Rough Beveling

A hand made fly rod is a relative concept. Strictly speaking 'hand made' means no power--none at all. By that definition, my rods are not hand made. For example, I use a lathe to form cork grips; I use a drill press for drilling ferrule holes for pinning.

But the most conspicuous use of power that I employ is that of a powered milling machine. The milling machine I use is called a Medved beveler. I never met Mr. Medved, but my implementation of his design is more than adequate to the task of rough beveling split cane strips into rod splines.



While it's true that rough beveling can be accomplished by hand, this is one step that I am happy to break with tradition (if you can even call it that) and go with power. There's a contiuum of belief here. Some believe that the 'best' way to make a fly rod is by hand--especially in this case. Of course, this ignores the fact that many of the old dead guys used power in the beveling and tapering processes. The point is arguable and I won't belabor it further here.

I won't go into detail about the construction of the beveling tool here. Highly detailed plans for the design can be found in books like Jack Howell's The Lovely Reed or elsewhere on the Web. The process for me was to build an interpretation of the design with the materials I had and tweak it to meet my needs. As I go along in the section I'll capture what I think are the important properties of the tool.

Before I proceed with describing the details of rough beveling, I should define the process itself. Rough beveling transforms split strips of bamboo into consistently beveled splines which are prepared for tapering in a planing form. We start by putting a 90 degree bevel on all the strips. That is, we mill the work such that its cross section is square. This is important because when we switch to the sixty degree jig, we'll have a conistent stock to work with.

Begin by sorting the strips by width. If you followed the process in the previous section, most of the strips should be of the thinner variety--for tips.



Set those aside for now. We'll bevel the butt strips first. There's not as much material to remove. Attach the 90 degree jig to the back plate.



Set the tensioners to apply light pressure to the strips that lay in the grove.





Lay a strip in the jig. Push it past the first tensioner. Turn the router bit so that one of the cutting surfaces is at the very bottom of travel. Line up the jig so that the top of the strip is about one millimeter above the blade travel. In other words, one the machine is powered up, passing the work past the bit will remove one millimeter of material. Be careful here. Removing too much material will destroy the work.

Anchor the jig tightly to the backplate (i use wing nuts that I snug up with a crescent wrench). Hand tighten the set screw also. The set screw is important, not because it it helps hold the jig in place, but rather by its use as a reference point when making small adjustments to the jig. We'll see later in this section that, for each round of milling, we'll move the jig slightly up so that more material is removed with each pass of the work.



Power up the router. Wearing gloves, grasp the strip with both hands and pass it into the jig (as you can see, on my jig, the motion is from left to right). Never mill the enamel side. Lay the strip in the jig enamel-side down.



As the strip passes the end of the jig on the right side, grasp the strip with your right hand. As enough of the strip is pulled out of the jig, grasp it with both hands and change from a pushing to a pulling motion. The trick here is to not stop moving the strip at any time during the pass. If you stop, the bit will burn the work. As the left end of the strip approaches the bit, lift your hands so that the strip angles up off the jig slightly. This avoids the problem of end shredding by the router bit. Basically, what happens is that the cutting surface of the bit will catch the end edge of the strip and fray it. It's kind of like putting a popsicle stick in a blender.



Two more passes are required for this strip. Lay the strip in the jig so with the enamel side facing you. Pass the strip again with the enamel facing away from you. What you end up with is a strip that is milled on three sides.

Repeat this for each butt strip. Reset the jig to remove another millimeter or two. Here's where the set screw comes in handy. I know that four half-turns of my set screw is the proper distance of travel for each round--your results may vary. How do you know ultimately how much material to remove? Two things determine this. First, you want to remove enough material from the work to render sharp edges all the way down the strip on all sides.



Second, you want the thickness of the square-beveled strips to be about 200% of the final thickness of the beefiest part of the taper. I know I haven't covered tapers yet, but you shouldn't start this process without understanding what a taper is and what the end result should be.

Once the butt strips have been satifactorally milled, start over with the tips. The last jig-depth setting for the butt strips should be a good starting point for the tip strips. Repeat the process for the tip strips.



Switch jigs. Install the sixty degree jig. You'll also need to reset the set screw.



Repeat the tuning steps for the depth of cut. The difference here is that you'll be laying 90-degree strips in a 60-degree jig, so for the first few passes, the strips won't lay evenly in the jig. That's fine; just try to keep the enamel side of the strip laying flat on one of the jig edges. After the first pass, you'll end up with a strip with five sides: three at ninety degrees and two that seem to cut off the last angle. Continue restting the set screw and the jig and milling opposite edges with each pass.



Once the butt splines have been satisfactorally beveled, swtich over to the tips. The jig depth setting is always pretty close to the perfect starting depth for tips when I complete the butts.



I usually run four to six passes with the tips to get them down to size. Again, we're beveling to the dimensions of the thickest part of the taper on the spline. This will vary between a dainty little 3 weight and a chubby Paul Young parabolic taper.

There's a noticable difference between the tips and the butt when the beveling is done.



With each pass, you can feel the group of splines getting lighter and more coherent in the hand. What you end up with is so much smaller than what you start with. This process really removes plenty of material. At the end of a long saturday of beveling, there's always a nice mound of sawdust on the floor of my garage. It's nice physical evidence of a hard day's work.

Splitting Cane

Splitting cane into uniform strips takes practice. You have to develop the right body English to maintain an even width throughout the length of the strip. The basic idea is to split the work in half until the desired strip width is achieved. You start with one big strip--the culm itself, split it in half, then split the two halves in half, and so on. You'll observe an exponential growth in strips since you're halving them. Ideally, you'll end up with 32 identical strips. That's 2^5 strips or five rounds of splitting. Easier said than done, however, until you get the hang of it. And that's more strips than you need, too, since you need only eighteen strips for a two piece, two tipped fly rod. I do this because it gives me plenty of strips to sort through. There are still many reasons why a particular strip won't pass muster and will have to be discarded. Also, if the rod you're making has particularly thick dimensions in the butt section, you won't want to split all the way to 32 strips. You'll need to leave some of them thicker, so that you have room to work with when it comes time for beveling and tapering those stout butt splines. In this case, I will split 24 strips. That is, eight thick ones (only four rounds), and sixteen thin ones (the full five rounds).

The Bamboo Froe

The tool you use to split cane is called a bamboo froe. It's not a particularly sharp tool. It doesn't need to be since you're using it just as a guide to help the cane split itself along the grain or fiber patterns. The tool isn't used to cut the strips. Some use a bandsaw for this purpose, but I tend to prefer the cane to make up it's own mind about what it wants to look like--with a bit of gentle suggestion from me.



Starting the Splitting Process

Wear leather gloves throughout this process. Bamboo has a nasty habit of tearing up hands and drawing blood. The first split is accomplished by centering the froe perpendicular to the culm wall directly opposite the center of the check split. Use a mallet to start the split. Hold the culm upright on the floor and give the mallet a good tap. That'll get things going. Push the froe down the length of the culm, grasping both sides of the froe. If you get jammed at a node, use the mallet to help the froe along. At this stage, no English is needed. Just allow the froe to follow the grain of the work and try not to force anything.



You should end up with two halves of roughly even dimension.



Quartering

Quartering is accomplished in the same way halving the culm. Hold each half upright on the floor, tap the mallet on the centered, perpendicular froe, and guide the froe through the length of the culm.



You should end up with four strips of roughly equal dimension.



For the rest of the splits, we'll use the froe clamped in the vise. This allows for more controlled splits by manipulating the strips instead of the froe.



Begin splitting the quarters. Center the end of the strip (pith side down) on the blade edge of the froe. Give it a light tap with the mallet.



Notice how the blade isn't cutting the fibers. Rather it is enabling the cane to split itself. Once enough of the work has made it past the blade, grasp it with your other hand. So you'll have the un-split portion in your right hand and you'll have the two split portions in you left.



The eight strips are still rather uniform in width.



Repeat the cycle. You'll end up with sixteen strips.



Notice that while they're still fairly consistent in width, some inconsistencies appear. It happens. There's still plenty of splitting to be done and each strip will be evaluated before splitting again.



Splitting Smaller Strips

Start the split on a small strip just like you do with a larger one. Only now, it's critical that the work is centered on the blade. It's important that the blade splits it exactly in half.

The ideal butt strip will be three eights of an inch wide while the ideal tip strip will be five sixteenths of an inch wide. If, in the fourth round, a strip is too narrow to be split into two 5/16ths strips, then don't split it--save it for a butt spline. A strip much narrower than a quarter inch won't bevel up properly. A good rule of thumb is "Too fat is OK, but too thin is useless".



An off center split dooms one of the two resulting strips to be unusably narrow.



As the strip is guided along its length, pay attention to the widths of the two strips--don't take your eyes off the splitting point. This is especially important when the split runs through the nodes. Invariably, the split will want to go off track. In other words, it's likely that the split point will want to veer off to one side or another at a node.



Any time that happens, stress has to be applied to the work to correct it. This is what I call body English. Here's how it works: If the split is veering away from you (i.e., the strip closest to you is becoming too wide), then push both hands away from you. This will create a bow in the work that will help center up the split point again. The opposite method is used when the strip furthest from you is becoming too thick. Just pull both hands back towards you so the apex of the bend is away from you. The rule to remember is: "Move your hands in the direction you want the split to go".



I ended up with 29 strips. One of the strips in round four was too narrow to split, and I lost the one that was too thin. All in all, not bad--eleven to spare.



There's certainly a more noticable distribution in widths now that all of the splitting is done. That's fine. These strips will be sorted by their suitability for butt and tip splines.



Preparing the Nodal Dams

One last thing before we can consider the strips prepared for beveling: node preparation. We've covered the preparation of the nodes on the enamel side. This time we need to address the pith side. The nodes must be planed, cut or sanded down flat with the rest of the pith surface. It doesn't have to be perfect. The beveling process will smooth out any inconsistencies. As long as the bulk of the nodal dams is removed, the strips will pass through the beveler jigs (as we'll see in the next section) without jamming.

I use the froe that is still mounted in the vise. I pull the node across the blade at a low angle in a quick jerking motion.



The prepared node surface will preferably be flat against the pith surface of the rest of the strip. However, erring on the side of removing too little is prefered over removing too much--especially for butt splines.

Preparing the Culm

Things move pretty fast early on in the process. It almost lulls you into feeling that this rodmaking stuff is easy. Enjoy it while it lasts. I don't think it needs to be stated, but I will anyway: Each step in the process is no more or less important than any other. Mistakes made now will haunt you later, so don't assume that since you can finish several steps in an afternoon, you should. Making a bamboo rod should be a lot like fishing a bamboo rod--slow down, take your time and enjoy the experience. Casting a dry fly isn't a race. Neither is making a bamboo fly rod. Ideally, the rod you end up with will be one that you fish with for the rest of your life. Take that extra ten minutes and do it right. And if you are like I was, you'll be accumulating tools as you go, so there will be plenty of time between paydays to enjoy each step. Oh, and by the way, if you have a customer bugging you to finish a rod, simply ask him, "So, you want me to rush through the rest of your rod?" That'll change his tune. If it doesn't, just refund his deposit and move on to the next order.

That being said, I will tell you that I tend to execute the early steps of the process in batches. I'll select, prepare, rough bevel, bind and bake enough cane to make a half dozen rods at a time. This is simply an optimization that I employ. There's no benefit to this if all you want to do is make a rod for yourself and I don't recommend this until you're comfortable with each step.

Measuring and Cutting the Culm Section

Once you've selected a culm you like, measure and cut a culm section for a particular fly rod. This is a good time to introduce your first rod making tool: The dozuki saw. The dozuki saw is a Japanese cross-cut saw. Very sharp, fine teeth and a reverse cutting action make the dozuki saw ideal for cutting and trimming bamboo culms and rod sections. It'll also make quick work out of branches when pruning your fruit trees, but I'll leave that up to you. This is not an expensive tool and I recommend it instead of a hack saw.



Oddly enough, my dozuki saw was made in Japan. My Japanese is a bit rusty, but I believe it says, "Be careful or you'll cut your fingers off."



The dozuki saw cuts cane quickly. Notice how you can cut nearly half way through the culm with two or three strokes.



I recommend supporting the culm on both sides of the line when cutting. I have a long workbench with a soft pine table-top. This makes an ideal surface for cross-cuts since it's important to finish with a firm stroke. Avoid cutting most of the way through the culm and 'cracking' the rest. The bamboo will split longitudinally, which will tear the fibers away from the culm. A best, that creates a mess. At worst, you'll ruin the culm.

Preparing the Nodes

The nodes must be dressed prior to splitting. There are two options as to the order here: dressing nodes before or after flaming. (Of course, if you're not flaming, I won't be with this example, this isn't an issue.) Flaming after dressing the nodes will give a uniform color throughout the length of the fly rod. I usually prefer to flame before dressing the nodes, however, since I like the light color of the nodes. It gives a rod a nice variegated look. It is messy, though, because the belt sander tends to fill the air with the nasty black flaming soot.

There are two common approaches to dressing nodes: the traditional and the practical. Can you guess which one I use? Anyway, the traditional method involves a mill bastard file and a free afternoon. The practical way involves a small belt sander and nerves of steel (or at least the absence of caffeine).

Install a medium grit belt--maybe 180 or 200-grit. For the first phase, leave the 90-degree backstop installed (you can see it peeking out from behind the belt). Carefully move the work into position. Just take off the highest spots in the node.



Work the culm slowly around until all of the high points are taken down. Be careful. Pay particular attention to the edges of the belt. Don't allow the belt to touch any part of the culm except for the node.



For final sanding, remove the backstop. This will allow for a softer approach. Work the node in a slow circular motion as you rotate the culm. You know you're done when you've removed all of the enamel from the center of the node area and there is a smooth transition from the finished node area to the rest of the culm. It's also important to try to minimize the amount of material you remove from the culm. That is, try to keep the sanding marks as narrow as possible. One of the quality marks of a good bamboo fly rod is unobtrusive node transitions or "narrow nodes".



Run your finger over the finished node. It should feel smooth across both enamel surfaces. Smooth and shiny is what you want.

Flaming

There are lots of reasons to flame a culm. There are a few reasons not to. The heat will temper the cane, which will stiffen it up a bit. I think it brings certain tapers alive. Flamed cane is gorgeous in the finished fly rod. Flaming really brings out the color of the fibers, especially at the node transitions. And any imperfections in the cane will become "beauty marks" once they're flamed. A flamed rod has character, while a blonde rod has class.



Notice how moisture exits the culm in sort of a sticky solution sugar water bubbling out through the power fibers. Flaming is the second phase of moisture removal. Remember that the first stage was to age the cane. The final stage comes later after the cane has been split and beveled. You'll want to oven bake the cane to remove even more moisture.

Use a propane torch with a gentle orange flame. I use a weed burner. I don't use a plumber's torch since the flame is too narrow and intense. You really only want to allow the flame to 'lick' the enamel. Work slowly. If the bamboo heats up too rapidly, the outside will char while the inside remains cool and untempered. Bring all of the fibers up to temperature slowly. You'll know when it's time to move the flame because the enamel will form an orange peel texture expanding from the center of the flamed area. And never flame unsplit cane. It will explode. I speak from experience. Scared the bejeezus out of me--almost dropped my torch. You've been warned.

So why wouldn't you want to flame? The first reason is obvious, you don't want a dark rod. Many customers prefer blondes. Also, flaming can be tricky. Until you get the hang of it, it's easy to turn a perfectly good culm into an expensive piece of charcoal. And finally, if your culm has many splits in addition to the check split, each exposed edge will char. You might not end up with enough usable cane.



Work the flame from the center of the culm to the ends. This will draw the moisture out.



I like flaming. I like the smell of freshly flamed bamboo, though some have said it smells like bar-b-qued dog piss. It's one of those smells I never forget, like the smell of coffee brewing makes me think of Grandmama's kitchen, or the smell of Scotch tape makes me think of Christmas.

Selecting A Fine Piece of Bamboo

Getting in a fresh shipment of bamboo is like Christmas morning for me. I can't wait to rip off the shipping plastic and inspect the stock. At that point, it's all about the possibilities. I don't so much look at it for what it is, but rather for what it could be. It's important to start with a good piece of bamboo. I swear that a good rod maker instinctively knows the difference between the fine and the merely adequate, but here are a few specific things to look for.

Species
Start with the right species of bamboo. It's called "Tonkin". It comes from China. There are two brokers in the United States that deal in premium Tonkin cane for use by rod makers: Andy Royer and Charles Demarest. I prefer the quality of Royer's stock, but it is more expensive. There are other species of bamboo out there that are of interest to the rod maker: Madake (Japan) and Calcutta (India, Bangladesh, and Burma). Don't bother experimenting with these until you get it right with Tonkin.

What You Get
The bamboo that you get from a broker comes in twelve foot long culms. A culm is a harvested bamboo pole or stalk. An average order consists of at least five or six culms. That amount is enough to offset the shipping cost. You can expect to throw away at least a quarter of the stock you get for any of a number of reasons. If you're just trying this out, a good place to start would be a rod maker in your area. Beg, borrow or buy a nice 4 foot piece. That's enough cane for one fly rod, and assuming you only make a single tip, you'll have some leftovers for practice and mistakes.

These culms have check splits. I start a split on one end of the culm that eventually splits itself to the other end. This relieves pressure on the tube as it dries and reacts to temperature changes. If you don't do this, you'll get lots of little splits, which is bad as we'll see when we discuss flaming.



Analyzing the Physical Characteristics
Inspect the culm. Notice the different features. The culm should have a pale yellow color. This means it has been aged a while and dried out some. If there's any green tint to the cane, it's not ready to be used.

One obvious physical characteristic of the bamboo culm is the node. Nodes are the rings you see every foot or so along the length of the culm. It's apparent that the culm is a hollow tube, but you can't see through the tube. This is because of the nodes. I love nodes and I hate them. I love them because they add strength to the plant, allowing it to grow tall, straight, and strong. I hate them because they can cause many problems for the rod maker.

You'll notice that the exterior of the culm is smooth and kind of shiny. That material is called enamel. Think of it as the bamboo equivalent of tree bark. The enamel offers protection from parasites as well as creating a moisture seal for the plant. The enamel must be removed from the bamboo prior to becoming part of the blank. Preparing and removing the enamel are important steps, but for now, we're only interested in the visible condition of the enamel.

Larger culms are better: 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter is a good size. You can specify the size when you order. The larger cane is more expensive, but it's still the least expensive part of the finished fly rod. Get the best cane you can.

The fibers that make up the walls of the plant are thicker at the "trunk".



It's easy to spot the "bottom" of the culm, that is, the end of the culm that was closest to the ground as a growing plant. The nodes are closest together near the ground. It's easy to see the difference in the wall thickness at the top of the culm versus at the bottom. The overall tube diameter is fairly uniform throughout the culm, but the walls are usually two to three time as thick at the bottom. You must consider this difference with regard to planning the kind of rod you want to make. Generally, the top section is sufficient for small fly rods.

I often use the thickest bottom sections for bait casting rods--yes I do make those. The action of a good bamboo bait casting rod is similar to that of a broomstick, so you want to use the most dense cane. I've been told by the bass pro's that I make these rods for that their action is ideal for flipping large jigs. I'll have to take their word for it.

We've seen that the fibers near the outer wall or enamel are closely packed. Towards the inner wall, the fiber bundles no longer touch each other. They're separated by a soft cellulose. This material has no strength on its own and serves only to bind the fiber bundles together. The inner wall is made of a very soft material called "pith". Pith is so soft, you can scrape it with your thumbnail. The process of beveling and tapering the splines will eliminate most of the pith and wide areas of cellulose.



You may notice some writing etched into the enamel. You won't be able to make much sense of it unless you can read Cantonese. These marks are usually cut deeply into the culm. If the cuts are deep enough to allow you to see any lateral fibers underneath the enamel, the affected areas must be discarded. Rod makers call these "power fibers". They are the most dense right below the enamel. Power fibers give the bamboo fly rod its light and responsive action, so they need to remain in the rod, not on your shop floor or in the dirt somewhere in southern China.

There are a few more things to be aware of when evaluating a culm. Sometimes, especially near the ground, parasites enter the plant. The fibers are weakened at these "wormholes", rendering the area useless to the rod maker. A spline with a wormhole, hidden or not, will fail stress testing.



Leaf nodes are just that--a node that had a leaf growing out if it. Since there is such an uneven impression left by the leaf, the fibers surrounding it are useless to the rod maker. While leaves are essential to the plant, they're a problem for the rod maker. Thankfully, they're rare in most stock.




Study the cane that you have. Get to know it. You'll be spending lots of time with it before you can call it a fly rod. It's natural material, so it's unique. Bamboo is amazing stuff. It's so hard, that it'll dull a plane iron faster than concrete, yet delicate enough to baby your 7X tippet.

Why on Earth Would You Want to go to All That Trouble?

Remember the first trout you caught on a fly that you tied? It was a pretty good feeling, right? It's even more satisfying to catch that first trout on a rod you made. I know it was for me, anyway. It didn't matter that the trout was four inches long. I remember it better than any four pound fish I've caught.

Maybe the thing I remember most was that it was winter. February in Colorado can be cold, and it was on this day. This was the kind of day that makes your fingers hurt. This was the kind of day where the pale sunlight wasn’t much help. But it didn't matter. I was standing on the bank of the river with the first bamboo fly rod that I made. It was so shiny and new, you could still smell the varnish. Red silk thread wraps covered light blonde cane. It was a beautiful six foot three inch Paul Young taper with a fat little cork grip. The rod couldn't have been more than two days old. I put the “good” tip on. The other tip, the first one, didn’t turn out so well. It was usable, but the six splines used to construct it were inconsistent due to my inexperience with the block plane. By the time I made the second tip, I pretty much had it figured out. I’d thrown a line with rod a few times in the back yard. The action was light and crisp, yet surprisingly powerful. It’s the kind of feeling I came to realize is unique to a bamboo fly rod. I was happy and relieved. All of the work had paid off.

I stumbled along the bank until I found a decent spot to fish. “Decent” is a relative term since the river was mostly frozen and the flow was very low. I managed to get into the water. I figured it was safer than sliding felt on the ice. Just then, I noticed some movement in the shallow water about fifty feet upstream. I waded across the liquid portion of the river and made a cast. The little blue-winged-olive dry fly landed lightly on the water about a foot downstream from the rise. I realized I had misjudged the distance. Maybe it was because I was still using the same beat-up old leader that was on the reel from last fall. It was shorter than it should have been.

I was about to lift the rod to cast out just a bit more when the fish took the fly. I set the hook. The fly line, the fly and the poor little four inch rainbow trout flew out of the water and slid across the ice in front of me. It happened, sort of, in slow motion. I picked him up, apologized for my enthusiasm, and tossed him in the river.

After the release, I stood up, looked around, and the world came back to me. I remembered that my fingers were frozen; I remembered that I had to go to work the next day, and I remembered that I was holding a bamboo fly rod. How could I forget that? That was the reason I was there in the first place. Since then I’ve learned that a good bamboo fly rod will make you forget that you’re casting a fly rod at all. The good ones I call "thinkers". All you have to do is think about where you want the fly, and through some bamboo magic, the fly just appears there.

Starting the process of making a fly rod out of bamboo can be slow and frustrating, but for the few that get it right, the payoff is wonderful. If you do get it right, you'll garner respect and unsolicited inquiries from your fishing buddies and people you meet on the river or at the local fly shop. And, of course, you'll have a fly casting tool of unmatched grace.

But that's not why I started. All of that stuff comes later. I started because of the folklore associated with bamboo fly rods. I read stories about the "old dead guys": Leonard, Payne, Young and the boys. I wanted to cast the rods I read about. I couldn't afford to buy any of those rods, and I didn't know anyone at that time that owned any. So I decided the next best thing would be to build my own. For the cost of an average new bamboo fly rod, I estimated I could buy the tools and supplies necessary to build one. I was right. Sort of.

A bit of a vocabulary lesson is in order. I tend to use the words "bamboo" and "cane" interchangeably. Sometimes one word sounds better than another. For instance, "Tonkin cane" sounds better than "Tonkin bamboo", while "bamboo fly rod" sounds better than "cane fly rod".

"Building", or "assembling" a rod means taking a pre-made blank (be it bamboo, graphite, greenheart, boron, glass, etc.) and gluing parts to it. I know I slip up on this occasionally; sorry. So, for example, you're only building a graphite rod if you weren't the one to roll the fabric on the mandrel and bake it.

A rod "maker" works at a deeper level. Starting with the raw materials, the rod maker will construct every aspect of the fly rod. This happens to varying degrees, however, depending on what the definition of "every aspect" is. For example, I don't make my own snake guides, but some rod makers do. I do make my own handles out of cork rings, but I don't fly over to Portugal to harvest the sheets of cork. Regardless, the rod maker is the only one who can craft a truly custom fly rod. The blank--the interesting stuff--is the primary focus of the rod maker.

Honestly, I believe I'm a better rod maker than builder. There are plenty of rod builders out there who have elevated their craft to an art form. I don't state that lightly. A few people have said that they like my work. I try not to let that go to my head, so I never stop pushing myself to improve. I just like to make fly rods. It's part of the experience.