Fishing The Fly Scotland Forum

charrcatcher

What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« on: 17/02/2008 at 08:15 »
Hi all.

I heard about this a wee while ago and initially thought it was a total wind-up. Then a bit later on another mention of it surfaced, and the wind-up notion dispersed a bit.

See http://www.justcast.co.uk/ for these things - rods made from carrot fibres.

The promotion pix of the rods look like they're finished to the sort of standard that everyone expects nowadays, but the prices are pretty steep.  Steep to me, anyway - but then I've never understood the huge prices of US fly rods, either.

So there's apparently new fibres available on the market that originate from carrots... and they've made them into a sort of Carrot Reinforced Plastic, or CRP (!) and now the resulting rods are buyable for prices starting at £325, for a 7.5ft brook shortie.

The basics of making a rod from vegetables seems so, well, wrong that it's sort of easy to forget that I already have several "vegetable" rods - a Rudge, and several Sharpes, to be exact - the split cane ones, split cane only being a sort of superstiff very long grass, after all. Yet they don't seem wrong at all...

Go figure.

Ian
CC

Sandy Nelson

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #1 on: 17/02/2008 at 09:13 »

The basics of making a rod from vegetables seems so, well, wrong that it's sort of easy to forget that I already have several "vegetable" rods - a Rudge, and several Sharpes, to be exact - the split cane ones, split cane only being a sort of superstiff very long grass, after all. Yet they don't seem wrong at all...


Would have to argue that one i'm afraid :roll, Split cane is made from a grass , yes, but the grass grows very tall 10ft plus and spend its life bending in the wind, so nature designed it to be flexible like a fishing rod,(if it was super stiff it would snap) fundamentally the bamboo has long stiff fibres on the outside for power, an enamel coating for protection and a soft shock absorbing core.(funny how much it sounds like any other composite material)
A carrot on the other hand lives in the ground and is about 8" long, spot the difference.

The justcast rods are Crap, both in build quality and the design of the action, if they had taken the time to come up with a modern style quick light rod and then get them built at least half decent then they might stand a chance of getting somewhere, but the action are reminiscient of the very first carbon rods, before people knew how to make the stuff work, as the material is basically a mix of mushed carrot fibres and carbon you would expect people with a degree of nouse as regards the modulus of the material would be able to produce a blank that took this into consideration :z6
Its a pity because i thought the idea would be pretty good when i first saw it, unfortunatley having had the chance to play with one i was bitterly dissapointed. Slow, dull, heavy and built by a 4 year old :z6
I think the person behind it came up with a great idea, a potentially great product, some great marketing but failed to remember he was supposed to be designing a fishing rod :roll

Sandy

Iain Goolager

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #2 on: 17/02/2008 at 09:34 »
So would you make a 7 1/2' 2wt rod out of baby carrots? ???

I wish I'd stuck in at school

charrcatcher

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #3 on: 17/02/2008 at 10:40 »
Well if bamboo was rigid, it'd snap; but I've never seen green bamboo as it grows, so can only say the seasoned tonkin poles I've seen here in the UK were pretty stiff!

I'm not a regular reader of the usual fishing magazines any more so wasn't aware if tests had been published on these rods. Have they? Seems a bit strange that after all the presumably big budget R&D it's taken to get the material up to the stage of making rods with it that they didn't  engage some good designers.
It'd have been great to find they were good kit - the idea of Scotland producing a potential market leader was very  :z18 attractive.

With modern resins needing god knows how many thousands of pounds of pressure and high temperatures to cure properly, maybe they've had to abandon current resin practice to avoid cooking the carrots?

They could have picked a better name too, surely.

Oh well.



Stuart at Artloch

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #4 on: 18/02/2008 at 10:40 »
I have some knowledge of these rods and the only carrot rods produced have been prototypes.  They have used these prototypes to get some market reaction.  Based on this, they are currently working on a small range of rods which I believe will be the lightest on the market, due for release later this year.

There is a plan to give these rods extensive magazine reviews and have them thoroughly tested both by "experts" and guys like me.  I understand they will be totally unlike their predecessors, both in action and finish.


Sandy Nelson

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #5 on: 19/02/2008 at 06:53 »
Great news, fingers crossed they get it right.

Lightest on the market, will be interesting to see this, could be very hard to achieve.
Sage make the lightest blanks, but the Helios is something else as regards physical weight.

I look forward to getting to play in the future

Sandy

Rob Brownfield

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #6 on: 19/02/2008 at 08:36 »
I have to say that I really do not see the point. The rods are the same price as many others on the market (according to the reviews) and therefore do not seem to offer any advantage. I have not picked one up, but I have read several times now that they were no lighter than a cheap carbon composite rod and that they had an inferior action.

Now, having worked a little with a UK blank maker, any prototype rod he has sent me for an opinion has been spot on and very well finished. If you are trying to market something new, it has to be significantly better than the compitition, and I just feel these "carrots" are a bit of a vegtable ;)

Hamish Young

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #7 on: 19/02/2008 at 08:38 »
I wonder - would those new lightweight rods be classified as 'shaved carrot' rods :?

I'll get my coat  :z4

Mike Barrio

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #8 on: 19/02/2008 at 08:42 »
Maybe they could try neeps?

Mike :z13

Jim Eddie

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #9 on: 19/02/2008 at 11:14 »
Or maybe they could get neeps to try them  :z4

 :z18

Jim

Tam Greenock

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #10 on: 19/02/2008 at 11:26 »
Now the company has hooked up with Sharpes it will interesting to see what happens in the future.

Rob Brownfield

Re: What's up doc, Carrots and Rods?
« Reply #11 on: 19/02/2008 at 12:43 »
I thought Sharpes were having problems..I know they moved to Burntisland so now have no ties with the Northeast. They lost there distributors, the website has not been touched in months and on it it says the "carrot" rods will be available in 2007  :?.

 




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