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"Rod Savvy"

Poveromo, George. "Rod Savvy." Salt Water Sportsman 77.3 (2016): 31-34. SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 16 Feb. 2016. FIBERGLASS: The most widely used rod material, fiberglass is strong, durable and flexible. It's able to withstand the abuse on boats and rough seas and is a tried and trusted general all-around rod material. Disadvantage: weight; it's difficult for anglers to detect subtle strikes or bait pickups.

GRAPHITE: A performance- oriented material, graphite results in smaller diameters and lighter blanks that are highly sensitive and superb for detecting subtle pickups and strikes, as well as the feel of the fighting antics of different game fish. Disadvantage: brittle; nicks from banging around on a boat can weaken the blank, making it susceptible to breakage under pressure in that area.

NEW-GENERATION COMPOSITE:

These new and powerful rods pack a lot of punch in small-diameter and lightweight designs. They're formulations of both fiberglass and graphite. In short, manufacturers are seeking the toughness and durability of fiberglass combined with the sensitivity and lightness of graphite. As a result, some of these top-quality rods are rated for up to 200-pound lines, yet they are the size of a 15-to 20-pound spinning or baitcasting rod.

"Why Build Your Own Fishing Rod"

Wessman, Bo. "Why Build Your Own Fishing Rod?." Building Your Own Rod (2004): 8-15. Book Collection: Nonfiction. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.

Carbon fiber is the only material that does justice to the work you put into building a fishing rod. Because of its lightness and strength it is ideal to make rod blanks from. The stiffness of the fibers, i.e. their resistance to bending, is measured in psi (pounds per square inch). What this unit means in detail is actually unimportant, and we will not go into it — the figures speak so well for themselves anyway. Modern carbon fiber has a bending resistance of 50-60 million psi. Compare this with the best glass fiber types that reach 6 million psi, and the advantages of carbon fiber will be clear enough.

The 8-10 times greater bending resistance of carbon fiber means that a lot less material is needed to achieve the same strength in a carbon fiber blank as in one of another material. A carbon fiber blank has both thinner walls and a smaller diameter than a similar glass fiber blank, and above all it is lighter. A blank of the "first generation" of carbon fiber, now an obsolete material, weighs approximately two-thirds of what an equivalent glass fiber blank weighs. A comparable split cane blade would weigh at least twice as much. Blanks in modern graphite are even lighter.

The weight of the blank, however, usually some ten or so grams, is seldom of any great importance as far as a "normal fishing rod" is concerned. In really long and heavy-duty rods, such as salmon fly rods, it nevertheless does become a different matter. Because of their length these rods have a large leverage effect, and can be tiring to fish with a whole day. If the material in such a rod is light, then this is naturally an advantage.

A very important factor is that the lightness of the material means that the action of a carbon fiber rod can be made faster, and can be varied within wide limits. The inherent mass of the blank becomes less and influences the action less if carbon fiber is used. We will get to the concept of inherent mass later on.

One disadvantage is that the strength of the fibers means that it is not possible to use too much material in the walls of the blank, they would be too stiff. In other words thin walls, which mean that the blanks become less robust, reduce the resistance to wear and increase the risk of breaking the rod, especially on light blanks.

Carbon fiber is produced from some form of fibrous organic polymer (i.e. a substance with threadlike macromolecules). Cellulose (common wood or paper) or rayon can be used. The quality and characteristics of the carbon fibers produced depend among other things on what the molecules in the initial material look like. If the carbon fiber is to be used for rod blanks there are stringent requirements that the fibers should be straight and uniform. The initial material must therefore be as uniform and pure as possible.

When manufacturing carbon fiber for fishing rod blanks a substance called polyacrylonitrile (abbreviated PAN) is used. The transformation to carbon fiber takes place by stretching the PAN fibers and heating them in three stages with increasing temperatures in different gas mixtures. In the first stage the fibers are changed chemically so that they can resist higher tem peratures. When the temperature is raised further all the other elements except carbon disappear from the fibers, and finally at over 2,500 degrees the positions of the carbon atoms in the fibers are changed so that what is called the graphitestructure is formed. Different types of carbon fibers are achieved by varying the temperature, the gas mixture, and the fiber tension.

Many types of carbon fibers, such as T800 and IM6 etc., are patented products that are available from different chemicals companies, such as DuPont or Union Carbide. They can be bought by anybody and the names themselves have nothing to do with any particular brand of fishing rod, type or action. Both good and bad, fast and slow, rod blanks can be built from the same graphite fibers.

Some newer "graphite designations" are, however, rather more a particular design of fishing rod — a combination of tapering and blank structure, etc. The type of graphite used is for the most part secret, and two different makes of fishing rod could theoretically use exactly the same type of carbon fiber despite the fact that the blanks behave in completely different ways and that there are different designations on the fishing rod labels. The difference lies in completely different aspects, such as how the blank is composed, its tapering, the thickness of the walls, and the different supplementary materials used.

We buyers must in other words not stare ourselves blind at the graphite names. It is wrong to believe that a fishing rod has certain characteristics just because a certain type of carbon fiber is printed on the label. The performance of the fishing rod is determined more by the tapering (the narrowing of the blank) and the thickness of material in the blank, and it is possible to build blanks without the slightest similarity to each other from identically the same type of carbon fiber.

References

Wessman, Bo. "Why Build Your Own Fishing Rod?." Building Your Own Rod (2004): 8-15. Book Collection: Nonfiction. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.

Poveromo, George. "Rod Savvy." Salt Water Sportsman 77.3 (2016): 31-34. SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.

1966 Philadelphia Phillies Season

In 1966, the Philadelphia Phillies had a winning record of 87-75. During the winning season the Phillies also beat two of their biggest rivals , the Pirates and Mets. They had the third highest winning percentage in the national league that year. The Phillies are owned by R. R. M. Carpenter, Jr. and since 1938 the Phillies have played home games in the Connie Mack stadium. While in the off season the Phillies purchased and traded several players. Among the purchased was Mike Marshall from the Detroit Tigers. Players can be added to the team via the Farm system. The primary farm team was the Triple A San Diego Padres and the Double A Macon Peaches. However, no players were added this season from the farm system.