Taper Research #4

I've tweaked the average Payne, Garrison and Young tapers in post #3 to build out taper numbers B6, B8 and B10 in this table. I've smoothed out the stress curves a little and used the same tip on all three tapers. The goal of this step was to extrapolate a standard set of tapers that cover the full range of functional taper designs. I realized that's a generalization. There are tapers in the database that cover every conceivable combination of peaks and valleys in the slope of a functional taper. However, most of them produce stress and deflection trends that fall somewhere within the range covered by these tapers.

Here's a summary of B6, B8 and B10. As in post #3, the tapers are diametrically opposed but all of them should be functional designs. The significant difference between these tapers and the average Payne, Garrison and Young tapers is the tip. I'm not going to include tip variations in the standard tapers. It seems to me that a variety of tip configurations could be used with these tapers depending on how the rod will be used (e.g. heavy tips for longer casts or quick hook sets, or softer tips for short casts and light tippets).

All the other tapers in this chart were built out from B6, B8 and B10. B7 and B9 are the average of B6/B8 and B8/B10 respectively. The 4wt and 6wt standard tapers were extrapolated from B6 through B10. The extrapolation process included changing the rod length using diagonal values and then changing the diameter at all stations by one line weight (about 6% to 8%). This chart illustrates the relationship between the 4wt, 5wt and 6wt versions of B6. The deflection appears to be significantly different...but it's really not. The rods are just different lengths with the same deflection. Note that the EL (effective length % of rod length) of the three tapers is almost identical at 84%, 83% and 83% respectively.

That's it in a nut shell...15 standard tapers that cover the majority of the functional bamboo taper designs based on 444 tapers from the RodDNA database. I could add a different tip design and swelled to each standard taper and create 60 different tapers that would all feel a little different in hand but not stray to far from the standard deflection range. But that's way beyond the scope of this project.

The standard tapers I've posted in this series will be the basis for my rod making from now on. Keep in mind that I didn't design these tapers. This project has been about researching the design characteristics of common tapers, not designing new ones. My next project is to make all five of the 5wt tapers to have around the shop for demo rods. When a friend asks me which type of taper would be right for them, I'll take them out in the yard and let them cast all five rods and then show them the difference on paper. There's no reason why a proficient fly caster should be confused by bamboo taper designs. Bamboo rods don't need to be hyped like composite fly rods. They make a statement of their own on the water when they're properly matched to the fishing conditions and casting style of the fisherman.

By the way, I'd be glad to post a FlexRod summary like the ones above for any tapers someone might want to compare. Just send me a note with the tapers and I'll run them through FlexRod and summarize them for you. If you want to do your own deflection analysis, check out DynaRod by Max Satoh.

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