new rods in progress

Much thought and pre-planning goes into rod design and crafting, to achieve a level of quality befitting a bespoke bamboo fly rod. The new rods described are custom crafted. Each rod is personally made from selected tapers to meet fishing requirements and are made to exacting toerances. 

Fittings, components and materials are carefully selected from leading international suppliers for their function, quality and performance and are applied with well researched and tested rod building and finishing techniques.  

New rods are made from well seasoned Tonkin bamboo culms. The bamboo is flamed and hand-split,  straightened with nodes filed, then planed by hand on Wagner planing forms. All blanks are hexagonal split-bamboo, with splines glued with West System epoxy and finished with Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil (also applied to gun stocks and violins). 

Line guides & tip tops are carefully sized and set out in accordance with the rod taper, weight, length of rod, with guides available in chrome, black or black nickel (smokey). Tom Morgan's published line guide charts are used as the basis for the set-out and graduating snake guide sizes, adjusted where necessary in response to ferrule positions and the rod length + weight. Stripping guides are nickel silver with agate inserts, sourced from Struble or Perfect Europe guides. 

Reel seats are selected relative to rod design, weight and taper diameter, finished in nickel silver with polished timber inserts. Screw lock reel seats are sourced from Classic Sporting Enterprises (CSE) and the cap & ring reel seats by Ray Lee. Down locking is preferred, to set the reel as far down the rod as possible, improving rod-to-reel balance at the foregrip. Timber insets for the cpa & ring hardware are bespoke, fabricated from Australian minor species, selected to accord with the bamboo blank and finished with Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil.  

Handle shapes are tuned to the rod size and weight - new rods illustrated employ bespoke cork grips, fabricated from flor-grade cork shives sourced from Portugal, glue laminated and turned down on a mini-lath and finished with fine sand paper.  Hexagonal nickel silver winding checks are calibrated to closely fit the blank at the fore-grip. 

Silk guide wraps are fine, even, low profile and glassy smooth - finished with 3 coats of preserver and 3 coats of varnish, hand brushed with fine sable art brushes. Ferrules are C.S.E., nickel silver, carefully selected,  fitted and lapped ready for assembly - male ferrules are turned down to exacting tolerances. When finished, the ferrules will be tight and well fitted - the rod will be ready to fish. 

All rods are test-cast on grass, first with the line guides set-out and taped on the blanks, followed by final test casting trials after completion to ensure that the rod is well balanced, ready for to be fished and meets expectations. Rod bags are CSE, sized to the each rod type, made from soft flannel and fittted with a leather suspension tab. 

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