Aspindale - Avondale

[Ryeman]

Well, I am no physicist - I can hardly spell the word - but here is my threepenneth. When the rod is not being bent the line travels in in a straight line from ring to ring, so the rings produce very little friction on the line when you reel in. The angle of the line on either side of any ring is 180 degrees. But when you have a good bend on the rod the line angle (on either side of each ring) gets tighter, and causes more friction. The fewer rings, the tighter the angle for any given amount of bend. In a progressive actioned rod the bend increases towards the tip, so to keep the line angle between each ring the same, the rings have to be closer together as the bend increases towards the tip.

My Avondale had so few rings that the line angle was quite tight - and the incorrect spacing meant that there was more friction at some rings than at others.

Anyone who wants perfection in ring spacing could try temporarily taping the intermediate rings in place with masking tape, then thread the rod up attach the line to something solid and get a helper to put a bend in the rod. If you stand at the side it is easy to see if the ring spacing is ok by looking for differences in the angle of the line between rings. I did this once with an 11 foot glass Avon rod and by gradually adjusting the rings to get all the line angles the same, I ended up with a very sweet to use rod -and a very bored wife who was holding the rod.

Alan

[Chevin]

Very well explained sir.

[Ryeman]

Thanks John!

Alan

[Nobby]

Still laughing at that as I type


So you could actually detect the difference then? And that's with a wife on the end, not a charging fish....


.................or did you make her run up the garden?



I have float rod onto which I whipped an extra butt ring for casting with a centrepin
...Wilson style ( I can't Wallis cast at all...not even a bit )..but I put the new ring too close to the original second ring to allow me to grab THREE fingers worth of line....it didn't work, the angles invlived produced far too much drag for me to be able to pull off line .

This rather bears out your theory .. the friction is simply too much...and friction might mean a snapped line.....


Whilst I'm concious of the weight of stand-off rings it must be remembered that a modern float rod has a huge quantty of rings on it, and it doesn't spoil the action, but then they are extremely small.



It would be interesting to use modren super-light rings on a cane float rod, ...but it just looks awful and wrong. Sort of suggests I'm more interested in looks than performance, I know.........

[Ryeman]

Nobby, my wife was holding the rod. I told her to act like a "lady of the stream" a half-joke which I hoped she didn't get... The "fish" at the other end was my woodwork vice, as I recall. The vice survived unscathed.

Alan

[SeanM]

Ouch! My wife now makes herself scarce if she sees me taping rings on a rod. Fly reel backing makesthe task of checking line angles a much easier job.

[PershoreHarrier]

Try again to post a photo of my Avondale.

[AshbyCut]

That looks to be a lovely rod PH, Sir.

[Nobby]

I see yours has a transfer. I believe that makes it a later rod, possibly made by Peter Aspindale himself. Peter has retired now, but he and his wife still live in Redditch just down the road from the Sports Hall where John Andrews holds his Redditch Tackel Fairs. Until recently they still undertook restorations of their rods.

I hadn't seen an Avondale with a transfer before. Others had all been hand-written in that distinctive hand with the unusual 'A's.

Nice rod!

[TraditionalAngling]

I see yours has a transfer. I believe that makes it a later rod, possibly made by Peter Aspindale himself. Peter has retired now, but he and his wife still live in Redditch just down the road from the Sports Hall where John Andrews holds his Redditch Tackel Fairs. Until recently they still undertook restorations of their rods.

I hadn't seen an Avondale with a transfer before. Others had all been hand-written in that distinctive hand with theunusul 'A's.

Nice rod!

Nobby
The later rods that did have that label type were more like a sticky paper label as the thickness was a lot more than a transfer.