Split Cane Flyrod Calculation and
Design, The Woxnan Series and other rods.
Designing flyrods in Split Cane is an art. Or science. However,
it doesn't matter, it is still the same. It is my belief that a good
taper isn't only a matter of calculation. Garrison e. g. did a lot
of taper calculations but there were years of rod design, trial and
error, as well. Finally, after numerous of experiments and testing,
he become an experienced rod designer and ended up with tapers of
his own taste. Garrisons method of taper calculation was only one
design tool that resulted in his famous tapers.
In the last couple of years more scientific works in rod taper
calculation and the dynamics of fly casting have been published.
None of these however, can offer a method in calculating an
arbitrary characteristic of a fly rod. Here the flyrod designer
personally must intervene and add his own skill and experience to
the calculations in order to end up with the taper aimed for.
When I designed the Woxnan Series some ten years ago, I did
rather extensive calculations with different types of stress curves.
For this purpose I developed an own computer program. I examined
even tapers from famous rods and calculated the corresponding stress
curves "backwards". The result surprised me in many cases. I
calculated stress curves considerably different in character.
Surprisingly were some of these utterly irregular and discontinuous.
(Discontinuous stress curves would end up in more or less irregular
rod action in my opinion). My intuition says that a good rod should
have a harmonic and continuos action regardless of your taste for
different kind of actions, tip action or but action and so on. Thus
I aimed for a rod design with a continuos (n. b. not constant!)
stress distribution along the whole length of the rod.
The Woxnan Series and Garrisons tapers have some similar
characteristics in common. However, since I prefer longer rods the
Woxnan rods are somewhat longer in each class respectively.
Try to build a Woxnan Rod next time. If you like these tapers,
let me know!
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