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hi boys and girls ken smith kinsman
fishing so
as a lot of you know i've not been on
the water the last couple of weeks which
is why i've not completed boat reviews
and why i haven't been fishing any
because we're very very very pregnant
actually by the time you guys see this
video everything goes as planned
baby boy number two will be here with us
in richardson texas so
hopefully sometime in the near future
right after that i can get back on the
water but
we're gonna spend a little family time
uh with the new top we're in the house
and by the way
uh hollis had his first er visit today
fell off front porch
but he's all good as well so uh quite an
eventful weekend for us
so this video so i've had an opportunity
because
of me being home to do a bunch of stuff
including the video you guys just
watched a bunch of you
about ford imaging sonar i found that
really interesting
and i know that somewhere in the next
few weeks i'm going to be buying a boat
and when i'm buying a boat i am not
buying another ranger i know that for
sure
and i know from when i bought my last
boat i did a bunch of prop videos i'll
post one of them right there
uh where i was trying to figure out the
right prop to run on that boat and
i know i know a little bit because of
that
and i thought i knew quite a bit but
i've been chasing somebody
for probably five or six weeks to do a
video
and they finally said yes to me i'm not
going to announce who it is yet
but as we can he's he's a guy who knows
his props
really well and i said i said uh he said
well what do you know about
props and i said well i know this and
this and this and this and he said what
about this this this this this this
and i'm like yeah i don't know very much
about props apparently
so he suggested i
watch some other videos and actually the
other videos remember some of them are
mercury racing videos
and suggested some things for me to read
up on
and i've been doing that and before i do
that video with him i want to do a
couple of videos for you guys
and i want to ask you guys to share back
with
me if you could sit down with the prop
expert
what would you ask so i thought it would
be smart to kind of level set
what i know and what i have learned over
the last few weeks
and i thought i'd share it with you guys
so i know there's at least two
videos worth of footage here before i
interview him
and i want you guys feedback before i
so let's just kind of go through this so
when i did my video reviews
excuse me when i did the video test on
my so mine was a
2018 ranger 521c
with the 250 pro xs of four stroke it
was
one of the very first four strokes in
texas my respect my serial number is a
bunch of numbers and then zero zero zero
zero seven seven so it was one of the
very first
i didn't even know it was a four stroke
when it left the ranger factor
and what i looked at on that boat
was basically a fury 3 and fury 4 and a
couple different
versions of pitches on those props
and and you see here the two props that
i looked at
but i always wondered about a trophy or
about
well about a bunch of stuff and so i
fished basketball days like everybody
else and we had a guy in the bass club
who ran a chopper prop sometime and
i never knew what all that different
stuff made and so i
i started doing some research so first i
started the mercury website
and it was immediate confusion there's
21 different props available on the
mercury website
and then there is a prop selector and by
the way this is
curious to me so i went through the prop
selector on the mercury website and it
says boats and manufactured you see all
the inputs you do here when you go
through this process
and look at that it sped out a tempest
plus
for my boat which made me scratch my
head because
they suggested i run a fury on it so now
i'm wondering okay well
am i running the right prop even on my
four-stroke motor and i'm going to talk
to the right people to figure that out
so
um this was interesting in and of itself
but then i went over to mercury racing
and there's another 10 let's see 5
10 13 another 15
now obviously you're not going to run a
cleaver braid oh blade on a on a bass
boat i don't think
but there were even more props over on
the mercury racing
and then there's just there's a bunch of
other prop makers right i mean i was
just messing around with pro with
but mercury but there's michigan wheel
and
i mean i own a power tank uh yamaha
obviously makes props uh by the way that
cheryl marine is that new prop that's
got that
loop around it doesn't have an ear it's
got a loop that's crazy it's a
five four five thousand dollar prop i
don't know if they're making from
outboard yet but there's
my point is there's a ton of other props
out there
and i wanted to get an understanding of
what i should be looking for um
so to do that you got to understand some
really
basic theories
and truthfully by the way so
this is a science right making a prop is
a science and if we all ran
identical boats with identical identical
loads
it would be really easy somebody would
make one perfect prop and we would all
run
that same prop but the problem is we
don't all
don't all the same and i mean it goes back to the
the same and i mean it goes back to the
old
marianne or ginger right until i found
this picture i was always mary ann i had
never seen junior bikini but
nonetheless there's different things for
everybody matter of fact
probably even somebody out there that
would throw miss howl into that
conversation no
not me
still mary anne but my point is we all
run lots of different kinds of boats
lots of different loads on the boats we
got guys who are looking for fuel
economy and believe it or not there's a
very significant difference in something
very basic
in props to get better fuel economy
which by the way
if you carry multiple props and you're
not tournament fishing and you're not
worried about running fast i'm going to
explain to you in this video
a very simple change you can make to
your prop to get the best possible
gas mileage out of your prop but
the point is because we run different
boats
different loads and we have different
desires some of us run big water some of
them from small water
some of us run a lot of real shallow
water i always think back to my buddies
in the arkansas river that are always
trying to get back into places
and they want a boat that not only gives
them bow lift but also gives them stern
lift
and there's things in a prop that will
lift the stern on a boat
there's things on a prop that will act
like a jack plate
there's some amazing things there's some
there's a lot of science in it but
there's some art in it too
and the art part comes in on the
different
types of boats you run and then also
the different lower units you run now
most of us in the mercury world are
running the torque master
the sport master is a different animal
we're going to talk about the difference
with those
in these videos as well so um
the things we need to kind of understand
in the science side of this equation is
a basic
something called the push-pull theory
which is what makes a prop
push a boat what makes an airplane prop
fly
an airplane what makes your fan blow air
onto you
angle of attack basic implications of
blade count
rake of a prop the cupping of a prop
blade
diameter and the implications of
diameter and the implications of diameter
diameter
basic prop styles now most of us kind of
want to run
one run one style of prop we're going to
talk about those as well
skew on a prop ventilation on a prop the
impact of barrel length
the impact of barrel flare again lower
unit design
and we've already talked about it but
pitch as well so
let's let's dive into a few of those in
this video and then we'll finish up
uh on at least part two and there might
be three parts
but again i need y'all's feedback for
what you want me to ask
a prop expert who's gonna spend some
time with us so
let's just talk real quick about the
kind of the basics
of a prop so uh let's look at the left
hand picture here
and you'll see up there at about 10
o'clock the blade route that's where the
blade
meets the hub if you will or the barrel
is actually the more proper term because
the hub as you see
over there to the right at two o'clock
that's actually what's inside
the spindles are inside the hub as well
now
this is funny to me when i had never
looked at a prop
and thought about what part of the prop
went in the water first
but obviously it's the thin cutting edge
again it's just something i had never
thought through so that's known as the
leading edge
and then the back end of it the fatter
part of it is the trailing edge now move
over
to the other side and we'll talk more
about this in that push-pull theory in a
second
but at 10 o'clock on that prop on the
right you see
the negative pressure side of the pop
prop
and then down below about six o'clock
you see the positive pressure side so
the positive is on the back of the
the positive is on the back of the if you will the back pacing part and the
if you will the back pacing part and the
negatives on the front
facing part exhaust vents which we've
talked about a little bit in the past
which are significant really only in
taking off in
in whether you want some air going over
the prop blades to help you build rpms
to get on the pad faster
the barrel tube we talked about and then
the cup
or the little cupping that's done to the
tip of the blade as well
now just again kind of general
terminology and i found this fish and i
love that problem
so that's the diameter right the width
of the bullet make a circle and cut
across that circle in any straight line
that's the diameter of the prop
and generally speaking prop diameter
increases for slower boats
with slower rpms
and then they generally decrease for a
speed and or rpms increase
however diameter will increase so if
you're running a
13 and three quarter inch you would go
up prop
if you have a a lower unit or a boat
that actually surfaces that problem
we'll talk more about that when we talk
about that sport master
but that sport master is designed to
surface and bring most of that prop or a
lot of that prop
out of the water versus the prop that
runs mostly submerged
so once you get a motor you know talk
about those
bowfest go fest boats we looked at the
the uh the bullet
and the ballistic those boats can go
faster if you put a surfacing prop on
them and a surfacing lower unit you
remember and we'll talk more about this
uh there was some conversation about how
much
fat so there was a there's a limitation
for speed
very technical we'll talk about it with
the torque master lower unit
if you want to go faster than 84 85 86
miles an hour they will tell you
you need to go to a sport master lower
unit and it's a different animal so
we'll talk more about that as well
and we're going to talk to our prop
expert about that as well
so last concept for part one of this
series
and when i say series what i mean is
these three or four videos we're going
to do
leading up to us having that
conversation with our prop
expert and it's a very it's a super
simple concept
and it's back to that pitch conversation
so
pitch is the distance of propeller
wouldn't move theoretically on one
rotation how far it would move the boat
forward
and i found this example online
it really makes sense to me if you think
about
putting a wood screw into a piece of
wood and turning it
one turn however far
that wood screw goes into that piece of
wood assuming it bites and makes a full
rotation goes fully in
that would be if you will that part of
that screws
pitch we'll have this conversation later
but you can have and most props are
progressive pitch
props here's our example of that so
with a 23 inch prop you basically see if
that prop
turned one revolution it would push the
boat forward
23 inches okay now i mentioned this a
second ago and by the way we'll talk
about
slip later it's another term we'll talk
but just as a real quick oh by the way
slip is how much you lose of that 23
inches is basically what that is so
uh there there are constant pitch props
and this is a real good one right that
pitch is
the same all the way through or there
are progressive
pitch props most of our props that we
run are progressive pitch props and what
it allows it to do
is it almost like the boat changes gears
if you will
so when you throttle down on it it it
catches those the water comes across
those lower pitched portions of the prop
to help you get that boat up on plane
and then because it's a progressive
pitch
as you pick up rpms that water
it's the wrong word but it's kind of
channeled to a different part of the
prop or a different part of the prop
really starts making a difference
and that's where that progressive
and that's where that progressive prop
prop
really starts making you maximize your
go forward
so by the way on the way they measure
our props
it's the average of those pitches is
what it would be
so on this one 778 920 i would guess
this would be about a 19 pitch
this would be about a 19 pitch because that would be about the average
because that would be about the average
across that prop and that's not exactly
the way to do that
but but for purposes of this
conversation that'll make sense
so let's stop there and
if you're still interested in this
i will do part two next week i hope
according to what's going on here at the
house we're going to dive further into
the rest of the terminology
we're going to talk a little bit more or
a lot more about
kind of the theory of that push-pull and
what makes a prop work
and then we're going to start talking
about different props for different
applications and then with y'all's
feedback
we're going to interview a prop expert
or maybe two
and uh talk to them about uh what we
should be running what we should be
looking for
based upon different applications and by
the way this
isn't this isn't just a basketball
conversation okay
this is a run about conversation this is
a ski boat conversation we can all learn
from this
uh my intent here is to learn about
props
and then learn about props for my boat
but
i think it'll be a journey we'll all
enjoy together so stick around part two
will be up here
very shortly thanks guys
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you