Crist Polespears

[robertonator]

I'm ready to drop the technology and head back a ways and switch back to a polespear. I'm pretty much decided on Aaaron Crist's rigs, but have a few questions first.
I'm pretty sure i read that the shaft itself can be any length up to 42"? If so, what is the relative weight between the steel shaft and the (aluminum?) spear material? Basically..42" of steel shaft to 42" of spear??
And what would be the weight of say, an 8 footer with 18" shaft, without tip? Any help would be awesome, even if you end up pulling it out of your ass-thats more than I can do right now.
Thanks alot,
Rob

[a.s.alvarez]

I would ask Ocean Ed, he is the polespear "Man". I have PM him in the past and he is very helpful.

[SnpperWhisperer]

1.6 kg (3.5 lb) for the 8 ft spear with the 18 inch tip section (but with no sliptip on it). (It just happens to be in my car as I am going away for the weekend with it!).

[azspearo]

Rob, I can help you out...maybe. I can custom make the shaft up to 42" as some divers have wanted them that long.
I would steer away from a shaft this long as it will bend easily with all that leverage sticking out the end of the pole.
If your going with a slip tip that is attached directly to a float a 42" shaft would help those divers that are going after fish that don't let them get close.
And then you would want this on a longer spear then the 42" spear you mentioned, more like an 8' or 9' spear.
Most users are going with the 2-piece 8' and 3-piece 9' spears when going after bigger or more elusive fish in open water. shafts have averaged between 18"-21" flopped or threaded.
The "Hole Pole"(4') and the 6' spear are used more for stay put reef fish and fish that stay tight to the reef and are found in caves and crevices and can be spear from a close distance.
The 8' spear is a tad under 4lbs with an 18" shaft, wrap and rubber sling.
All of the measurements on my spears are the length of the pole minus the shaft.
So an 8' spear with 18" shaft is 9'6".

For the last 6 months I have been having a sale on my spears and of today they have gone back up to regular price. Don't worry... if your interested I will still give you the sale price and those that have been in contact with me lately.
I've had interest from dive shops that want to carry my spears and I need to have an MSRP to continue selling on-line and through the board.
In the past all the spears were made by me on my manual lathe and mill. This will be too time consuming to keep up with dive shop orders.
I have started jobbing out some of my parts to a machine shop(CNC)to free up my time in developing new products.
The shafts and spears will still be made and assembled by me and whoever happens to be hanging out in my shop at the time;)
I will be coming out with a slip-tip and other goodies this Summer and hopefully a new website.
Thanks to all for the kind words and support I have had here on the Board in the last year.

[azspearo]

I have a calibrated scale at work and I will get an exact weight on my spear tomorrow.

[robertonator]

If your going with a slip tip that is attached directly to a float a 42" shaft would help those divers that are going after fish that don't let them get close.
And then you would want this on a longer spear then the 42" spear you mentioned, more like an 8' or 9' spear.


haha sorry about that, I know Im looking at something in the 8-10' range. I think I meant 42" shaft sorry-I've been a gun guy for a while I'm not too hip on the lingo for poles :stupid:


Don't worry about getting an exact weight, I appreciate it though. Is the steel shaft material heavier than the spear material? Or the other way around?
Target species would be more elusive fish that won't let me get too close, which is why I'm trying to find something with the right weight to have the kick of a brick at a slightly longer distance.
Thanks for the help-now just one more question....
6' with 30-36" shaft,
or 8' with 18-24" shaft?
Okay I suppose I lied, I have another.
Your spears stay rigid right? Or do they flex like the longer Gat-Kus?
I guess I'm just getting caught up on what would be a good balance/weight to get optimum distance/punch combo....

[azspearo]

The weight of the aluminum tube is .288 lbs per/ft and the weight of the shaft is .260 lbs per/ft.
8' with 18-24" shaft would be best.
My spears flex very little. You don't have to wrap the sling around the pole on my 6' spears and I use one wrap on my 8' spear for a little better accuracy.
The 8' spear at around 4lbs with the band fully stretched to 50-60lbs of force packs quite a punch. It has no problem penetrating fish.

[mnguy]

I guess I'm just getting caught up on what would be a good balance/weight to get optimum distance/punch combo....

Speaking of punch and distance...
http://www.spearboard.com/showthread.php?p=698068#post698068

I've also strung a fat rubberlip perch that was darting away from me with a tahitian tip from about 10' away. The tip entered right at the back end of the dorsal fin's soft rays on the left side and exited out the right cheek. Then it started crapping out babies(they're livebearers), though the rest of it was thoroughly paralyzed.

I've really gotta power that thing down for regular reef applications.

[OceanEd]

Aaron:

I have been doing more experimenting and it seems that you can actually get the pole so long that it has too much mass to effectively travel much of a distance and still punch into a big fish. The only way to change this equation is to develop arms the size of the "HULK" so you could pull back on a massive band or several bands. This is the problem when I screw the extra piece you sent me onto my 9 foot pole.

That being said, now we have to switch gears to see if it is possible to come at this from another direction. I may try to take your 9 ft. pole and take off the shaft extension on the end and replace it with a 60" shaft from one of my guns. Then I will either put a slip tip on the end of the shaft, or not screw the shaft into the pole and allow the entire 60" shaft to pull out (break away) from the pole. The shaft would be attached to either a float line or to the pole.

I am trying to reduce the mass of the entire unit without sacraficing the extended length (about 14 feet).

[robertonator]

OceanEd,

I think by releasing an entire shaft (which would serve the same purpose of a slip-tip, except gian) would essentially eliminate the purpose of having a slip-tip in the first place. I think the slip-tip rigged to a floatline would serve it's purpose more effectively than a shaft essentially used as a slip. And unless you had another slip-tip on the end of this slip-shaft then you'd just as easily bend a shaft as on a gun with a flopper. If you figured a way to eliminate shaft pressure you'd be pretty good I suppose.
Ed, what have you found to be the best combination of sizes for these spears? I'll be going after bigger fish with this more than reef fish.
Maybe 8' or 9' with about 24" shaft and Mori slip??

[mnguy]

Aaron:

I have been doing more experimenting and it seems that you can actually get the pole so long that it has too much mass to effectively travel much of a distance and still punch into a big fish. The only way to change this equation is to develop arms the size of the "HULK" so you could pull back on a massive band or several bands. This is the problem when I screw the extra piece you sent me onto my 9 foot pole.

That being said, now we have to switch gears to see if it is possible to come at this from another direction. I may try to take your 9 ft. pole and take off the shaft extension on the end and replace it with a 60" shaft from one of my guns. Then I will either put a slip tip on the end of the shaft, or not screw the shaft into the pole and allow the entire 60" shaft to pull out (break away) from the pole. The shaft would be attached to either a float line or to the pole.

I am trying to reduce the mass of the entire unit without sacraficing the extended length (about 14 feet).

I wonder what the wobble will be like with a 60" shaft on the end of the unit. I mean, a shaft doesn't wobble too much out of a gun because it is pretty much a free projectile that is just expending imparted energy in flight. A shaft that long with a constant force behind it might have a tendency to deflect and/or wobble as the force behind it will never be constant and will never vector 100% straight.

Maybe starting to taper a longer pole at the halfway point might mitigate some of the critical mass problem? So say a 14' pole starting to taper at the 7 or 8' mark. I wonder how much mass, as a percentage, that would shave off. Maybe drop down a size on the insert shaft to shave some total mass too, so down to maybe 9/32".

edit: Robertonator, where are you hunting? If you're in Southern California and want to check one out, I live in Riverside and hunt mostly in Laguna. I have a 3 piece 9 footer with an 18" shank.

[robertonator]

And you'd also only be saving about .14 of 1 lbs.
The drag may be a suficient difference and enough reason to make this change, but I have no experience with this and I don't have a calculator in front of me to solve that one :D

[azspearo]

Aaron:

I have been doing more experimenting and it seems that you can actually get the pole so long that it has too much mass to effectively travel much of a distance and still punch into a big fish. The only way to change this equation is to develop arms the size of the "HULK" so you could pull back on a massive band or several bands. This is the problem when I screw the extra piece you sent me onto my 9 foot pole."



Stephen, The longest spear I sale is 9' and I consider this close to the max for this design. The spear I sent you is 8' and the middle extension is 4'.
I have noticed with users using a sling that is short and only drawn half and less then half is that they are having a harder time propelling the spear.
I have done some testing and if you draw the spear less then half way you will have to use a rubber sling that is a minimum of 1/2" od and 1/8" id (speargun) rubber.
If you have more then half of the spear out in front of you as you stated your going to have an arm like "Hulk". I had to get 80lbs+ on the 1/2"x1/8" band to propel the spear when it was drawn at a 1/3 of the length of the spear.
But only needed 45 lbs to get the same punch with a 1/2"x1/4" tubing when drawn up to 8/10 of the spear.
I know you don't like to draw your spear that far, but have you tried to draw it 2/3 the way up the spear?

I sold a spear to a guy who has been polespearing for years and he liked to only draw the spear two to three feet on a 6' spear. I set him up with two rubbers, one 1/2" x 1/8" and the other 1/2" x 1/4". He hated the spear and this was the first dissatisfied customer I had. I talked with him about trying it at 2/3 draw, now he loves the spear and has ordered another one.

I believe that with the weight of the spear a draw of over 3' is needed on the 6' spear and over 4" on the 8' and 9' spear to propel effectively. Also the rubber sling should be drawn 200-300 percent.






[/QUOTE]"That being said, now we have to switch gears to see if it is possible to come at this from another direction. I may try to take your 9 ft. pole and take off the shaft extension on the end and replace it with a 60" shaft from one of my guns. Then I will either put a slip tip on the end of the shaft, or not screw the shaft into the pole and allow the entire 60" shaft to pull out (break away) from the pole. The shaft would be attached to either a float line or to the pole.[/QUOTE]"


I have on paper a similar set up it uses sprung SS ball detents to hold the shaft in the end. The detents would be in the set-screws and screwed in place of the regular set-screws that hold on the regular shaft.
The slip shaft would have very shallow radius hole so the detents would lightly grip the shaft.



[/QUOTE] I am trying to reduce the mass of the entire unit without sacrificing the extended length (about 14 feet). [/QUOTE]"

I'm building a lighter carbon/aluminum spear that will be 12'-16' long. This spear will be used to put a slip-tip in a large or elusive fish namely pelagic's.
I have started using a machine shop to make my parts so I can free up time to design and bring out new products I have a slip tip and paralyzer that is close to final design and should have them out by the end of July.

[OceanEd]

Aaron:

I agree with you about your 9 ft. spear being about the max length that is practical for its weight/diameter/mass. You can go a little longer with a pole spear such as a Cockerham that is made out of aluminum pipe and has a larger diameter, but is lighter. However, not much.

Another factor is that the longer the pole spear after that length, it tends to wobble. You can get around that mostly because you have to get the tip very close to the fish to shoot and it is not too much of a factor, but the wobble combined with the long length really makes it difficult to swing the entire pole to track a fish. You absolutely can not swing it fast with any accuracy.

I love the idea of the ball sets and a shallow hole for the shaft and the other things are are experimenting with. Once again you are ahead of me in your thinking. I hope you will keep me informed about what you are doing.

Rebertonator:

I probably was not clear in my last post. It would be either a 60" shaft with a fixed tip and that would come out of the pole, or it would be a 60" shaft that is fixed to the pole with a slip tip that would come off the 60" shaft.

Another reason for the smaller diameter shaft up forward is to try to eliminate some of the surface area that makes it so difficult to swing and track a very long pole spear when you are trying to follow a fish as he is moving. You could just chunk bait into the water and keep a long pole spear's tip aimed at a particular piece of bait and wait for the fish to swim into your sight, but if you want to be swimming around and swinging the pole spear you need some changes to what we have now if the pole is extra long.

MNGUY:

I have no idea about the "wobble" factor as you describe it, but I am sure that between Aaron and myself we are going to find out!

This is what is so great about having spearboard. We can kick these ideas around and see what we can come up with to improve the pole spear concept. When I gave my talk last year at Sheri's Spearfishing Symposium both sides were amazed. Many people came up to me for the next 2 days and said they never realized there could be so much to know about pole spears and the different types. I was amazed because I didn't realize how little most spearo's know about pole spears.

I am pretty sure we are going to be doing a pole spear workshop at the Symposium this year and I hope Aaron's new ideas can be presented there. Hopefully we can get as many pole spear manufactures as possible to send someone to talk about their pole spears so we can share ideas. I also hope we can get into how to adapt and customize pole spears for maximum effect.

[azspearo]

Stephan, when will the Symposium be held and where? I'll be spearfishing in a week at the Channel Islands and I'm going to be trying out some different set-ups with the spear.
Your right about the bouncing ideas around, I know how I like my spears set-up but without others feedback I would be just another typical company feeding stuff to the masses what they don't really want.

[OceanEd]

Aaron:

We will have to check with Sheri about the dates. It will not be the same dates as last year, but don't want to give you bad info on when it will be held.