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Philippe Sicher and Christian Trixner
Hollow Built Rods
Swiss and German bamboo rod makers Philippe Sicher and Christian
Trixner presented and studied various methods to make hollow
rods. The cavities of the rod can assume different shapes and so create
different
geometric sections, notably:
- Magic Star
- Fluted
- Powell
- Reim
The purpose of hollow rods is the reduction of weight, yet a compromise
must be reached otherwise the action of
the rod will be affected, although this is still a topic at the centre
of a debate an opinions vary drastically.
So, their conclusions were:
- The biggest weight saving are with longer rods
- The ferrule area must be solid (weakest fracture point)
- The glue applied does not affect the rod construction i.e. it
does not fill the cavities. However, care must be used and a small brush
used
- The action of the rod IS affected but this is left to the personal
judgment. On this regard, they prepared 5 identical rods
(identical taper, a Garrison 209E, 8', #5) and varied the internal structure,
from full to Magic Star, Fluted, Powell and Reim hollow-methods. The biggest
weight loss was with the Fluted method (-15.6%), followed by the Magic
Star (system preferred by Philippe Sicher, - 12.2%), Powell (-7.2%) and
Reim (-6.1%).
I think this is a very well presented topic and a good introduction to hollow-buil
rods in bamboo.
Incidentally,
IBRA (the Italian Bamboo Rodmakers Associations) also created a
special hollow-built rod based on Roberto Pragliola's - Italy most influential
fly angler - flycasting
style
and called
it IRP. This rod,opened up an intersting topic on the tolerance in bamboo
rod making.
By tolerance we man the following. If you want to measure the diameters
of each section of the finished rod in order to see if the final result complies
to the parameters set on paper in the beginning, you
notice
that
simply
the humidity in the airinfluences so much those same parameters that
it's
impossible to make such rod within the set measures!
from
Philippe Sicher and Christian Trixner's presentation to the Sansepolcro
Gathering main page
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