Photographs

A beautiful river Rainbow to Alex Swann and the Lightweight Special.

A magnificent Sea Trout to Uwe Heyk who was using a 7ft 6in Garrison 206, in this case rated for a 5 weight line. The fish weighed over 8 1/2 pounds and was more than 26 inches long.

I thought this might make some folk think twice before complaining about the cold! Very early season Grayling fishing in Norway Torbjorn puts a Garrison 206 taper rod through its paces.

New Rods

Blond rods

To read descriptions just run your mouse over the image.

The above rod, now sold I'm afraid, is an example of a blond rod constructed on a 3x3 node spacing and fitted with my own design cap and ring reelseat with morticed burr mali insert. The genuine agate lined butt ring is from a pre-war rod.
The rod shown above is constructed in conventional fashion using the cleanest available cane with minimal marking. Most of my blond rods are now constructed "nodeless", that is the nodes are removed and the remaining cane is spliced together. Some makers maintain that this gives a stronger rod as the nodes are perceived as being the weakest part of the material. However my objective in using this technique is to obtain the best clean cane from the culm giving a more sustainable approach than discarding so much basically sound material due to surface marking. The nodeless construction allows short lengths of marked strips to be discarded rather than full length strips.

The picture above shows a hand made agate lined stripper guide with a polished nickel silver frame, shown fitted to a blond rod and whipped in my signature colours of antique gold and black.

Below is an example of a blond rod with a swelled butt. In this case a 7ft FE Thomas 3 weight.

Flamed rods

The photo above is of a very elegant 8ft 5 weight based on a Leonard taper with a wet fly action designed for northern streams.

The flamed rod pictured above represents the longest fly rod that I make. It is perfectly possible to make a longer rod but beyond 8ft 6inches the weight penalty becomes significant. The rod shown is partially hollow built and weighs under 5 1/2 ozs which is relatively easy to use. It is a powerful rod quite capable of tackling large rainbow trout from the widely available stocked stillwater fisheries.
As the name suggests the cane used in these rods is tempered by controlled exposure to a naked flame before splitting, this give a surface hardening effect and produces the distinctive dark colouring.
The rod features a polished aluminium internally threaded uplocking reel seat of my own design and manufacture, later versions of which incorporate knurling on the turnscrew that is easier to use with wet hands. The insert is olive wood with an oiled finish and it is eccentrically turned to provide the reduced diameter where the reel mounts.
Whippings are translucent silk finely tipped in Highland Green and polished to achieve the perfect poured in place look only achievable with multiple coats of fine varnish. Single coat epoxy finishes may seek to emulate this finish but always look lumpy in comparison.
On the last picture the glue lines can be seen to the right of centre. This indicates that the blank has been glued with Rescorcinol Phenol Formaldehyde glue that leaves distinctive plumb coloured lines. On rods glued with Urea Formaldehyde and Epoxy resin the glue lines are invisible.
Node stagger on this rod is paired opposites "Payne style" rather than the more common 3x3.

Restoration - Fly Rods

A typical example of rod that has seen better days. In this case Hardys famous "CC de France" dating from 1940 and needing a new tip and re-finishing throughout.
As with a lot of restorations some searching was required to obtain matching silk and replacement english twist snake guides and a new male ferrule had to be made as an exact match to replace a cracked original.

In the after restoration pictures above the replacement tip is shown below the original butt to illustrate colour matching. In the perspective shot below the new cane looks lighter but the match is actually quite good. The low mounted nickel silver framed butt ring is original whilst the bronzed english twist snake guides were obtained for the project
This rod has a large number of intermediates the positions of which were all accurately recorded before stripping so that the rebuilt rod exactly matches the original.

In the picture below are the male and female ferrules. The female is original whilst the male is a one off replacement.

No apologies for using this photograph twice. A fine catch taken on the second outing with this restored rod. Photograph by the captor, Steven Keyse.

Restoration - Coarse rods

A rare Lindop Renown, Spanish Reed Roach Rod fully restored. A delicate rod weighing only 7 ozs this project required full re-colouring to match the signature strip.

Allcocks Lucky Strike after a full restoration including new handle, new purpose made male ferrules, straighten, re-ring and re-finish. The new butt ring is purpose made with genuine agate liner.

The Fred J Taylor Roach rod. Fitted with a new handle and completely re-built to the the owners specification. The male ferrule thats fits the removable butt has been nickle plated and re-fitted. In this case the blank for the new tip was provided by Chapmans, the original makers.

Re-finishing

"The Houghton" a three piece fly rod by Hardy and dating back to the 1920's is a good example of re-finishing work. The old badly oxidised varnish has been removed and the whole re-varnished, preserving all of the whippings. Including the 278 intermediates!

A recently completed Hardy Victor spinning rod that had suffered a terminal varnish meltdown and was covered in fibres from its rod bag stuck into the brown sticky finish. Now fully restored.

Coarse fishing rods

All models catered for including bespoke design. Pictured above is a 10ft 6in Fine Cane Avon. Based on Richard Walkers design but extended 6 in with a stiffened handle and finer tip.

Below is a custom designed 11ft 2in float rod. Hollow built with purpose made nickel silver ferrules.