All You Need To Know - Stick and Waggler Floats

[preston96]

The secrets of the ancients!!

 

[calvin]

Taking all the arithmatic, algebra, geometry, archimedes theory and the theory of relativity into consideration, I still think Jeff did a cracking job with his feature and to be truthful who really cares a float is a tool to aid in catching fish no matter what way you look at it.
Well Done Jeff for your work & insight in letting other know about floats.

George, I've read all through this thread and I don't think anybody is saying that Wolfman Woody's article is no good, they're just discussing the point that seemed to contradict Archimedes' Principle. Isn't that what forum's are for? As for 'who cares?', well, those who have read and participated in this thread for starters!

 

[chris_fox]

I love the article. I want more .............. deep dive into uses and more on history of materials.

I'm a magpie ............... floats and flies love them. I must admit collecting cage feeders haven't grabbed me yet.

 

[Stealph Viper]

I'm a magpie ............... floats and flies love them. I must admit collecting cage feeders haven't grabbed me yet.

The GripMesh Feeders will ........................... :wh

 

[Jeff Woodhouse]

In the case of my test float the balsa provides the buoyancy, and as you say a possible overall shot load of say 8BB or 2 SSG. If changes are made to the materials used in the float then the shot load will change even if the overall volume and shape remains exactly the same. Substitute the nail with a piece of cane and you might have to add another couple of BB.

Sorry, I don't understand, are you now supporting what I was saying? Aren't you, or are you, or what are you saying? Unless you're going to hark back to that LOB about being the same diameter again, or have we killed that one.

Cane, reed and peacock inserts add buoyancy to a float, wire and plastic don't whatever their diameters. Is that it or are you going to contradict taht which you just said again?

The steel nail is much denser than water (could look it up but we know it's several times denser) yet we can successfully shot the float to have an inch of steel above the water despite it being much denser than water.

You can't, it's impossible. As soon as you add sufficient shot to counter the buoyancy of the wood IN ITS ENTIRETY the whole thing sinks until the lowest shot touches bottom and then the remainder of shot and the float will suspend due to the buoyancy of the main body of the float.

(That's the idea of suspension floats used in pike fishing, but I hope I'm not getting out of your depth there.)

In your example with the nail, or let's say fine wire as in a pole float, there has to be a very tiny amount of the buoyancy part touching the surface or the last tiny shot on the deck. You cannot have all the buoyancy part of the float submerged by the shot and just have a bit of wire tip showing because wire won't float. It's one reason the tackle companies sell float grease to add buoyancy to the wire as grease floats, I think, I'm pretty sure it does, or can you prove me wrong on that one?

So, are we still on about diameters now or simple buoyancy?

---------- Post added at 21:16 ---------- Previous post was at 21:04 ----------

So Woody, if you now take your inverted loaded insert waggler and draw out the brass insert until it's the same diameter as the tip, you'll have a float with the same length of tip showing for a given shot load and the same sensitivity (responsiveness to a pull from below) whichever way up you fish it.

Did I have a loaded insert waggler with a brass insert?

Where did that come from? Still, I refer you in part to the answer given to the Honourable Member earlier.

 

[George387]

George, I've read all through this thread and I don't think anybody is saying that Wolfman Woody's article is no good, they're just discussing the point that seemed to contradict Archimedes' Principle. Isn't that what forum's are for? As for 'who cares?', well, those who have read and participated in this thread for starters!

I agree Jack nobody is saying that Jeff's thread is no good but a few seem to be pushing the boundries of discussion a bit close to the edge and trying to wind people up with certain comments & this is how arguements start when people throw dummies.

I fully appreciate some people like delving into the principles of how things float etc and want to get clinical over it but as the thread topic states "All You Need To Know” and not “All There Is To Know”. In other words, it’s not every scrap of knowledge that’s ever been written or is known about a subject, its just enough to help you make a sensible choice from what is currently available.

I believe this thread was aimed at helping young/inexperienced anglers understand the difference between the types of floats, do you honestly think they worry about bouyancy issues, if nothing else its confusing...thats was my point.

 

[ED (The ORIGINAL and REAL one)]

Somebody explained this very well in a magazine a few years ago. They said that it didn't matter what the shape or material of the tip was, the deciding factor was how much buoyancy remained in the float. If there was the equivalent of 1BB shot of buoyancy left in the float after shotting it, it would take 1BB to sink it regardless of tip shape or what it was made of.

He'll correct me if I'm wrong but I think it was Graham who runs this site who wrote the article. By the way, he probably won't remember me but we fished together on a local mere once or twice a good few years ago.

Hmmmmm Jack Beresford .............. Now that name seems to ring a bell in the far distant past

 

[Stealph Viper]

Ed ....................... your Frog Avatar, seems to have evolved, i notice

 

[Xplorer1]

Jack, you're absolutely right. I didn't mean to start an epic debate on Archimedes principle with my (I thought) innocent comment about buoyancy, but I'm a scientist by training and it does irk me when I see mistakes like that. My shortcoming (and not the only one) I'm afraid.

 

[Mark Wintle]

The debate wouldn't be epic if we could get Jeff to grasp something so simple. His attempts to obfuscate simple principles are frustrating yet it is important to get this right. This myth of tip density affecting sensitivity is published in magazines and books several times a year by people who ought to know better.
Neil (Xplorer) has no difficulty understanding this yet Jeff is not even trying (or is very trying!).

Which part of a float is balsa, cane or even steel has no effect on how it behaves when you add more shot only the diameter at the waterline which is where the displacement is happening. Buoyancy as such doesn't exist only displacement. A balsa float with a volume of 1cc weighs less than 1cc of water say about 0.2 grams compared to 1 gram for water therefore the balsa will support another 0.8 grams but if the volume stays the same but we replace part of the float with a piece of steel wire we might find that the float now weighs 0.9 grams therefore the float will now only support 0.1 grams.

Unfortunately for Jeff I have just found the experimental float with the steel and cane tips and will photograph it a bit later so that he can see steel floating! That's without the aid of bristle grease which is used (surprise, surprise) to increase the diameter of the bristle and therefore affects its sensitivity.

 

[Alan Tyler]

As soon as you grease the bristle it reacts differently with the surface film of the water, and you open a whole new can o'worms about wetability, surface tension, meniscuses (or whatever the plural of meniscus may be) AS WELL as the straightforward modification to the diameter of the bristle... this could run and run.

Mark, Neil and Archimedes are right, b.t.w.

The real reasons for using as un-dense a material for float tips are stability in the water and "flighting" when cast.
A u-boat with one cubic centimetre of steel mast above the surface and a balsa float cocked to leave one c.c. of its tip above the surface will both need exactly the same force to sink them - that needed to displace one c.c. of water.

Once my Physics teacher had dunned that into me, I made some antenna floats with small, quill bodies and long, bamboo antennae, with which to take many captives among the roach of Perivale... fat chance; the long, needle thin antennae clung so fiercely to the surface film that they could not be induced to cock!
Exit, red-faced, to mocking salutes from the roach.
Ain't float-making fun?

 

[ED (The ORIGINAL and REAL one)]

You know what will happen to Woody when it finally sinks in that Archimedes was right................

He'll end up running down Marlow High Street naked in a barrel shouting EUREKA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KA !!!!!!

...........and it will be all Mr Winkle's fault!!!

 

[Jeff Woodhouse]

A balsa float with a volume of 1cc weighs less than 1cc of water say about 0.2 grams compared to 1 gram for water therefore the balsa will support another 0.8 grams but if the volume stays the same but we replace part of the float with a piece of steel wire we might find that the float now weighs 0.9 grams therefore the float will now only support 0.1 grams.

So let me get this absolutely right...... that means - it's more sensitive to bites, right?

Come on, it has to be hasn't it?


From my article (excuse the wording which obviously must be confusing) - "The insert waggler is very much like the straight waggler with the exception that the indication part, the bit that sticks above the water, is of a thinner and possibly different material. Being thinner there is less resistance to it floating making bite indication more positive, but at the same time more difficult to see at range. In some floats, particularly plastic ones, the insert part is solid plastic and even less buoyant so therefore even more sensitive"

Is that not the same using other words, maybe not as complicated.

I know you believe you understand what you think it was that I wrote, but I am not sure you realize that what you read is not what I meant. Is that clear?

I do believe, Mark, that you have gone deliberately out of your way to belittle my article although why I do not understand except to prove how clever you are. Forget all about Archimedes for a moment and I can only work on past practical experiences of shotting floats with cane, reed, carbon, plastic, and wire antennas of whatever thicknesses. All I know is that it is easier to shot lighter materials than heavier (or denser) ones, but that the latter do show bites better making them IMO more sensitive. That is all I was trying to say before you started off.

Or when you shot a float, do you take a calculator with you?

 

[Mark Wintle]

No it's not more sensitive to bites but it will behave differently.

I'm not trying to belittle your article but perhaps the wording is ambiguous when you mention the insert being less buoyant. I know what you mean about some floats being harder to shot up but this is because when you halve the diameter of an insert it becomes 4 times more sensitive and when you get very fine tips like pole floats (especially the pole floats of old when they fished much shorter poles) it can seem nearly impossible when trying to use no. 13 shot.

 

[Alan Tyler]

"...when you get very fine tips like pole floats (especially the pole floats of old when they fished much shorter poles)"

So that's why I can't see the beggars - 1960s pole floats with pins or monofil tips - thought my eyes were going!

 

[Xplorer1]

A u-boat with one cubic centimetre of steel mast above the surface and a balsa float cocked to leave one c.c. of its tip above the surface will both need exactly the same force to sink them - that needed to displace one c.c. of water.

Alan - extending ideas and theories to extremes is always a good idea of testing them, and the submarine's a great example: it's huge, and (like our insert waggler) a composite of dense (steel) and light (air) material. I was going to cite a seamine (those big round ones with antennae you see at resorts turned into collecting boxes for the Life Boat service) as an example: the sub's even better.

 

[Jeff Woodhouse]

but perhaps the wording is ambiguous

Well, sod it. I give up, but when it comes to being ambiguous in some areas, Mark, you take the biscuit. I write these things so the ordinary person WITHOUT a science degree can try and understand them. They were never intend for you anyway, but if you think that's being ambuguous, I dread to think what these books of yours read like.
I don't suppose you've heard of the word "generalisation" have you? Bit beyond your conception I expect.

 

[Graham Marsden]

I hope his books are OK, or that's two of us who are cr*p.

But may as well use the opportunity to get a plug in:

Here's 'Pole Fishing - A Complete Guide' and our latest effort published a couple of weeks ago:

'Practical Carp Fishing'

 

[ED (The ORIGINAL and REAL one)]

(COPIED FROM BAITBOX)


Roll Up !! Roll Up !! Tickets available soon .........
TICKETS AVAILABLE SOON FOR :


~~~~~~~~~~ ROUND 2 ~~~~~~~~~~

............. of a fascinating battle of theories and principles.............

----------------------------- BETWEEN ------------------------


-----(The ever bouyant) PROFESSOR WINKLE-----

---------------------AND-------------------

-----(The unsinkable) ARCHIE WOODLOUSE-----


#########NOT TO BE MISSED#########

 

[Xplorer1]

Copied from Baitbox

Archie's sunk before the first bell. I'll stick my money on the Prof, he's no loafer, knows his onions and my antenna tells me science always wins. He'll Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. I'll be loaded after the knockout
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