Hi Tommy,

If you desire, I can talk with you on techniques. My email is accessible.
In a few minutes I will be off to a field to work on my consistency and get in my weekly walk.

I have a 12 foot BWC XH Ugly Stik. Great rod. I was able to cast it 545 feet in the field. What makes it great is being able to leave it in the car and not worry and its durability.

Don Becker

I'll confuse the issue ever farther. Were one to build a casting rod with regard to the spine, it would be up to the customer or builder to decide whether the spine would be on the top or bottom. Assuming it uses a right hand crank reel, which all did at one time, and many still do, the spine would be on the side of the rod during the cast. If being cast properly, the reel handle would be straight up during the cast.

Thanks for your input

It seems everybody will always want to differ, conflict and disagree on this

I will build with the backbone at the back and seek rods built this way as that is what I want

If it makes you happy to spine a rod then do it! It's easy to do, takes less than a minute, and won't hurt a thing. If you believe it improves the rod's performance, even better! Belief is a powerful thing.

Tommy Bee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Am I right that there has been no scientific
> testing done on this subject?
>
> That surprises me in such a supermassive
> participation interest as angling.
>
> Surely a robot could be used to ''cast'' a rod on
> a dead straight axis (also used to pull a blank to
> destruction on a dead straight axis) to thus
> measure durability and casting accuracy, torque
> etc. on both spined and unspined rods?

St Croix does have a machine to test durability and will test a blank until it is destroyed, [www.tackletour.com] it's about midway through the article. They have found the spine makes no difference in the durability of the blank, because of that they build on the straightest axis. It seems as though you have made up your mind and want to spine the blank. More power to you if you want to spine your blank, however you keep asking the same question over and over again until you get the answer that you want to hear. The best way to settle it for yourself is to test and confirm your results. I have done it both ways and have noticed no difference either way, others will argue that I'm wrong and I get it, but don't condemn the way I build a rod because you're of a different mind. I don't build on the spine and have never had a casting or breakage issue because of the spine, car doors and ceiling fans on the other side don't care if a rod is spined or not lol.

Very well stated Mark

Ron Weber