I don’t think I’ve been fishing since we went out to Nine Mile in October.  That stinks.  Snow and ice do tend to slow all that down (as does hunting season, I have to admit)…  But I have gotten a couple rods done – finished the second “Martha Marie’s Perfectionist”, to match the one I made this summer, and fished on the Yampa.  Then, I finally finished an 8013 I’ve been working on for months – some rods go together willingly, and others seem to come into being screaming and kicking, and this 8013 has been one of those.  It’s funny, because it’s a great rod, straight, strong and good looking, it’s just been a series of fits and starts in the process..  For example….




This is a photo of one of the things a rodmaker really hates to see:  it’s a freshly-glued section that had 2 splines crossed.  I pulled the binding string off and found the “surprise.”  If a rodmaker catches the twist while the glue is still wet, you can take everything apart, clean the glue off, dry out the splines and glue it up again.  If you miss it when the section comes off the binder, and the glue dries, well…  we use strong glues for a reason, and sometimes it backfires…  This usually happens on the tip sections, where the splines are tiny, and they can cross if you don’t pay attention.  Usually I roll the glued-and-bound sections to straighten them out, and in that process, you can feel the “knot” where a spline has crossed (it’s happened to me one other time.)  In this case, the section came off the binder so straight that I didn’t even roll it, I just hung it in the hot box.  As I said, if you don’t catch this when the glue is wet, well, the section is toast.  So, I’ve actually made 3 tips for this rod as opposed to the regular 2.  That’s what I mean when I say it’s been a series of fits and starts.  It’s going to be a beautiful rod though, flamed with red-yellow-black wraps, and a very pretty flamed hex reelseat.  This is a new 8013 for me – it’s the lighter, 1951 version.  All the other 8013’s I’ve made have been based on the more muscular 1949 version.  The familial resemblance is there, but I think it’ll sort of be the brother who is a gymnast, as opposed to the brother who plays football.  With any luck, the gymnast brother will soon “graduate”, as it were.

Lee