The Old Man and the Driveway
Five o’clock came early… around 4:30…and after the normal 5 cups of French Roast while watching a bit of The Open (Garcia still leading) and defeating a slightly pesky Thursday NY Times crossword puzzle, the intrepid woodbutcher (rodmaker?) pulled on shoes and headed outdoors for the long-awaited test of his first prototype wood rod.
After a few tentative whips in the still air, he started to lay out a bit of line. The initial efforts were pitiful, decorated with 40 years of rust since the last time he had actually worked a fly rod. But after a few casts, the feeling started to return and he hardly even felt the line fold into the back of his head as he began to get some semblance of rhythm to the action. A hawk, spying the flipping line, swooped down from a nearby tree, then thought better of it and flew off into the grey light of approaching dawn.
Eventually, the line started to lay out further and straighter…first 20 yards, then 30…then 35… before reaching the limits of the leaderless 4 wt line and the abilities of the caster. The rod…well, the rod felt marvelous in his hands! The action was not stiff, nor was the rod a “noodle”, with the characteristic action of many of the longer early wood and bamboo rods. The 7 foot length felt perfect for the anticipated trip in August to the Sierras where the Old Man would have a chance to duel a lovingly farm-fed trout in one of the many beautiful bathtubs with trees that dot the mountain landscape.
Finally, after 20 minutes of casting, the woodworker (dare he think rodmaker?) was satisfied and wound up the line on the little Pflueger Sal-Trout reel chosen with care for this maiden voyage. As an afterthought, he put the butt against his shoe and gave the beautiful rod a few ginger tugs and bends, just to assure himself that it was, indeed, a rod for the ages…...and of course, it snapped like a twig right at the male ferrule of the mid.
Disheartened, but never defeated, the (still) woodworker pondered what it all meant. He had read somewhere that there was a reason that rodmakers stopped using wood for fly rods….could this have anything to do with it, he thought? After all, the wood in a rod was destined to exist near the breaking point by the nature of the action. With baseball bats made of Ash, a stamp was always placed on the grain face and all young players were admonished to always keep the stamp “up”, to insure making contact against the grain so the bat would not crack. But with a fly rod, the grain is what defines the action and even if set up against the grain, the rod would bend in the direction of the grain when put under load.
So what were his alternatives? He could make the rod bigger in diameter, something often done with early rods. However, that would just produce a clumsy, actionless instrument that would not perform as he wished. Or he could just make lots of extra tips and mids to keep the pole in action if more breaks occurred…again, an approach used by the early rodmakers. Lastly, he could make the rod from laminations of one or more types of wood so that, as with split bamboo, the construction would employ strength on strength to yield a stiffer, but sturdier product.
As for the prototype, the woodworker fondly returned it to his shop for gluing and wrap/repair, comforted in the knowledge that he had learned a few things and at the least, had a nice wall-hanger to grace his displays….and who knows…perhaps after repair, the rod will still be strong enough to catch that trout! The strength added at that most critical stress point in the rod may be all that’s needed.
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