Hi folks , i searched before posting this and nothing really helped in explaining how to correct this. With the stainless there's no problem they are easily bent into position if the guide feet don't sit flat but i'm nervous about trying to bend these titanium frames since i read they can snap off. It's just the back foot of the guides that are raised a bit upward the front guide foot sits perfectly flat .

Anyone have a similar experience with these Fuji K double foot's and what did you do about it ?

Thank you

Get them as close as you can. Then lock a non-tapered chainsaw file in your vise and run the feet across it until you have a nice mating surface to the rod blank.

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Thanks for your response Tom , i take it that this is not something that i am just experiencing and maybe some others have noticed the back foot doesn't sit as flat on the blank as the front foot does , and am i correct in thinking that i should avoid attempting to bend titanium frames like the stainless frames ? Last question is about a non tapered chainsaw file , is that something that is used to shape the very bottom of the feet into more of a concave shape ?

Thanks again

Are the frames of FUGI K guides 100% titanium metal, 100% alloy of titanium , or an unknown base metal electro-plated with some form of titanium? It's like the difference in malleability between a gold ring, a 15% gold-alloy ring, and a gold-colored ring. It may be possible to safely bend these guide feet and re-align them?

Well Fuji lists them as titanium , it doesn't say anything else just titanium . They're very expensive

I would bet K guide frames are not solid, unalloyed titanium, and I am certain they are relatively expensive - and they may well break easily. There is precious little solid, objective fact in labeling and advertisement for fishing tackle. "Titanium" is one of those vague but important-sounding words so dear to advertisers of fishing tackle - and consumer goods in general.

Jim Ising should know .

I would be VERY surprised if any "titanium" guide is not an alloy. The only Fuji two-footed titanium guides I've used are the RV's and I've never seen the need to bend them. From my experience we have a very wide spectrum of titanium physical characteristics on the market, all called "titanium," or "titanium alloy." As stated, highly likely all are an alloy. One maker's guides are very soft, easily bent, and take only a couple of cycles to fail. They are so fragile that I will not use them after my experiences with them. The two other makers' titanium guides with which I have experience, are much harder to bend, but can be bent at least a few cycles without failure. Fuji is not the maker of the fragile guides.

Thanks for the comments Mike , after looking over these titanium K guides it looks like EVERY SINGLE GUIDE size in the double foot titanium is bent exactly alike on the back foot and only the very end of the foot (approx 1 mm) sits flat on the blank , the foot raises up and makes no contact going in the other direction .

You have to tape it down to keep it down .

I would follow Tom's suggestion
But if they are titanium and contain an alloy you will be hard pressed to file them as titanium doesn't machine well with standard tools they use specialty ceramic cutting tools.
the alloy content is the key factor with using it for guide frames or they would cost a whole lot more than they do if they were just titanium as they would have to be machined not stamped out

The best day to be alive is always tomorrow !!
Think out side the box when all else fails !!!
Wi.

Matthew Paul Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would follow Tom's suggestion
> But if they are titanium and contain an alloy you
> will be hard pressed to file them as titanium
> doesn't machine well with standard tools they use
> specialty ceramic cutting tools.
> the alloy content is the key factor with using it
> for guide frames or they would cost a whole lot
> more than they do if they were just titanium as
> they would have to be machined not stamped out



I was trying to confirm that what Tom was saying was to try and contour the very bottom of the foot to get it close to concave but he never responded back.

It seems to me that if the contact error is anything but very small, filing the feet would remove a LOT of metal in order to get really good contact. I would be very surprised if one careful bending of a Fuji titanium guide will hurt it. A few years ago I had to bend a Y series Fuji titanium a number of times and it survived. Since you have many guides with the same problem, I think, based on my experience, that I would simply carefully bend them into compliance. And inform jim Ising of your experience. Seems like it's worth a try.

The Fuji guides are a 100%Titanium alloy, of which there are many different grades, and I do not know which titanium grade (alloy) is used by Fuji. Most titanium alloys contain about 90% titanium with the rest being various other elements in specific amounts which gives each grade specific properties. An exception would be a Nickel Titanium alloy, also known as nitinol, which is about 50% nickel and 50% titanium and is used to make the REC recoil guides. Nitinol is a shape memory alloy. The Fuji guides are not nitinol but rest assured they are not a titanium coated steel, they are the real thing! If I have a guide that is not perfectly flat I gently press it against a hard flat surface. This is generally enough to put the feet on the same plane.
Norm

I think you're right Mike , will have to give it a try . Norm , i also have done the same with bending the foot to fit the blank with stainless guides but not titanium , will have to try it though .

OK , i got the guts up and used overwhelming force even though overwhelming force was not necessary. The foot actually bent and it started to spring back at first which stainless frames never do but this titanium clearly has more spring to it and the bottom line is i finally got it to lay flat on the blank .

Thanks for all the ideas and help folks.





PS- Remember the key is to use overwhelming force even if a delicate touch is all thats needed .

Don't overthink it.

If the end of a foot is bent up, then just bend it down so that it sits flat on the guide. The guide won't break.

But, if the guide does break, it was a defective guide and needed to be tossed anyway.

After I dress my guide feet to the taper that I wish, I have a flat Arkansas stone next to my prep bench that I use on the bottom of the guide foot to insure that there are no debris, sharpies hanging down and that the bottom of the guide foot is perfectly flat.

A couple of stroked on the stone is normally all that is required to be sure that the guide foot underside or bottom is free of debris and perfectly flat, after bending down anything that is obviously bent up.

I basically took a needle nose plier and cut the end of the nose off so that I have a nice uniformly wide pair of pliers with gripping teeth across each jaw to take care of any of these bending chores.

But, also linesman's pliers also do a perfect job with this task with no added work on your part.


For example:

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Yes, I do frequently find that the feet on double foot guides are not completely bent properly, so need a tweak now and then. But, the pliers do it easily, quickly and with no fuss or bother.

Good luck

I almost exclusively use titanium framed guides because I build mostly nearshore saltwater type rods. I have mostly bent the longer spinning rod guides and have bent them back in place without any issue. I have also have bent a few shorter "L" and "KT" guides and bent them back without issue. I have not had a rod come back with a guide that was broken because of this. I have replaced guides where the frame was mechanically damaged by getting stepped on or the ceramic ring popped out.

I am not a metallurgist but in my line work I have to know materials and assess their integrity. There are many grades of titanium with ASME Grades 1 through 4 being unalloyed after that Grades 5 through 25 have some other elements added to them, with aluminum in most of the grades and then other things like vanadium, nickel, palladium, molybdenum, etc. All Grades have a small amount of iron, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Also the malleability and elasticity will have an effect on the material depending on the heat treating that it received. I do have access to instruments that can measure the different amounts of elements in a material. This is called PMI or Positive Material Identification. I need a somewhat large sample of the material because the PMI instrument has a large analysis window compared to a rod guide so I am thinking a large spinning guide will work. I can also measure the hardness of it with a Brinell hardness tester. I will post the results when I get it done sometime after the New Year when I return to work after the holidays.

Lance , thats some technical stuff there , i suppose some people wouldn't mind the hardness tests info so by all means but it's not necessary . Roger , the bottoms of the Fuji feet are very smooth as is , don't think it's possible to get them any smoother . Don't most people just grind the top of the foot to smooth out the top angle on the edge so the thread climbs up easier ?

I tend to leave the very smooth bottom of the foot alone .

I don't grind anything unless it's necessary, but yes, it is often an improvement to cross-sand the foot tops to get the thread to climb easier. I check the bottoms as I have (rarely) found a little burr there. It all depends on the guide.

Herb,
You are correct about the underside of the guide feet.
However, when I prep a guide foot, I use a belt sander sanding down the top of the foot to thin the ends of the foot. I like to have the very end of the foot very thin to expedite both the appearance of the final wrap as to ease the thread application.
Since I do thin the guide foot, there are sometimes some shads of metal that have been forced under the edge of the foot and I like to be sure that these shads of metal have been removed before using the guide foot.

Hence, the use of the stone = making a couple of light passes on the stone after final guide foot prep to insure that there is nothing extending below the thin edge of the foot that could scratch the finish on the rod when wrapping the guide foot.

Good luck