I posted this on Ifish yesterday and it seemed to draw some interest and was asked to post it here as well. Hope it is educational.


Been a fair amount of of broken rod talk lately so I thought I'd give some perspective as one who's job is making graphite fishing rod blanks.

The material:
Graphite as used in rod making is strands of material, individual strings layed out across a paper backing in a linier fashion. Added to these thousands of strings is a fiberglass mesh known as scrim. This adds toughness and stability. added to that are thrmoplastic resins that bond all the materials together when molded. graphite in this configuration has all it's strength along it's length. it has NO strength across it's grain.

The process
The graphite is ordered to the manufacturers specs and cut into patterns. The patterns are then ironed onto a tapered steel shaft called a mandrel,then they are rolled onto the mandrel. if the parts are not rolled perfectly straight or pull loose from the mandrle the material will be twisted and because graphite has no strength across the grain the part is very likely to break. we call this a "broken tack".
The part is then wrapped with plastic tape and baked in an oven. after the baking process the mandrel is removed and you have a fihished peice ( after being trimmed)

Graphite breaks under compression. It does not break from being streatched. so when a rod that has a bend in it breaks it always breaks on the inside of the curve, as that is the part being compressed. This is what happens whn a rod explodes. The break will usually have lots of fibers. These kinds of breaks usually indicate that the angler was the cause of the break by putting to much heat on a fish or snag.

If a rod gets struck by an object and breaks it's because again the graphite has no strength across the grain. Thes breaks are usually pretty clean, not always straight across but just a clean break not many fibers. However a rod can get struck and then break later as a result such breaks will have a clean side where the impact was and a very fibery break on the opposite side.

If a rod breaks while casting ( fly rods usually) and there was no aparent damage before it's likely to have been a broken tack that didn't get caught by the manufacturer ( very rare)
Another common break is breakage on the male end of a ferrule. This happens when the parts of the rod are not properly seated together. If the parts fit loosly it creates pressure pointsin both ends of the ferrule instead of even pressure through the ferrule. Because the female end of the ferrule is reinforced with an additional piece of graphite it is the pressure point on the male end that causes the breakage. these breaks are usually clean like and impact break.


Now I wanna say this as nicely as I can because I am not trying to offend anyone but with how I see people treat their rods when I am out fishing I constantly marvel an the engineering involved in the making of rods. In general the anglers I see, particularly with salmon, put WAY too much pressure on fish and snags both and commonly use mono or braid that is too heavy for their rod.