Tip Research #1

I've been giving some thought to tip design lately. Bill Harms prompted that with a convex taper design discussion on the rod makers list several weeks ago. Bill and Tom Whittle are the authors of "Split & Glued By Vincent C. Marinaro”. They discuss convex taper designs in detail in the book. The book is available at www.wmharmsrods.com.

I've summarized tip designs in general from the list of 444 tapers used in earlier taper research. The tip styles are compared based on average diagonal values with a trend line representing 50% of the length of the rod. A positive diagonal value is convex and a negative value is concave. Of the 444 tapers, 58% of the tips are convex, 12% are straight and 30% are concave.

Butt taper styles are generally the opposite of the tip styles as 62% are concave and 38% are convex. Click on the charts to enlarge them.

Here's an example of two significantly different taper designs from the same maker. I picked them from the taper list at random to illustrate convex and concave taper styles. They're both Heddon #14s.


Here's a sectional view of the two tapers. The 191 tip is only slightly convex. The 190 tip is extremely concave.










All that's interesting, but what I really want to know is how to minimize or eliminate tip bounce. Does it have to be a convex tip to eliminate tip bounce? Or just a "fair"curve of any shape? Tip bounce is being discussed on the rod makers list today. We'll see where that discussion leads.