rod-making style

I got a surprising e-mail the other day from David, inviting me to contribute entries to this blog. I’m flattered to do so, and will try to live up to the high standard he has set. David and I are contemporaries – at my first SRG, in 2002, I brought both of the only 2 rods I had made (twin Driggs), and David was in the final process of gearing up to make his first rod.

I want to talk today about rodmaking styles. Not "style" as in whether you flame a rod, or what color you wrap guides, but rather what kind of rodmaker you turn into as you work through the process of making several rods.

Some rodmakers embrace a certain historical rodmaker ("I’m a Garrison man"), or a regional approach ("East coast rods"). Some guys make a lot of rods, like, hundreds, and never deviate from published tapers. On the other hand, some guys design their own tapers from whatever mathematical or theoretical principle they start from, and then move on from there. Some guys find a taper or set of tapers, and repeat and repeat them, making small refinements within a narrow set or parameters. On the other hand, some guys never make 2 rods that resemble each other. A few guys ignore everything that has been done before and dream up their own everything.

I don’t know all the rods he has made, but today David certainly falls into the "theoretical" group. He thinks about rod tapers (lots of them, more than he’ll ever make in his lifetime), analyzes them, and builds rods that help him understand how differences in a set of numbers translate into different casting characteristics. A large portion of David’s rodmaking efforts in the last year went into making 4 or 5 rods that illustrate a spectrum of tapers, ranging from "parabolic" through "straight taper" and ending with "tip action" or "dry fly". It’s one thing to read about a bunch of tapers and try to imagine in your mind how they might change casting action; it’s totally another to actually make 5 rods that illustrate the differences, controlling all other variables. David did this, and it was the highlight of SRG 2008.

One of our rodmaking friends, who makes beautiful rods and who has made well more than 100 rods, says he has never deviated from a written taper, in large majority drawn from Howell’s "A Lovely Reed." He trusts the tapers in that book (as well as the processes) and just has no interest in "tweaking" numbers. He repeats tapers that he likes, and works hard on making each one more perfect than the last. As a side-note, he also works on making more and more of the components that go into his rods. He hasn’t made wire snake guides yet (that I know of) but not only does he make his own reelseat hardware and ferrules, he now is drawing his own nickel silver tubing. How many rodmakers can say that?

I think I must fall somewhere between the 2 extremes. I start with casting a rod and liking the taper. That’s why rodmakers meetings are so important for me. You get to cast a lot of rods. I have no interest in stress curves, or analysis software. I also have no interest in designing my own tapers from scratch. I believe, as Gierach once quoted, "In taper design, there’s really not much new under the sun." For me, it always boils down to how a rod casts. I believe in casting a rod, and then if any modifications are to be made, it will be in response to what I judge to be the strengths and weaknesses of the rod in use. I guess that’s called the empiricist approach. I’ve made several Dickerson 8013s after casting an original, and I’ve loved most every one of them. The first 2 were made as twins to see if they would come out the same (they did.) The next was a 3-piece (stiffer and a 6wt instead of 5), the next was hollow (smooth, slightly more powerful), and the last was a tri-hex geometry rather than regular hex. That’s the best one yet. The point, at least for me, is that I get to learn something important from each 50 hours I put into one of these things.

Some rodmakers will make virtually any rod that you provide a set of numbers for, given that you are willing to pay. That’s fine with me, but being in the spare-time amateur category, I see absolutely no reason to spend my time making a rod I know I won’t like. A guy recently asked me to make a rod for him based on a Garrison taper. I don’t have anything against Garrison tapers, but I’ve never cast one that wowed me. So I told him that he’d do better talking to rodmaker X and Y, both of whom I knew make plenty of Garrison tapers. Nice rods, too. Not rods that I should make, though.

So what’s the point? Well, if you’re thinking someday of getting a new bamboo rod, at least think a little bit about the kind of rodmaker you’re talking to. If you want consistency over time, a guy like me is probably not your rodmaker. I don’t like repetition. If you want an almost-exact replica of a classic taper, there are certain guys to talk to. If you don’t know exactly what you want, talk to a rodmaker who is both a very good caster and a good casting teacher – he will know what you need even if you don’t. There aren’t that many rodmakers around, but there are maybe more than you think, and a little investigation might make your rod-buying experience a lot more pleasurable than you could imagine.

If you’re a budding rodmaker, think a little about what kind of rodmaker you’d like to become. You’ll become whatever kind of maker you become whether you do this or not, and things evolve over time, but it may save you some time to ponder it early – I know that I wish I had spent less time trying to be a rodmaker that I am not, and more time exploring the rodmaking issues that interest me.

Lee