure for station rise was almost exactly the figure I suggested. You can do all the compensation you like for varnish thickness, ring weight and ferrules but you will still not produce anything like as good as a properly calculated compound taper rod. "Proper amounts" and "correct points" are hardly scientifically precise terms, so I regret that I don't know what you might mean. Its the old problem, everyone wants to tell us what they think the answer is, but they never want to tell us why in terms unequivocal and universal! (Robin Haywood) Hmmm. . .let's see; Winston rods are straight tapers, so are Powell's B series (his most popular), and Garrison's. . . . Not too many folks consider these mediocre. (Chris Obuchowski) Are you really sure? Hexrod’s library seems to suggest otherwise. (Robin Haywood) Yes. Look at a graph of the rod dimensions. Garrison's are straight except for the last 15 inches which he "fudged" to accommodate one of the standard tip top sizes. A Powell B taper by definition is a straight taper. Talk to any of the 'boo boys who used to work at Winston, and they'll tell you Winston tapers are basically straight (I got that straight from Jeff Walker). (Chris Obuchowski) Neither of the Powell's on Hexrod are straight taper, I have no Winston tapers handy. An awful lot of fudging, especially as he could have made up tip rings quite easily. The tip tapers are the only redeeming feature of his designs, and now you tell me they were not deliberate, I'll burn my copy of "The Book" immediately, at least I shall be spared tolerating toadying references to "Garry" when ever (very seldom, in fact) I refer to it! Not that I very much care, these people have a perfect right to their willful ignorance. But nobody has a right to ask me to share it. If you want to make overweight rods with unnecessarily heavy tips and relatively floppy butts then straight tapers will deliver. But if you decide to tell the world that this is therefore the right way to design a fishing rod then I'm going to disagree with you! Sorry! (Robin Haywood) I think you are being a tad myopic, if you can't see that .016, .014, and .015 AVERAGE OUT to equal .014". Are you so precise in your planing that all your stations are bang on, with less than .001"? I will suggest that rodmakers as a whole are not (especially the "classics" who were trying to make a living by banging out rods), but also that minor variances of a few thousandths occurring at random do not have a large impact on the rod actions as a whole. Here's a classic Winston from the Hexrod taper archive. Point Dimension The slope of the taper of this rod is .014/5" or a B-8.4 (taking the average drop from 80" thru 0"). If you look at the individual changes every five inches, no they are not always .014, but the mean and mode are .014". I would argue that the variances are due to machine error, rather than deliberate (consider that you are tapering the strips by running them thru a glorified router, excuse me milling machine, using a worn wooden pattern board running over metal rollers, to determine the taper. It's all pulled through by hand. The biggest discrepancies are around the ferrules, and you'll notice in many "classic tapers" flattening of the slope into and out of the ferrules - presumably to make fitting a tapered peg into a cylindrical hole easier. The same can be said for the EC Powell taper in Hexrod (the 7'6" 2pc 6wt in the archives) which IS A B-9 TAPER; just look at the average slope from stations from the 80" mark thru 0". Again, there is slight flattening around the ferrule, and I suspect the measurement at 35" is due to machine operator error/technique rather than designed in. Even if EC did "compound" his B-9 taper just in front of the ferrule for a specific reason, it wouldn't negate the fact that this is AT HEART A STRAIGHT TAPER. Most of the classic rodmakers continually "fudged" their tapers over the years (sometimes unintentionally due to machine and pattern wear, and sometimes deliberately). Your statement that "if you want to make overweight rods with unnecessarily heavy tips and relatively floppy butts then straight tapers will deliver. But if you decide to tell the world that this is therefore the right way to design a fishing rod then I'm going to disagree with you!" is obviously your opinion, which you are entitled to. . .but like most opinions you will find that many on this list (and in the world at large) are not going to agree with you. I'm not sure why you don't like Garrison, nor his tapers, but you can have your own opinions as can everyone else. I would suggest you should RESPECT the man (as well as EC Powell and others) who made contributions to providing us all with tools to understand and continue to develop taper design (Hexrod being one, a powerful and easily applied tool, I believe based on Garrison's math). (Chris Obuchowski) In reading my post the tone seems a little harsh. My intention is not to criticize you, but to try to reveal the "big picture" when looking at tapers and stress curves. . . I would specifically urge all to look at the graphs. This gives a quick, accurate impression as to what type of taper the rod is made from (straight, parabolic, "compound" , etc.) (Chris Obuchowski) Actually, your second post said what I was going to say, look at the graphs. That is all I did! Straight tapers are just that, nobody needs to develop them, as if they did they wouldn't be straight anymore. Garrison's tapers may have been all right in his day, for the equipment and applications he was designing for, i.e. double taper silk lines at short ranges. But all right is not a euphemism for excellent. However many people may like them, does this mean they cannot be improved on? He took the first step to improving them, inadvertently, you say, by fining down the tips. All he needed to do was speed up the butts, preferably with a concave taper form, and he would really have been cooking with gas! You may think you are being rude about "Classic" production methods, but they're probably better than mine. I could probably improve just by buying a new cheap file.. The trouble is, really, that I know there are people out there who really do understand taper design, it's getting them to talk to us about it that’s the problem. They will not be using straight tapers, I'm afraid. (Robin Haywood) I find this a very interesting. I don't disagree with any one here in fact I think you are all correct. Over the time I have made rods. I always encourage customers to try before they buy. It throws up some very interesting facts. First, no one casts the same. I don't think anyone fishes the same. I have been gobs smacked many times when the customer turns around and says I like this one. I recently sold a rod to a customer blind on the phone. It was a rod I hate. In fact, I had great trouble casting the bloody thing. OK, the rod was a Paul Young Perfectionist. 3 months after I had the guy back on the phone asking me to make another one as its the best rod he has ever had. The guy turns out to be a top casting instructor. (Gary Nicholson)
The chap is obviously of unsound mind as the Perfectionist is IMHO one of the all time worst taper rods out there. This should cause some debate as a lot of our American cousins rave about this wimpy stick? (Paul Blakley) There are two Perfectionists on Hexrod. Both tapers conform to the shape broadly called parabolic and thus will have the shortcomings that all rods of this misconceived taper share. The butts are just not stiff enough, although, in some, the tips are quite satisfactory. In the original Ritz conception the rod, or the taper, was the tip. The butt was merely an extension pole to keep the tip further from the ground. Hence the short butt long tip "BSAS" conformation of some of the better iterations. Because Ritz was not an engineer, any more than Creusevaut or Plantet were (although the latter may have been a competent mechanic) it was thought that the extension pole should be just that, a large diameter pole of slow taper. They were severely inhibited by several difficulties. In fact, if you want to design a cane "Parabolic" which will perform as Ritz wanted all you have to do is choose a tip taper you fancy and plonk it out on the end of a fast taper hollow built butt of whatever length you fancy. This butt can be a foot shorter than the tip and of straight taper. If you want a starting point then make the rate of taper 20 thousandths per inch and hollow build to 50 or 60% of original wall thickness. Just for once I'm going to recommend a step down ferrule! The idea is that the butt must not bend, and when it does its only at the very end, if it bends further down then the height of the line above the ground is dramatically reduced and thus fully one half of the "High speed high line" proposition is not met. It's the important half, too, the other one is less important than line weight, I refer you to the basic laws of aerodynamics, this post is already too long! The only question that puzzles me is why on earth he thought this might be important for fishing the Risle, which is hardly the Tay. (Robin Haywood) I think the perfectionist is a fine taper and rod. I have made about 6 for auctions and as favors and all have been very well received and enjoyed. I finally made one for my wife and cut one into 4 pieces for me. I will be bringing it to Korea next trip to go for trout here in the eastern mountains. Maybe it is the version of the taper they are making, there are several out there. (Gordon Koppin) If I might ask: Which Perfectionist taper do you favor? (Ted Godfrey) I can say the one I don't like is the one in Ray Gould’s fine book, 'Cane Rods, Tips and Tapers', page 85. (Paul Blakley) I use the taper in Maurer's book, which is the same as Wane C's, which supposedly came from Young's mill. (Steve Weiss) That opens up another question. Do any rod makers sells rods they do not like? Let's be honest about this. (Gary Nicholson) I think most rodmakers wouldn't build a rod to sell that they didn't like, but would make one for a customer that they wouldn't use themselves, I know I have. BTW, Paul, different strokes for different folks. I've made at least a dozen Perfectionists (most with a swelled butt so they aren't exactly the same) and all their owners love them. (John Channer) I have never been able to describe to anyone else how a rod feels to them. This is one of those bio-feedback things you must be self taught IMHO. However, a straight line taper will create a rod in which the angle of deflection will increase from the butt to the tip at linear (constant)rate. like .03%/inch. That is up to the tip transition point, or max tip stress point according to Garrison. (Jerry Foster) I agree. I would love to have the opportunity to cast my perfectionist (or any one of the several I've made for people) against any 7 1/2-foot 5-weight of his choice and compare line speed, distance, accuracy, or any other criterion he would like. I get tired of hearing that kind of comment. (Steve Weiss) Good idea, Steven, but you would have get in line behind me and one of my Garrisons. (Tom Smithwick) See what Steve says, lots of people (Americans ?)really love this taper. Perhaps it's a European thing to like fast action rods ? (Paul Blakley)
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