Recoils or not Recoils?

[Bernd]

On my 6wt. Streamdance HLS which I used a hell lot on grass during the past 5 years I have titanium SIC (Fuji) single foot rings. Since they are wrapped single foot itis not much of extra weight. I like the performance of that rod very much. Rings don't show the slightest wear after years and thousands of hours on grass. The shooting abilty of the SIC rings is excellent. I have compared my max carry with different rings. SIC were very good here always! Seems to have low friction. This works especially well when being wet or when having line dressing on the line (again compared with other rings this is).

Yet I don't know why some of us do not wear out rings on grass! I easily do for whatever reason.

[Bloke]

Mick,

A) I have only broken the very thin ones (I will not use them anymore, but will put thicker ones on instead if decide to use that much money). With that wire gauge, all of them would have been broken a lot earlier! Btw, I managed to break two thick gauge chromed stainless steel snakes this summer (I don't know what happened, they just popped).

B) On some that seems to happen, I haven't seen a sign of wear. This really puzzles me. I don't wear lines fast either.

C) Energy from the blank is pretty low normally (unless you are casting a super soft rod with lighting fast stroke). And the rod bends anyway, so a maybe 1mm deflection is no issue.

D) No sound on mine if not thin wire single foot. Silent when wet, thus silent when fishing.

E) Agree, but way less than the horrible lined titanium ones.

Minimas look horrible, but might be ok if they're light enough (20-30% lighter compared to normal lined SS guides won't cut it) in decent sizes. And they don't mention what grade of steel they use. Stainless rusts, so unless acid prood, they can rust on warm water SW rods.

Three months use!


You might think Minimas look horrible but my clients certainly do not and its my clients I listen to!

[_Ré]

Yes, this is one of the probably 4 pictures on the internet you can find of grooved recoils. I am absolutely sure that if I add the time I fished my 7wt NRX with black recoils that would be more than 90x8 hours, so 3 months every day for a long time. My usual fishing is overhead casts to 25-27 meters, strip the line to my feet and repeating this sequence the whole day long.
Even the black coating was perfect on the guides when I sold that rod to a friend.

[Paul Arden]

I fitted SICs to an XP5 once, it absolutely killed the rod. And "felt" one line weight softer. Quite a remarkable difference.

[Ben_D]

XP 590 is a minger anyway Paul so I'll disregard that thanks

[Paul Arden]

XP590 was a fantastic rod, at its time I reckon it was easily the best 5 weight and it still feels wonderful. I personally still prefer it to the Z-axis.

[Bloke]

Having done a stock take recently I came across three REC recoil stripping guides....size 10, 12 and 16 along with 7 x size 6 recoil RSFX size 6.
I will accept any reasonable offer as they are no use to me.
Otherwise I will chuck them in the rubbish where they belong.
Mick

[Ben_D]

I personally still prefer it to the Z-axis.

Didn't like the Z Axis in that particular configuration either really, ZXL 590 is a sweet rod though and the SLT690 makes a nice #5 rod.

Cheers

Ben

[Haggisboy]

I never liked the ZAxis (5) when it first came out, but it is now my go to dry fly rod. It was never really an upgrade from the XP in performance, it seems more of a faster SLT.

[_Ré]

It is very interesting that those who use rods with Recoils like them, most of the negative feedback comes from anglers who either have heard from someone that they suck or only had a couple of casts with them.

[Ben_D]

It is very interesting that those who use rods with Recoils like them, most of the negative feedback comes from anglers who either have heard from someone that they suck or only had a couple of casts with them.

I mainly fish Helios which are factory built with Recoils and had my custom TCR built with them too. I've had my TCR re ringed twice, this mainly got cast along the tape. Helios 905 (go to trout rod) re ringed twice. Helios 966, sea trout, grilse & streamer rod has been re ringed 3 times.

I'm really not convinced by their durability!


Cheers

Ben

[Bloke]

It is very interesting that those who use rods with Recoils like them, most of the negative feedback comes from anglers who either have heard from someone that they suck or only had a couple of casts with them.

I used to build rods with them.....does that count? Interestingly no body seems interested in buying my excess stock...either here or on ebay.
Actions speak louder than words methink!
Personally I dont really give a shit whether they are marginally better or worse than other guides, what really "did it" for me was having to spend a week in a boat fishing the Alta with a guy who fished a GLoomis fitted with them....by day three both the guides and I were ready to throw the guy overboard because of the ridiculous bloody noise they made....it drove us NUTS!
From a professional standpoint and as any rod builder will tell you they are by far the worst guides to work with as each foot has to be dressed as they are not cut with a progressive taper and most of the feet have been cut at an angle and not finished square...marry that with the fact that the material is almost impervious to most Dremmel stone attachments and destroys them after a couple of minutes grinding and you are not in very comfortable territory.
But the noise....I can still hear it now, nine years on! like Chinese water torture but much, much worse.

[_Ré]

I said most. Ben, you seem to be the exception. Although I still think that there must be some other factors too. There must be a logical explanation why most don't wear them out and some do.

I consider myself as a rod builder too and I don't think they are finished worse then any other guide.

If they destroy the Dremmel stones they can't be so fragile and soft, can they?

We just finished a 3 hour casting video with Paul. On the countless hours of casting we spent a lot of time on grass. I have 1 single shot where the noise can be heard.

[Paul Arden]

The noise comes from the stripping guides, not the single legs. I think everyone would agree I'm hard on gear - I have very few rods older than one year, and have broken numerous in less than 15 minutes. Flylines destroy themselves sometimes in one weekend, at best 4-6 months, only water and no algae, usually 6 weeks of fishing.

SiCs I can't wear out, but they kill the rod (at least low swing weight, fast action, light tipped rods). H&H changes the tip response compared to recoils. I haven't grooved recoils yet. In fact I've only ever grooved tip rings (and the epoxy on the blank below the stripping guide). We don't use recoil tip rings - they look a bit ugly!

Mick once ringed a TCR5 as an experiment for Magnus, to see if anyone could pick the rod as being a great casting tool. We cast it and didn't like it, and it wasn't a great casting tool because the rings changed the action - the tip bounced, only because of the rings.

Pac Bay I thought was the least durable of the four. SiCs the most durable. I don't know the weight or durability of the rings in question, Mick. We'll try them out. Thanks!

Cheers, Paul

[sms]

Just took my 25x magnification tool (that is used to visually inspect holes that dye penetrant testing exposes) and checked a few guides.

I was able to find wear on the recoil tip ring of my comp/training/fishing rod Five Rivers FT905-4. Nothing to worry about yet thou. I didn't find anything on rest of the guides. This is almost eight years old rod now.

Checked my real singer too, an old Loomis 15' GLX with Tich single foot guides. No wear except for there doesn't seem to be coating on the chrome anymore.

Checked my #16 CTS with recoil snakes. I've fought yellow fin tunas and some serious gsp abrasion. No wear.

Also looked some other chromed guides.

Btw, you don't want to look see your guides at this magnification. They're full of scratches. And those scratches seemed worse on chromed ones than on recoils.

I build most of my rods (14 of them I've built), haven't had trouble with Recoils. Normal file works, you just need a bit of patience.