| Allan Marsden recently posted a question to the consultancy team asking whether they considered the diameter of elastics to be significant as is in the case of monofilaments. This got me thinking. I had previously written a brief review on Vespe elastic but had not studied the brand in detail. So I thought I would put a range to the test and off I went to Fosters Of Birmingham to see what brands they had in stock. I then came back with five different ones. Now the next question was how to put them to the test. The first two parts were easy, as the manufactures had already given me help. The elastic length as stated on the packets and secondly the elastic diameter as also stated on the packets. So with the help of a trusted Metric micrometer from my engineering days and a tape measure, I set about taking down all the particulars. To be fair to the test, three measurments were taken and the average size was resulted.
That sorted I wanted to know how they would perform when put under pressure. After all that's what we do every time we hook a fish, stretch the gear sometimes to it's maximum. (Some anglers more than others!. . . . .Ed) Now, Now calm down.
Anyway to do this I obtained a piece of MDF board, scribed some lines 25 cm apart and another down the centre between them. I scribed another 2cm from the left hand edge. This line was to be my starting point. The centre line was to be my finished point. The other two lines were divided by ten and some panel pins knocked into the marks.
The idea being to place a drawing pin into the tip of the elastic push into the board at the starting point, wrapping it around the pins and finishing it all off with another drawing pin inserted into the other tip and pushing it into the centre line. By cutting all the elastic at a predetermined length, 60cm, I would be able to establish the amount of stretch and the amount of memory and what each would look like at the end of 7 days being stretched to the limit.
The elastics I used were in size 10 and 12 with the manufactures being: Preston Fluoro, MAP, Preston Slip, Fox match and Vespe. So lets have a look at the results.
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