What are your older (even vintage) fishing rods made of, and what do we use nowadays? In the second blog of our CTS tech series, we’re taking a look at fishing rod blank materials.

The earliest fishing rods were made from bamboo and wood, and in the twentieth century were transformed with modern materials such as fibreglass and carbon fibre. Today, we describe these materials as composites.

Composite materials are, generally speaking, a reinforcement held in a matrix.

Steel reinforcement in a concrete matrix is a familiar example of how strength and durability is achieved via composite construction. A cob house (mud with added straw) is another.

Reinforcement Types

The types of reinforcements typically used in fishing rod blanks are:

• Carbon fibre
• Glass fibre
• Natural fibres such as flax or hemp
• Boron fibre
• Aramid fibre (Kevlar)

Matrix

The most common matrix used in modern fishing rod materials is epoxy.

In earlier predominantly-fibreglass days, vinyl ester resin was used (for cost reasons). Vinyl ester is still commonly used in boat building and also in shower trays and domestic composite products.

In our case, we use carbon and glass fibres as our reinforcements, with epoxy resin as the matrix.

Carbon and glass composites come in rolls, similar to fabrics, and are produced in various forms: woven, uni-directional, stitched and chop-strand.

Uni-directional vs Woven

CTS uses 100% uni-directional carbon fibre in our blank manufacture. We combine this with our carbon helical core (made also from 100% uni-directional carbon fibre) to obtain superior hoop strength. Hoop strength stops the blank from creasing like a drinking straw and it keeps the blank from ‘ovaling’ under pressure (softening and potentially failing).

One of the advantages of composite materials is the ability to combine different reinforcement types within the same material. This can be to aid production and or tweak material performance to the desired objectives.

One of the most common examples of this, in the fishing industry, is the addition of a glass scrim layer, onto a uni-directional carbon layer. Glass scrim can amount to between 15-45% of the total weight of a laminate and when rolled into a fishing rod, the glass scrim creates the hoop strength, while the carbon layers give the rod, its bending (lengthwise) strength. This method of manufacture is employed in over 95% of the world’s blanks.

One thing that sets CTS apart is our carbon helical core. While it would be quicker and more convenient to use a laminate of uni-directional carbon and glass scrim, it does come at the cost of performance. We’ll cover this in more depth in a future blog on Design and Construction.

Storage

Pre-impregnated materials need to be stored at refrigerated temperatures or below. The amount of time they spend out of the fridge/freezer should be monitored in order to ensure that the resin isn’t starting to cure before it is put to use.

Are some materials better than others?

Absolutely. Materials can be inferior if they contain higher than optimal resin content, or contain imperfections due to poor manufacturing environments.

We also don’t just take our suppliers words for it. We have an in-house materials testing laboratory where we constantly test samples from our suppliers – ensuring any new materials live up to our demanding specifications. We’re constantly testing new materials to see where we can gain improvements.

We work closely with our boutique carbon and fibreglass suppliers to source the highest quality materials, and to obtain the optimum fibre types and resin systems to ensure all CTS blanks are at the leading edge in terms of material development.

Our next blog will explore the design and construction process – how we use the best materials to make the best rods.