litest blank

[spoonplugger1]

Team, You have quite few untruths in your post. Respectfully, when the difference between a SS guide and a Ti version is so small a postal scale requires 20 of each to reliably measure the difference, will anyone ever notice the difference on a rod build? We're talking parts of a grain. Ti guide material, which by the way is not pure Ti, pure Ti would never allow the forming done to make a guide. The supposed Ti REC guides aren't pure Ti either, it's nickel titanium, notice what comes first, it is a memory metal like spring steel and formed the same way. Ti/ceramic guides are not the same material, it can't be bent and return like REC guide. The simplest description of Ti is a metal with similar toughness of steel, but much closer in weight to aluminum. Back in my racing days we used and made a lot of Ti parts, there were a bunch of places where Ti could not be used, it wouldn't take the stress, or work cycle without failure.

[teamfirstcast]

Originally Posted by spoonplugger1

Team, You have quite few untruths in your post. Respectfully, when the difference between a SS guide and a Ti version is so small a postal scale requires 20 of each to reliably measure the difference, will anyone ever notice the difference on a rod build? We're talking parts of a grain. Ti guide material, which by the way is not pure Ti, pure Ti would never allow the forming done to make a guide. The supposed Ti REC guides aren't pure Ti either, it's nickel titanium, notice what comes first, it is a memory metal like spring steel and formed the same way. Ti/ceramic guides are not the same material, it can't be bent and return like REC guide. The simplest description of Ti is a metal with similar toughness of steel, but much closer in weight to aluminum. Back in my racing days we used and made a lot of Ti parts, there were a bunch of places where Ti could not be used, it wouldn't take the stress, or work cycle without failure.

Spoon, first please list ANY and all of the untruths in my posts. Second, no one is using a postal scale to measure the weight of these guides (lol). Yes, they are very light - I said that... matter of fact titanium is approx half the weight of any stainless steel or nickel, And yes, I'm very aware of the material used to make Recoil guides, mostly nickel which gives them their great corrosion resistance. We aint making race cars, just fishing poles, practically no stress on a guide on a standard inshore casting or spinning rod. Titanium has the highest strength to weight ratio of any metal, just as strong as steel/steel alloys, at half the weight.

The OP asked about the lightest blank, and building a balanced rod. I listed real world examples i have used and built many times. I hope he was able to get some good information from this thread.