Let's all of us on FM wish David and Eric the very best with their new company and new material.

I've been thinking for some time that a new rod making material was overdue. Now it seems we have it.

I will certainly be one of those who will want to own a Just Cast fly rod.

It certainly seems the way forward, as top grade carbon is becoming very expensive.

Invented by two fishing mad scientists

.....at least they admit they are mad scientists !

And I have already started on building my own carrot sourced rod; drying out the individual lengths and fitting spiggotts. Reckon that twenty or thirty sections should give me a nice 12 ft rod in the end. Wonderful travel rod and a handy snack if caught low on blood sugar on a long sesh..... :-)

Any plans for coarse rods?

Will the price be competative?



Tally ho

Developments like this affect all of us and we should be rejoicing that it is a British innovation.br>
I don't doubt that given time and the economics of scale, this material will be competitive.

Coarse fishing rods I guess will come later. The market for fly rods is umpteen times greater than it is for coarse rods, which tend to be very specialised and localised in demand.

Not only that, the claimed advantages of this material will be appreciated far more by the fly fishing sector of our sport than by the coarse anglers.

And lets face up to realities:

1: Fly fishers generally have more disposable income than coarse fishers.

2: Fly fishing is the fastest growing division of our sport world wide.

Thanks Ron

I was for once making a sensible contribution, don't you think the carp boys would spend a bob or two on a new rods

I will enquire about your first question Jeff.

On the second point: No!

The reason I know that is that I have been involved in the sale of filtration equipment using cellulosic fibres for many years!

I wonder if they will make any poles? the decent poles cost £1000's now, so if they can produce them to a higher standard than carbon, they should be able to sell..........

The action of the rod in the top photo looks a bit soft. Many of us prefer a crisper, tippier tool.

I, too, wish these guys the best of luck.

"Looks a bit soft"

Come on Dave, remove yourself from the typical "Joe Soap" comments. Any material of this nature can be made as soft or as stiff as you require.

I am surprised at your post.

Ian - the future will tell.

Whilst I wish these gentlemen well in their endevour and hope that they have great success with it I feel unable to pass any intelligent comment on the product without having had the the opportunity of first using it when such an opportunity presents I will indeed give it a fair trial and then pass judgement to do otherwise is crass in extremis

I'll be the first to admit I'm hypothsising from to a basis of total ignorance here. But if its the fibourous nature of the carrot that is the reason for their use will other fibourous plant materials be suitable when combined with resin?

Ron old boy

Will this be like a lot of other new produces that come onto the market (any market not just fishing).

Expensive at first - manufacturers needing to recoup the cost of research and set up of production, then a gradual lowering of prices as more people start to make the product so that the manufactures need to stay competitive. Finally as the market is flooded then the price drops and the standard of the product falls.

Tally Ho

Matt,

Various plant sources can be used in the process of the extraction of nanofibres. Carrots happen to be the cheapest and easiest available here, and that's why they are used.

The diameter of a nanofibre by the way is measured in nanometres which are billionths of a metre. Anyone who cannot concieve how small that is should first of all look at the concept of a micron or micrometer which is one millionth of a metre. The smallest particle the human eye can see is about 40 microns in diameter.

One nanometre is equal to one forty thousandth part of the diameter of the smallest particle the human eye can distinguish!

Plant like carrots are made up of vast numbers of fibres, many of them less than 100 nms in diameter.

I have a few technical papers in my possesion, and if anyone wants to know more, I'll hopefully answer any of your questions.

But dont ask daft things.

I'll be the first to admit I'm hypothesizing from to a basis of total ignorance here. But if its the fibrous nature of the carrot that is the reason for their use will other fibrous plant materials be suitable when combined with resin?

No, it's seems mainly to be cost in this instance.

The finer you can extract a fibre the more you will be able to cram or compress more of those fibre into a small space and the stronger in tensile strength those combined fibres will be.

But they do require a bonding agent to stick them together or they will not have resistance to bending, only tensile strength.

Everyone understand?

Ron
Some thought on your praise of this advancement in rod technology. They are not written to be critical of the what these two guy have created but to provoke deeper though.

What they have done, nano fibres found in cellulose form plants is not a new technology, the carrot bit is, but the technology has been around for sometime in other products on the market.

It is the “environmentally friendly” bit I have some misgivings about
Carrots are grown in very sterile environment with lots of chemicals used to aid their growing. Chemicals we know the use of, are degrading the environment including the water environ. Making the arable areas very biodiversity poor.

Lets assume this carrot tech has many uses and takes off in a huge way. Will we see in place of miles and miles of rape field, those replaced with Carrot fields with the associated chemical treatments?
Given that Rape is being used for other processes and the market with biodiesel, bioethonol, etc is forecast to grow considerably in coming years, where is the land for large amounts of carrot growing, going to come from?

Then you have the possibility that such carrots may be genetically modified to produce more cellulose for the nano fibres. GM has not been proven to be an environmentally safe technology so far.

Then there is the resins it’s mixed with, many being Volatile Organic Compounds. Many of the processes used to create them are distinctly environmentally unfriendly as are many of the compounds themselves.

Ron it’s one thing to say a product is Envo friendly, but for it to be so, it must stack up to a full environmental life cycle and history analysis.
Does this new carrot tech do so?
.

Thats exactly what I was wondering. Though probably not in spo much detail.

still don't know why people don't make rods out of buckminster fullerenes.

now that would be a laugh.

" Fly fishers generally have more disposable income than coarse fishers " .
What a load of class crap ,there are a lot of coarse ,carp and pike anglers on FM and other sites who spend top doller on thier gear ,rods and reels for every situation ,running into thousands of pounds ,so please don`t downgrade us Ron just becouse you have your fly fishing hat on .