Yesterday I headed into Boston to attend an auction of baseball great Ted Williams’ personal effects at Fenway Park. My chief objective was to re-acquire a 6 1/2′#3 Spring Creek Special rod which I made to be presented to Williams by fellow Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn as part of a tribute he was arranging. I was also hoping to pick up any other interesting angling items provided that they wound up in my price range. There were a number of great books as well as a goodly amount of tackle that Williams had used or that had been given to him by various friends and acquaintances.

One thing that especially caught my eye was lot #528 which was listed as a collection of two vintage Ted Williams wooden fly rods. One was a salmon rod with no equal sections and no maker name which I personally didn’t find that interesting. The other, however, was fascinating. It was an H.L. Leonard black bass rod with the owners initials and a date of 1904. The initials were “G.M.L. La.B.” and of course alarm bells started going off in my head instantly. George La Branch! Now what was Ted doing with this rod? Obviously he knew who La Branch was since he had a strong sense of fishing history. It would be fascinating to know the history of how he came to acquire it and what the  journey had been to that point.

Unfortunately, the lot sold for more than I was able to put into it but I began to wonder if the purchaser had any idea of what exactly he had bought. I worry that he may have just been looking for a souvenir and may be unaware of its historical interest. Anyway, I bring all of this up to say that if the owner happens to be out there and reading this, please please make sure that rod isn’t used to beat the dust off any oriental rugs. I’m sure that the Catskill Fly Fishing Museum or the New York Anglers club would like to talk to you!

Best,

Marc

(Credit: Hunt Auctions – The Ted Williams Collection)

A fellow rodmaker recently sent this interesting new york times article my way, which covers the growth of artisan production amidst the helter-skelter of the modern globalized economy. It focuses, at least initially, on artisan food production but uses it to illustrate a broader theme, namely, the growing shift away from “high-volume, low-margin” mega-businesses toward more specialized niche producers.

Of course in the world of fly-fishing, they very easily could have been talking about bamboo fly rod makers. No we don’t make enough rods to compete with the major graphite manufacturers, but that’s not the point. As long as there are people who appreciate fine craftsmanship, who value the time and energy that goes into creating a fine bamboo fly rod, then there will be space for specialized rodmakers to continue doing what we do. The article’s takeaway?

“When it comes to profit and satisfaction, craft business is showing how American manufacturing can compete in the global economy.”

I’m curious to know what others think of this. You can find the link to the full piece here.

-Marc

Did Someone Call for a Grilse Inspector?

(credit: Walt Trzcienski)

I posted a photo of this rod over on our facebook page recently, and got a few questions about it (it’s a 7’6″ Spring Creek for an #8). This rod was a special one for me to make, since I built it as a college graduation present for Junior some years back. The first thing he said was “Wow!”, and then after having cast it for a few minutes remarked, “So, if I go to graduate school I can get another one, right?”. Smart cookie.

Perhaps the most fun part of making it was looking forward to him being able to use it on his first salmon trip the following autumn. In preparation I had spent the summer telling him – warning him really – about how difficult salmon fishing was and how there had been years in the past where I had gone whole trips with barely so much as a take. Naturally, after all of my efforts to appropriately lower his expectations, he bagged a salmon on his second cast of the trip, and then went on to catch a goodly number of them over the next two weeks. Some rods have serious luck, and this is certainly one of them!

 -Marc

You’ll have to forgive a little shameless self-promotion, but I hope it’s a little less shameless since the man who wrote the piece – Jeff Joiner — has been a friend and customer for many years now. Anyway, his son has started a publication and so Jeff penned an article for a recent issue. If nothing else it was fun to hang out at the shop for a day and to step back and talk with them a bit more about what I do as well as my thoughts on rodbuilding more generally. Anyway, I encourage you to check it out – below I’ve pasted a few pictures from the piece.

One of the great things about where I live and work is that there is a considerable amount of fishing tackle history in the area. While we often think of the Catskills as being the epicenter of all things bamboo — it was the home of the Leonard and Payne shops during their heyday, after all — the fact is that New England has also had a number of important fly rod manufacturers over the years. And while they may not have been quite as exalted as Leonard or Payne, New England companies like Chubb, Montague, Sewell Dunton and others, played a large role in helping popularize fly fishing for many Americans.

What this also means – and more to the point of this post — is that I often come across interesting pieces of machinery or old tools that were used in some of these early rod shops. The Montague shop, in particular, was located not far from where my shop stands today and so over the years I’ve managed to acquire a few interesting pieces of Montague equipment.

One such piece is this one here, a box designed to help in winding on the silk thread that holds the guides on the rod. It’s a pretty simple but clever design, with spring pressure to keep the spools nice and tight and with enough heft to the box to keep the whole thing good and stable.

I have another winding box that belonged to Tom Maxwell so I don’t use this one for any of my work, but I’ve always thought that it’s a kind of interesting reminder of some of the rodbuilding history in my area of New England.

-Marc

Thanks to all of those who provided such great feedback about the video I did on making Payne-style acorn caps! It was a fun project and has inspired Junior and I to try and do a few more over the next couple of months (at least if we can get the time!).

One thing that the video also inspired me to do was to retire the tool post I was working with and make a new one altogether. A tool post is a pretty standard piece of lathe equipment and its purpose is to hold whatever tool you’re working with to machine your material. Basic, but pretty important. You can see the piece of machinery I’m talking about in these two photos.

Here I am attaching the tool post to the Lathe.

 And here it is being used to apply the knurl to the finished cap. You can see in the photo below that there is a portion of the tool post that is angled up slightly, a problem which I had fixed at an earlier point but which was now breaking again.

Anyway, last week before the Somerest show I managed to carve out a few hours to go ahead and make a new one. Some of the photos below are a little blurry but hopefully you get the idea.

The first basic step involved getting the stock material cut and then machining all of the surfaces so that it squared up nicely. In this photo the new block for the post is in the lower right hand part of the picture.

The next steps involved turning the top so that there was a nice little rise for the handle to bed on, and then milling out the parts of the block to create the spaces for the tools to rest. I machined the slots for the tools so that they were a few thousandths below the center line (which gives you a much better cut when you use a plastic shim) and good for 3/8” tooling (I also machined one that was quite a bit lower that I could use for my knurl holders). The last thing I did during this phase was to machine one slot at a 3 degree incline so that I could easily adjust the height of the tools by sliding it back and forth slightly in the slot and thus raising or lowering the point at which it touches whatever material I’m working on.

Here’s the semi-finished tool-post with all of the slots machined out.

The last step was to machine the holes for the screws that lock each tool in place in the slots. Below you can see the new tool post on the left with the freshly machined slots and holes, and my old (and somewhat battered) one on the right. I’m looking forward to using the new one since I anticipate it being especially helpful with much of my work!

 -Marc

A Classic from Lee Wulff:

(hat tip: Moldy Chum)

Just a quick reminder that if you haven’t yet signed up for our email list, make sure you do. We’ve got a handful of rods coming in that we’ll be posting in the next week or so and those on our email list will be the first ones notified!