[SPEAKER_01]: Join us August 14th through 16th for the 2026 mastering rod-building seminar at the Orange Beach Event Center at the Warf in Orange Beach, Alabama.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your chance to learn from the best in the rod-building industry while enjoying a full weekend of hands-on education.
[SPEAKER_01]: great food and community fellowship.
[SPEAKER_01]: On Saturday, we'll have seminars all day, we'll feed you breakfast lunch, and have a crawfish and shrimp boil dinner on Saturday, plus breakfast and more seminars, including lunch on Sunday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Discounted lodging is available just a one minute walk from the venue, so grab your tickets now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're bringing others, be sure to include all attendee names at checkout.
[SPEAKER_01]: For more information, email my guide Jack Baron
[SPEAKER_01]: Jay Barron at anglersresource.net, that's JBARO in at anglersresource.net or call 2519-43-4491.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you in Orange Beach.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello to everyone and welcome to Rooks a Master in Rod Building Podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your guest gamer, Bill Wagner and I'm your ex-girlfriend.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girl
[SPEAKER_01]: So Bill, don't infuriate the Gons of Folk Aldoich, Rockin'.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was okay, they won't understand it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have not tuned in the wrong place, people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just playing, but when I get the great pleasure of having a fluent German speaker who can appreciate exactly how bad my...
[SPEAKER_01]: vocabulary pronunciation and grammar is I always like to trot it out so they can as a Germans love to do make fun of me and point out my mistakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well you're grammar wasn't too bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the nation was not that great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah well I was rushing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm rusty buddy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really really rusty.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll do take two.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll do take two until we get it right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So welcome back everybody to the Mastering Rod Building podcast and I'm sorry I'm having a little fun today because I'm excited I have one of my rod building heroes on again with me Mark Krause and a lot of you know Mark you've met Mark I've known Mark's work for more than 30 years he and I have known each other for more than 20 years but for those of you who don't know Mark also known as the Munich or Munich Rod Man has been building rods for 52 years which in
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, maybe the more impressive part is that he started when he was 12, which is really cool, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You think it was hard for adults to get into it back then, and there's no information.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine a kid, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in Mark has led just a tremendously interesting life.
[SPEAKER_01]: We won't go into all of it, unless he chooses to, or it comes up.
[SPEAKER_01]: But
[SPEAKER_01]: He is a chef.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a chef of apprentice at 16, became a master chef at 19.
[SPEAKER_01]: He joined the German army and served in the army for six years and has some really interesting stories about that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been a professional long-haul and over the road truck driver.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is a painter himself and the son of his mother is a very famous German painter.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's a true Renaissance man, jack of all trades, master of many trades as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Please welcome Mark Krause.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I should tell you that at Mark's house, we're, I'm also a little nervous.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're playing to a very discerning audience.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do we got?
[SPEAKER_01]: We got five dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got seven in here, right seven dogs seven lovely, uh, for babies in Mark's, uh, we're boring one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, just give us a little time.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll get them all bored, trust me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unless they love rod building, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So mark everybody, despite your accolades and pedigree and experience, everybody gets the same question.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm actually really fascinated about this with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you grew up in Germany.
[SPEAKER_01]: How did you get into fishing in the first place?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then how did you get into rod building at age 12?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you have someone who,
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew you mastered a total lot of students that are kind of like an accident.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was okay to story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: To start with your first question, how I got into fishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When my mom got pregnant, she left Germany and we went to the US with my dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't soldier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't know anybody in the US during her whole pregnancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She fished.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where was she?
[SPEAKER_00]: And Pennsylvania, you in Tom, Pennsylvania.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So was she transition or drug fish and catfish?
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: It, she would catch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started fishing before I could actually walk my grandpa's taught me casting when I barely could walk in a backyard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with with four, he taught me how to hunt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was an outdoors family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: How I got into rob building.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was 12 years old on a
[SPEAKER_00]: And the guy could cast his spoon almost across the river.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were fishing for the German Shad similar to the American Shad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two, three feet long, big.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that fascinated me and I asked him what kind of rod it is and he says he built it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's that spike my interest.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then a couple of weeks later, a box store was closing a big box store in Germany and that is sporting good sections.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my mother comes home with a blank.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said to her, what's that?
[SPEAKER_00]: She says, well, it's a fishing rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: I says, mom, where the guides?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's the roost?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's the handle?
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... she says i don't know they said it's a fishing rod so and it was in the uh... a japanese tincara rock where a German steprock it was supposed to be a regular rock yeah it's a rock going to be bill yeah so i took this plan to a local store and ask him what do i do with it he says you build it and i asked him if he knows how to use his note uh... but he has to run up his vendor so had the parts so we ordered some guides in a real seat that's all he ordered me guides in a real seat
[SPEAKER_00]: So I took parachute court and wrapped a handle and that was in 1973.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did parachute court handles before anybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: before her she cord was widely available as a craft item yeah and I was I took electrical tape to take down the real city was a plate real see okay so it was kind of easy for me to rob was telescopic so he got each section got me one guides so I had five guides on there uh I didn't know how to get the guides on I didn't with electrical tape and then put you over it okay like sealed a tape off yeah yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I went fishing and when I caught a fish, that was it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I caught a fish on the rod I built with the float.
[SPEAKER_00]: I built out of a keel from a goose.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was hooked.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got home and I asked my mom if there's any where she can find something about rubbill.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she found a book printed in 1968.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, our materials change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the thought process behind it was still the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, it's still, I mean, we, there's, we had to tell people this all the time, wrapping guides on a rod blank with thread and finishing it with something like we've been doing it that way for 200 years, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's parts that have changed, but there's parts that haven't changed at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not so far anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reasoning one we're doing in the extension of our arms,
[SPEAKER_00]: So the book helped me a lot and I rebuilt that rod and then friends wanted a rod and living in Germany.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were not in a fishing club, you couldn't go fishing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: All tributaries in Germany are leads to clubs for private people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so by the time I was like 13, 14, I was building for 400 members to our odds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just like an angled breeder shop, there would have... Yeah, it's like a...
[SPEAKER_00]: on the fine okay a club yeah fine okay yeah and in Germany as you may be still remember everything is a fine sports it's not that in school it's not on a private fine right it's barely pay anything yeah the same was with fishing fine fishing club I think my fee was 10 bucks a year oh gosh wow and you had instant huge audience of custom of customers for you that's fascinating
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course I wasn't making money, but what I did then, and you have to think that that's a long time ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Long time, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told him 10 marks extra per rod plus the points.
[SPEAKER_01]: For your profit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see the other side what I did every time when somebody wanted let's say red black and brown thread.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would buy a red black and brown thread.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next guy says he wants red, black and brown thread.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will buy different colors.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got red, brown and black already.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You said to build it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, every time a new build came, I bought new thread.
[SPEAKER_01]: yeah and and that's why my collection is over two thousand spools because I thought it was going to say well that you sure whatever if you want to use that as an explanation I you know or or you might be like me a little bit of a gear freaking a hoarder and have to have every color and every size to be happy but yeah it does make sense you came by it honest I also think it's really interesting because we're going to get into some topics next
[SPEAKER_01]: about your build in your skills and sort of the way you approach your odd building, which to me is really innovative and fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the fact that you had to come up with a grip material and come up with your own float material out of a goose quill feather and all this stuff like it kind of to me now I'm kind of having an aha moment because it informs in a way how innovative you've always been with using different materials and things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's let's jump into that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is going to sound like the Mark Krause fan club, but I've told
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I really admire about builders is, this is art, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It comes in all different forms, and anything can be done really, really well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Any kind of a rod builder can be an artist in weaving, an artist in wood turning, an artist in
[SPEAKER_01]: court grips and composite court grips in threat art of infinite varieties of marbling of custom finishes I would say it's a lost art and of itself to execute really high quality epoxy finish work on every part of the rod every single time and I've met very few people.
[SPEAKER_01]: who are obsessed with it as I am, and you're more obsessed with it than I am, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, and we'll talk about that a little bit because there's a lot of stuff I know and I teach that I ultimately kind of learn from you and I do it an easier way and probably not to the integral YouTube, but enough that it helps me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I admire these people and I always felt like if I was going to be a craftsman, if I was going to say I was a professional rod builder, then I shouldn't just be able to build one kind of rod in one color or one style, I shouldn't only be able to do one kind of decorative technique, I shouldn't only be able to work in one medium like cork or wood or carbon fiber, I really always felt like if you're a master.
[SPEAKER_01]: The customer could ask you for anything and you could execute it at a masterful level and I was always interested in trying and I'm still interested and I'm still journeying and trying to learn all these techniques, but if I had to single out a person to be like if I had to pick somebody who's probably mastered more techniques than everybody else like you've really done it all I mean you've.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you weave and color change weave, you do beautiful woodwork, you do beautiful cork and birchwork, you do beautiful, you're really innovative with, and we're gonna talk a lot about the 3D printing and some of the carbon fiber stuff you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is my own, I make my own acrylics, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, you pour your own acrylics, like you just, you do a lot of, but your cable of any kind of thread art, basically your cable of any kind of marbling.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm one of the, I'm looking at it, sit here in my office, one of the featured rods in my collection that I love, love, love is a big,
[SPEAKER_01]: AV1 shark rod you built me that has an incredible G irushi on it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So like I could see a rod almost anywhere in the world made by anybody and I could say Mark Kraus can do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So is that just like so congratulations on that and I really admire that and it It's a lifetime worth of craftsmanship and before you get discouraged as a new rod builder remember Mark's been doing it since he was 12 and that's 52 years so
[SPEAKER_01]: He earned it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But is that just like how did that happen?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because for me, it's been like a deliberate like I don't really love weaving But I feel like I need to learn it so I'm gonna do it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't enjoy closed decorative cross wraps as much as some people, but I feel like you need to be able to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if I got I'm gonna learn how to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like a real deliberate
[SPEAKER_01]: March for me and I am not saying I'm at your level.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just saying I I deliberately added some skills.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't I'm not personally drawn to because I just feel like their skills.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to have right did you go about it like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I need to just round it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to I want to be able to check all these boxes or was that just like.
[SPEAKER_01]: your appetite and artistic creativity that drove you to just trial these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that make sense?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, so was it on purpose?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it just you being you and it just.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I tell you straight up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think now back when I started rob building a 74 and a 73 75, I build a lot of rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody seen in Europe that created perhaps.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not until the early 80s when Clements' book came on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, I bought that book.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was living in the States and we were in Germany.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he got the book for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I showed it to friends and then friends as I went that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that says okay holy shit how do I do that so I have the wrong laying on my knees sitting on my bed in my room trying to wrap it and keep the threads tight didn't work that great yeah I fold it oh books and laid them on top of the run on my knees now I can turn it and it was stay in place great that's how I did a decorative wrap yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, reading more and trying more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had a couple of friends, they were interested in Rob building too, so we brainstorm together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can we make this happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: And our big thing was to do rods, what you couldn't buy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's custom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's truly custom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I found out the secret from that guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I watched him at then.
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember why he was casting so far that spoon.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was using a weight fly rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: We built a spinning rod with an old style parabolic action.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's being catapulted that spoon out like crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The downside was sometimes the fish were so big.
[SPEAKER_00]: You broke the rods off.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we didn't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were looking at the fish.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were getting the fish.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're reaching them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we tried to do stuff to improve what we can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we didn't have a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I couldn't go to convenience in the back of store and look for really fine floats.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my favorite was for my headshot, the quills, they make the finest floats.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Japanese still use them today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can put one magnet on a hook size 18 and drift that down a stream.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why we were building so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't that we wanted to build, we had to build.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the first, that someone, you and I have shared a lot of common interests in one of the things we obsess about a lot is you probably have built more like super ultra light.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm talking hyper light ultra light custom ultra light like crazy light line crazy long rods probably more than anybody I know for sure right I won't go crazy and say more than anybody in the world because I don't know the world but and like you know some of the innovation of that stuff we've talked about yeah this fits right I just built some 20 footers for crappy fishermen in Missouri.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and Mark mentioned fishing with a magnet.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first time I went to Germany is an exchange student in high school and I stayed in clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: I brought back for me and as gifts from my dad and my brother, Silstar or maggot runs, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a whole like European style of rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: Think a long limber rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: with a long hollow, usually cork tape wrapped butt section of the rod with sliding rings for your seat.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as hollow and inside you have a bunch of interchangeable tips that have like size 2.5 or 3 maybe mark, wire line guides and so...
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, most of them are around 2.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, so they're super hyper sensitive accurate light line rods for fishing maggots for trout.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's some for fishing carp where you can't and a carp, you know, are so savvy and clever and spooky and you they can't feel any resistance when they eat the bait.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm we yeah, we use them for trout rods for shore fishing from lakes.
[SPEAKER_01]: We could cast a mile.
[SPEAKER_01]: We used them almost like downrigger rods for trolling spoons and plugs for trout in lakes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it was, it was that was my first kind of for a into that.
[SPEAKER_01]: having that cross both German and European expertise and experience because they do fish very differently than we do here in many months in this fish yeah right and different fish in different fisheries we don't fish for roach right like we don't fish for there there's a host of fish that you guys target over there oh barbell barbell yeah like that's a tough fish right yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: and people always ask me what is a barbell that says take a buffalo carp and mix that with a salmon they had a baby that's what you have on the line that's pretty good which which kind of salmon if you had to pick one of the kinds of salmon is it can't see them because we are all right yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: When you set the hook on them, they explode, but like you said, it's really hard to catch them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're very, very sensitive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grailing don't exist in this country anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: We fish for grailing continuously everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: I fish downtown Munich from Grailing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to fish very, very, very, very small.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very light.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I'm not really specialized on it, but that was our go-to fish, and that's what we did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you always have been one who, and you send me, like, and I appreciate this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am bragging not complaining, but you'll send me middle of the night, middle of the day, any picture of something.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like always tinkering with something.
[SPEAKER_01]: You make your own fixtures, you've made a lot of, and we're gonna talk about some of this with the, I think you're just doing,
[SPEAKER_01]: Incredibly fascinating stuff with a 3D printer these days, and you and I both share an affinity and you help me out a lot over time You've been working with carbon fiber as long as anybody For grips and parts and stuff you also fabricate a lot of jigs and fixtures and stuff like Do you have any machining in your background or is that just coming from the do it yourself and like you were talking about You when you started out you had to make your own you didn't have access to anything The legit for anything that just carry over or
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is one thing with a young people now to understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was growing up in YouTube, we didn't have an on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have documentation on everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were hardly any books printed about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was trial and error.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have tons of scars on the top of my hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're learning how to work with a metal lathe in the back of my hands up continuously Ask Andy in Aaron's Eddie about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's one of the five.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, machine us in North America and he's missing fingers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's just cautionary tale, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, it was self-taught, but I had to, a lot of people say, oh, you were machinous reviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I was a chef.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was sling a wood cooking spill, but my hobby was always building rods, and then my hobby got really big into army, I was building for all my,
[SPEAKER_00]: Officers, I was building them rods on when I was on duty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Found out that I built rods every maneuver.
[SPEAKER_00]: We went any position we had a good to somewhere more zones.
[SPEAKER_00]: They always asked me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got rods in the truck.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it sure, dude?
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all vote in my name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because people says, but how does it imagine there's a it's when we went because of you because of all and all these places and maneuvers who's going to check the army if they got a license.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right, not not likely right, yeah, hey, you might as well get the most benefit out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can, right, we're in the uniform might as well fish.
[SPEAKER_01]: no man that's awesome so let's let's talk about this thing and i'm fascinated by this and you've blown my mind with a few things but um y'all don't know for those of you who don't know mark marks very precise very uh quality oriented when he says fit and finish he means like to the
[SPEAKER_01]: millionth of a millimeter like he's he's is obsessed with sort of quality and fit and stuff like that is anybody which is partially I think a somewhat German characteristic and also partly just the way you execute all of your work with the high level of precision.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have gone deep in this I would call it a rabbit hole but I don't think it's a rabbit hole I think it's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: with 3D printing as it relates to rod building.
[SPEAKER_01]: So before I get ahead of myself, I've got a million questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some driven by stuff you've sent me pictures of, which I think is so cool that I wanna learn how to do as I've told you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And some of it is just kind of, I'm always interested in how,
[SPEAKER_01]: innovators are thinking and really creative people like how do they tumble to these things like how did you 3D printing kind of journey and you're way into it We're like getting formally taught and certified now like you will be like a master operator or something we talk about that But like how do that start for you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you just see it and think oh that's got some potential in rod building or were you trying to solve a particular problem or Well, how did you get started with this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a little bit interested when they first started to come out, but not that much driven that I said, I need a printer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to a buddy's shop.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has a big metal shop, and he printed with a certain filament, a bolt for a Harley, because it was Sunday afternoon, if we couldn't get that bolt in the poor of a guy couldn't write home.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, oh, you're also a motorcycleist like we left it out, but okay, so so you see your buddy in your machine shop 3D print a bolt and that got that got the wheels turned in, huh?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was enough to get him home and I thought, man, if it can bring enough strength to hold that for a while, it wasn't a motor block or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just an attachment needed to go back on the bike.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will work for a fisherman.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will definitely share.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I checked out the different filaments and some are very usable for fishing and some of course not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's let's talk about that a little bit and in Mark, I want to and for the audience and for Mark, I always when I have guests like this on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm always telling them, like, hey, you spent years in a lot of money and a lot of time figuring this out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you don't have to give away any secret sauce.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't accept you.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're really, they're really isn't secrets.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I live by the philosophy, the Germans live by knowledge, not shared as knowledge plays.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've been the beneficiary of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, talk to me about what makes a filament suitable and not suitable for fishing for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what are the ones you really like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you have to look for temperature it's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Were you live?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very hot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't use regular PLA.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're PLA tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Top is actually for I live enough, but for you not because your temperatures get too hot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it could distort.
[SPEAKER_00]: It won't break, but it could shift a little bit in the high temperatures.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a filament out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called PETG.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody says pet G.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's a filament with carbon fiber.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if this is what you're printing all these seats and that's what I do on my rib my rod parts for.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bring it something out for somebody who lives in big heat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I use the filament it's called ABS.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means the chamber when I'm printing it is already on 160 degrees my novelist 300 degrees.
[SPEAKER_01]: My good.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that tells you that filament is really good if it has to get hot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's thermally stable at high high temperatures way higher than rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, most blanks won't survive 300 degrees.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, I mean, they won't the most of them are rolled at 180.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I always tell people never hold your lighter on the tip of the bank.
[SPEAKER_01]: guilty done that yeah because they will flop down like a loop you know what dude I literally have I ever told you this story I back when I was young in broke I saved all my money and I bought like a and they were like $595 or $495 or something ridiculous when G-Lumus came out with the GMX fly rods and I had to wait forever to get this nine foot five weight four-piece GMX fly rods or G-HX fly rods, sorry
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first thing I did, I'm rapping, single-foot snake guides on it, and I go to heat up my finish with my lighter, like I normally do, Mark, and the six inches that rod tip just went.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I literally almost threw up in the back of my mouth.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was sick to my stomach, and it's like, yeah, that's high modulus.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really low melting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Luminous was so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I called them a ton of exactly what I did, and they's like, we'll send you another one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't do that again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is your free beat.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, thank you, thank you, thank you, because I can afford to replace it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had another company in the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were rolling the blanks at 169.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I can give a heat blower to 169.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was going to say, I think in summertime down here in a black car with the windows closed, we could get to 169.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a lot of heat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so it needs to be thermally stable.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these materials, so even though they're high heat stable, they don't crack or get rid of when they're cold, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is like, you found this carbon fiber stuff to be this pet GCF to be very strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's very strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's stronger.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was, I think I told you the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was printing a real C. And it may be printed.
[SPEAKER_00]: two millimeters.
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone was wrong with my spool and a printer stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: It said check a spool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did not thought I should have just started.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to start over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was just two millimeter of the threading.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I take this off the hot plate, start over, take that little piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a tiny ring.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I'm to break it with my fingers, you couldn't break it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought holy shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I take a nylon seal and cut something that's
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, like nothing at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Heck, a lot of the, a lot of that carbon fiber real seats on the market today.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can crush with my bare hands, and I'm not just like a big burly, super strong guy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, no, you're old like me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're not burned.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't make me start pulling out social security cards and comparing dates.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, hey, look, I'm flattered to be in the same categories you in any way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if that's age, I'll take it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll take it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So some of the stuff that you've done,
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you've done some really interesting trim pieces.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've done some really interesting butt caps and fitments.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've done that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my pet P2 butt caps.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, and I'll tell you why.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I came back to the United States in 1992, I was building rods already for quite some time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And first place, I called the sklimits.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like you, I ordered a loom of splank from him and everything, and get the real seed and the guides, got food cheese, dides, and then I get to the butt cap and I say, hey, Dale, and you're cataloging all rubber butt caps, and he says, yeah, that's what we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, so you're telling me, I'm spending now $500 on component and have to pay a dollar for a butt cap.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, that's all there is us as look in Europe.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have book caps.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can exchange the wooden knob on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have book caps then already.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like 80 bucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, but think about it, the Europeans put a lot of money in their hobby.
[SPEAKER_00]: They buy shotguns to 20 grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: They buy rods where the blanks cost two grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they see it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm going out with the little spare time I have, I don't want my materials fail.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's I can little afford it to fail if I don't get much time to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why they do spend a lot of money on that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Clemens was totally shocked.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, are you serious?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, God, there's a shit load of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he asked me for one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grabbed my box and I said, this one is from Fuji.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I sell Fuji.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, yeah, but it's probably Fuji Europe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I started to make my own because they were, there were no good but caps available in the US.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were all rumour.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was frustrating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have to start making my butt caps once I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's make the trip parts the once I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's make the real seats so it's just a natural evolution.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could get what you wanted and so you just started making your own it's like the real seat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I showed you a couple days ago, they're where at one point some real seats in that color Michael downs has one, but I cannot find him anywhere to get a special production.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I bought a filament in that color.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I used a hoods from food she and made the body with the 3D printer now I got that color So dude, and it looked good to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, um, yeah, I looked really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I proved that since you've seen it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's awesome You also do and this is kind of where some of my fascination comes from and look I
[SPEAKER_01]: You're the first person I ever saw do any of this stuff, you're the first person I know of do any of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry if somebody else has done it first and again, I'm not trying to I'm in no position tonight or crown the first place person and I don't really think it's about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's about knowledge sharing and evolution and creativity.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have kind of mastered making your own carbon fiber grips and you've done a lot of work with I've only really done work with sleeve carbon and you've done work with rolled carbon sleeve carbon chopped carbon like you've mess with a lot of stuff which is fascinating to me I got carbon thread
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you've tried kind of everything you can get, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you kind of came up with this notion of, I'm going to say you came up with it to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It came from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Almost like 3D printing a cage or a structure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then skinning our carbon fiber ring over it and getting a intentionally designed hollow assembly that's incredibly strong, incredibly light.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I think is really cool is you're able to produce asymmetrical
[SPEAKER_01]: almost everything in rod building is to concentric to board right because it's turned on a laid you're able to do some ergonomic things and some curved and shaped and I do an oval.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah exactly like you're you doing all those talk to me about that process like how did you get into that and and very simple any time you pick up a tool handle it's never round right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always oval.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always thought that a fly rod handle, yes, they feel good, but they're not comfortable after six and a half hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now I carved one myself out of cork, oval, and I thought that feels a lot better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I did a lot of cork handles and wooden handles, as you know, I did them oval.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the beginning, I would do them like a millimeter and a half wall thickness now and down to 0.7 millimeter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I make them really thin, very, very light and then I cover them with a sleeve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a carbon fiber sleeve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once you put your lamination fluid on it and it dry down, it is hard like a rock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and there y'all, you have to, we'll post some pictures and post some links, but I'm talking about some, you know, one of the things you see like in Bavaria is these custom walking sticks, you know what I mean, and they're like these beautifully crafted.
[SPEAKER_01]: pieces hand carved and all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have this one shape you do in a pistol grip.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like a arched shape and it's short.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll just be the arch and if it's longer be the arch with like a straight extension going off the back.
[SPEAKER_01]: That reminds me of some of those beautiful high dollar kind of like you'd see at a Christmas market or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: German walking sticks, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, my goal for doing something like that was staying comfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: If your hand gets uncomfortable when you're fishing, you're getting aggravated.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're getting aggravated, you're going to miss the hits.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you miss the hits, you're going to be really pissed off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, your your hobby did exactly the opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was supposed to be amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It made you mad instead of making you happy and relaxing you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I always think around how can we get it to work better and feel better?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's never that much about looks.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about functionality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I get it to work and I know, okay, I can repeat that 100 times that will be always the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, now we can try to make it pretty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So so you mentioned the wall thickness on these pieces.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I keep coming back to the tube and the sock kind of carbon fiber like I'm very familiar with that over, like you're a thing core or some other base like if somebody wants to try something like this what do they need to know you sort of given us a key to the wall thickness there you told us about this pet GCF that's a really good fiber we can use are you vacuum bagging or you do in kind of the way like you normally would or you shrink tubing or how
[SPEAKER_00]: if you disclose.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: The heat is too big.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your thin shell will collapse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're literally just doing a top coating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not emanating it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A couple of youngsters, how I do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pull my sleeve over it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pull it as tight as possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I put my lamination fluid on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wait about 1.5 an hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I rub it in my hand into the sleeve itself, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: I rub it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I literally like you're pushing the material and it's charging it that it goes through and through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once I have that, I strip off the excess of lemonade because you're going to push some of it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it can only soak up this much and then the rest is just sitting there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've striped that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I retime my ends again because now I've stretched the sleeve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, rubbing it in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Expand it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you stretched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm making the tight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm going to put it in a compression chamber to dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not in the bag.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I put a vacuum chamber.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a pot chamber.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that will eat or is it just the vacuum all the time?
[SPEAKER_00]: I put it on 60 pound.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just air pressure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, push it down all the rest remaining air out of the sleeve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Huh, that's fascinating and again, you got to see these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're light.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're very strong and look I know there's people going to be like how strong is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's strong enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm satisfied with you Are that it's strong enough?
[SPEAKER_01]: I know and I've got I've gotten a hold of a bunch of these things You've taken them to ICRBE taking them to shows.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've gotten to touch them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know Okay, that's awesome anything different that rubbing in is a great tip.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never tried that I'm gonna have to mess with that and you just have to be careful to keep your fiber aligned straight But yeah, yeah, okay
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've weighed on purpose about 1.5 an hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give it 1.5 an hour to really soak in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it's just thickening a little at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's already kind of, you have to do it before it gets tacky.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: I live on 3,000 feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: So any resin up here takes longer to dry or not to react than where you were.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK. And for me, it's about 1.5 an hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: And are you just putting on nitrogloves and just Yeah, I'm just putting on nitrogloves and Okay, rub it in and then I have already prepped my back you and pot and I use A portable like a a little bias, you know, you can buy it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Loves just to hold the piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay, I don't want it to lay down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want it to stand up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, because sometimes I think maybe if I lay it down the pressure So big it will bend it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stand and straight in there so that the pressure is all sides Okay, and not just pushing down towards the bottom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and the no heat no shrink to because the heat and that makes sense But I wouldn't have thought of that that's fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean the new material I use ABS now What's kind of tricky to get to print right, but I figured it out how to do it now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I might I'm gonna try one with it and see if I can apply a heat gun on a shrink tube
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah on that with that material you probably can based on that high 10 because it takes so much to get that stuff to melt yeah and that might work, but you don't need really expensive filament ABS and some of those
[SPEAKER_00]: interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you've been at this for a while and you have the luxury of the resources to like if you need a piece of equipment you're going to get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: like if you what advice and you've obviously tried a lot of things that didn't work and like the strength of you try a lot of materials that failed and you melted and broke and messed up a lot of stuff like if someone's listening to this and they're interested in getting more into it like what walk me through kind of like the equipment primers see you're going to need you're going to need some way to design either scan an existing part you want to sort of start with or copy or a program or design create and design a part right you can get
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of programs online.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can download from free.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have one you like or would recommend based on your experience?
[SPEAKER_00]: Tinker Cat is pretty good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you, so get to use tinkercad and figure out how to use it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure there are two tutorials all over YouTube and read it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just start designing your item.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once you decide it, it has to go into a slice of program.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: The slice of program is connected with your 3D program.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
[SPEAKER_01]: So are you saying slice up or slice or slice or SL?
[SPEAKER_00]: OK. OK. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Got you.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK. And in that program, then you can tell it.
[SPEAKER_00]: how thick you want the walls to be, what kind of infill you want the walls to have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, since we're making it so thin, I don't need no infill.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just doing a single line wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like the real seed I showed you a couple of days ago, the first one you've seen, I did with a 45% infill.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I've redid it, I did it with a 100% infill.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I've made cutouts and now the walls are not hollows.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, that's what I mean, it's it's played around with a 3D printing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's for all of us playing around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how we're learning it.
[SPEAKER_01]: How how.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we, how should we be thinking about the actual 3D printer, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there's more of them at more accessible price points now than there ever have been.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I've got to imagine not all of them are suitable for what you're trying to do is a rod builder like and so I will often tell people Like if we're talking about acoustic guitars right and you wanted to buy a really good acoustic guitar you'd say, hey, make sure you get a solid top You know, solid wood guitar with scallop racing and a trust ride like don't okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a good tip here for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, perfect there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of printers out there as you said.
[SPEAKER_00]: The main thing what we found out now is the humidity in the filament, meaning how much humidity did your filament pick up while you stored it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, do not get an open printer, like a lot of marne, because that means your filament doesn't open to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And an open printer also cannot contain the heat and the chamber correctly, because it has no walls.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and that's where I found out is the big difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you want to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to do precise parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need a good printer.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to spend literally a lot more than the open wall than maybe 152 hundred bucks more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now you've got to close the printer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, what do they call that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, they call an open printer in open printer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they call that a close printer or a change printer?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a box printer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Box printer.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one with a cabinet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you definitely want a box printer with a cabinet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: What else in terms of the deals and specs?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, again, for your filament to feed it into, if your filament is hanging on my outside of your printer, like a lot of them are, that means it's picking up the humidity again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why dry your filament and then put it on the printer and it's running again in the high humidity?
[SPEAKER_00]: So get an AMS feeder.
[SPEAKER_00]: They cost around 200 bucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: They keep it dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're heated and they're closed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your filament is never in the open when it feeds and it's all in-house.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the simple part.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other part is
[SPEAKER_00]: If you build a rod in the customer once a purple rod and now you think man, purple winding checks and everything in real C check will be really cool and you need size and I say that on purpose now, size 22.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regular winding checks start at the stop at 15.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you need to go bigger once and the bigger ones are pretty bulky, they don't look really.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The printer.
[SPEAKER_00]: you draw it in your tinker cap program takes you 10 minutes and then you print about 15 minutes later, it's on your rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you played?
[SPEAKER_01]: So the carbon fiber, I think, is the one based on what I've learned from you in our conversations that I think is probably the most applicable to what we're doing with rod building, but some people are actually printing metals and stuff now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you asked for any of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's basically the same way to print.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the way more expensive forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so and look, I don't I mean, this stuff you you've had some of these winding checks like you'll leave them out on the sun to test the color fastness to test the Yeah, they're fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're great.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to last.
[SPEAKER_01]: They actually look really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'd have to be pretty Now you're picky about finish though.
[SPEAKER_01]: So some things like I'm looking around at my desk.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was seeing if I could pick some of 3D printed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some things that are 3D printed are really coarsely printed.
[SPEAKER_01]: They obviously look like you see
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, your stuff doesn't look like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell me what you want the outside to look like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's almost like when you're printing paper stuff, you can choose a photo, high quality photo setting, or you can choose a draft setting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just choosing your printer setting to be a very high quality outer finish.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the thing, how to pick a printer, read everything up, read how their slice program they're using like the Creality Users One, Bamboo Users One, Some Flow Users One, they all use their own program.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look what the people are talking about the program, they a lot of them say, well, they're good, but it will take you a while to get used to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of who say they're easy to manage, explains and very, very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when you can change everything, how you want the outside of your project to be, how dense you want it to be, what kind of overhang you want to have, you can change everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where you have to play through and it's not a secret, but if I write a program to make that real seat you see, I use a bamboo, you use Creality.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I sent you to finish STL file, your Creality might not run with it because I have different settings in my bamboo, so you have to know your settings what you have to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the only way to find out what you have to do is just play with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seriously, make toys, make whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I made Mother's Day card with the printer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you also have made some really cool little statues and figurines and things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I made the powers with the printer too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I've roses in the base.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I didn't have to go to the store.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just printed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did she did that go over with Johanna or she yeah, yeah, she likes him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Enough to water him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: My wife would be like you forgot didn't you you're late last night.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty miss in the basement because you forgot it was mother day.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I would get.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's when you print a lot ahead and you can overwhelm her with a lot of prints.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, another thing you do that I really like and I'm kind of jealous of this like it's a neat thing and you sort of do it as a matter of course and now as I'm hearing about how you learn and the way you think about things and Have in a different perspective from what's available in Europe like I saw lines up and make sense for me now, but
[SPEAKER_01]: you very often on almost every rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm thinking just about every rod you sent me or I've seen, there's a custom fabricated part on there, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like you said, something somebody can't go by.
[SPEAKER_01]: It occurs to me that that's another awesome application for the 3D printer is, you know, so let's say I have a little metal lead and I can make winding checks or I can make real seats or something, but I'll need one that's a 22.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's a pain to set it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to burn a bunch of material.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to have to make more than one to get him to turn out, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But with a 3D printer, you can literally fabricate one custom part for one size, pretty immediately, and it really low cost.
[SPEAKER_00]: And well, but now comes the good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I told you, I did that real seed in 22.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because somebody wanted that specific real seed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's in my printer's file.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now, you're going to call me, hey, I love what you did for him in that 22 real seed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want it too, but I needed for her 24.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes me five seconds to change it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can change the percentage to overall percentage.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can change one axis or two axis or all three axis.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can change it manipulated the way you needed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: and you can do any color.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one thing I have never done in all those years, no two rods look alive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's another good point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm into bringing that up too.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I bring that up, not because people should necessarily go copy what Mark's doing, but think about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to have unique bespoke rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to have rods that are truly custom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, think about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's never made a rod that's an exact duplicate of another rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's never, he doesn't make any rods that don't have a custom fabricated part on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you want to talk about being a Mark Krauss rod, a music rod man rod, a rod father rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, that's unique.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think that's something every builder could learn from.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's, uh, not to rule anybody's business.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never, never, ever buy a pre-shaped
[SPEAKER_00]: because it's custom and I want it to be for that person, especially when I do fly rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you hold a fly rod handle, your middle finger shall never touch the palm of your hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should stay about a quarter inch away right the moment it touches you're putting tension on your fingers Yeah, that means your fingers are gonna go cramp up means your grips too small.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and the wrong shape yeah and one hundred percent of all factory fly rod animals are too thin for me Yeah, yeah, but a very simple reason I still can hold it Yes, my hand will be uncomfortable, but if they make them thick a guy with a little hand he can't hold it
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So no one's feeling your rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will drop it continuously.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why they make him smaller, not to be mean against us, but they have to supply it to everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got to be average.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got to be for every man, not for one particular man or woman, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the beauty of custom.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what's so valuable about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: What you've got to be, so you've also, let's see, you mentioned the FlyRoy handles.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've done retan, you've done birch, you've done wood, you've done every variety of cork and composite cork imaginable, every cord, everything, you've done all kinds of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, I really like some of the stuff you're doing with real seats and handles with this 3D printer.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh what other stuff are you messing with any other ideas or any other places you're kind of tinker and with the 3d printer or anything else kind of well as you've seen on and I'm learning that and it's it's hard to do my thought it is yeah uh i'm making now the shelves
[SPEAKER_00]: for a handle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I cover him with a simple carbon sock.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very simple one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my hydrogen dip them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you've gotten some really cool effects.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you'll, if you will let me, we may share some of those photos as part of this podcast and link to them in the description and as we kind of push it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, um, and so you're kind of doing that at home, uh, just buying your own film and setting up your own tank and just hiding it open.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bought
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and set up my tank and I dipped and it would not have here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reversed it dipped it would not have here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I called me a sole resting piece our friend which was passed away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was a master in high group dipping.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he was really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we did with you camera and he watched what I'm doing and he says you're doing everything correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: The chemicals are bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... so i call the company they rejected any replacement and my told a message look i can send you the video because we videotaped it warning disclaimer by the mastering rod building podcasts just because marks
[SPEAKER_01]: Hydro dipping didn't work because of chemicals that does not mean that's what's wrong if your epoxy does not set up It is absolutely user error and measuring and mixing problems, but we're now we will now resume our regularly scheduled programming Okay, you actually you're the one you got bad chemicals.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tell you all it works.
[SPEAKER_00]: You put water in the tub Yes, you're a your activator on top of that water and then you put your film on it Yeah, but you're film on and then you slowly dip your part in every time I dip my part in nothing that's here to it
[SPEAKER_00]: literally nothing so and Wayne was really right he says something is wrong with your with your chemicals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I gave those chemicals to a really good hydrodipper and he had the same problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you know it's not you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah and he taught me again and I have to tell you it looks very simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you got you got to play a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, I'm sure it must take a lot to make it look good.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that stuff you're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was one you sent me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the one that had the it's I want to say it's like a dragon eye butt cap.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, that one looked awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that looked really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and that's another thing I'd found over years English guy got me on that idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: He put he put a fish eye of the fish he wants to target in the in the real scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I thought okay I'm gonna call taxidermy You can get anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you get the eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, see I never even thought about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, see you bought I seemed you I seemed you printed that eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know I called a taxidermy And I said like the first one I did I was a brown trout and I said I need a brown trout I use as I'll big
[SPEAKER_00]: And I go, how big do you get it, these is up to two centimeters.
[SPEAKER_00]: As is holy shit, that will be a 50 pound brown trout.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then he gave you an address where you can get reptile eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then on Amazon, you can buy 200 of them for 10 bucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh gosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's a very striking visual effect.
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, oh, yeah, it's a, and basically that they're easy made.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a half from glass with the sticker behind have you any trouble with disability, uh, durability, excuse me or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I have the perfect color custom colors.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, okay, very clever man.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a very clever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and you're also, let me let me not make stuff up, but you're also kind of getting certified and getting formal 3D printing training now, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like tell me about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're actually going to school for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I called I called a lot of universities and everybody told me the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a secrecy from the guys who evolved in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not even books out about it, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all keeping it a secret.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I found a professor in Utah, and me and him were working together, and every time something was going wrong, I asked him what I can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he couldn't figure it out either because every printer acts differently, right, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I was reading up on the bamboo printers, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're the most user-friendly printers there are.
[SPEAKER_00]: any time that printer makes a mistake it will let you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any time you enter a mistake it will let you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I need that for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I have the university close to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a department with the rebranding.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been playing a lot around with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they told me one time stay away from carbon fiber filament.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not working right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I called them back.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's working fine with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I had to go over to
[SPEAKER_00]: and one tip on the back of your spool it tells you operating to your temperature.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: 90% of the times that temperature is wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the sad part.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you know that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or how do you get the right temperature?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to play with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And me and that professor in Utah, he was getting really frustrated too because even the companies didn't give you information.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's frustrating.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you think about it, how long are they not around about five years, they're still about one book available.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't really thought about that until you said that, but yeah, you're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't want to let out their secrets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I ran into a guy who was really good with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was up there and I said, look, buddy, I pay you money.
[SPEAKER_00]: You come to my house.
[SPEAKER_00]: You check my printer and help me setting it differently up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I give you 50 books an hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to do to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, I says, I'm not printing toys.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was printing a lot of toys for kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And was making really good business with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love, I print fishing stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm trying to make custom fishing rods here, dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the guy was so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: He built his own printers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wouldn't come.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wouldn't help.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what they're calling the secrecy about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really don't do no secrecy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tell you what I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if anybody has a problem like last night, somebody that email me text me, my address is everywhere online.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will see if I can figure out what's going wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And give you a tip, but I don't have the solution.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can give you tips, what to do with your friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if you do have the same primer, I have, I can give you straight out of the answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's very generous of you to share your learning and your knowledge and you've always been so good about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's another thing I really admire.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I personally have learned a lot from you and I appreciate that very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's good for the community and I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Moving past the 3D printing for a while and I know we've gone like a full hour here so I want to be mindful of our time and we may have to come back and do a part two but if you don't mind and I didn't prep you that we were going to talk about this but you are one of the shortlist of people who I think is more obsessive compulsive and you know detail-oriented around the quality of their finish and level finish and enough finish but not too much finish
[SPEAKER_01]: more so than me and I feel like I'm more so than most and I you know I've learned a lot from you and also from just looking at your work and knowing kind of what what is possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you said to me one time and this really stuck out to me and so I just want to kind of have this conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're applying fish, finish, honor a rod with a brush, it ain't never going to be truly level.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only way to get it truly level is and you've literally tried everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is to build it up and sand it down and the reality is our I can't really detect absolute and you're you're I'm talking about you've gotten it laser level precise level level like you've got a dead level.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I put metal ruler or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm talking about marks actually taking it beyond what the human eye can perceive.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sort of getting it to where my human eye perceives it as totally straight, but talk to me a little bit about that in that process.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well,
[SPEAKER_00]: me in Kirkman started to talk about that God in the early 2000s.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, so he's talking about another person who's finished I admire who does beautiful work and he's at the absolute opposite into the spectrum, which he does about as little as finish as anybody I know, but it's beautiful and he actually usually turns by hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's Tom Kirkman, the editor of Rod Maker magazine.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's who he's talking about when he's this Kirkman.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry Mark continues.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and when we talked, we both agreed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter what you take, spatula brush.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any time you lift that off your object, you're pulling finish out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: How good you are with that brush.
[SPEAKER_00]: You lifted off the rug.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're pulling it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an elevated port.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that will never totally settle completely down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I figure.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the best way that I don't pull finish on?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do a minimum of five coats of finish on every rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now how many on guide?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we talking just about wraps?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're talking about guide wraps to everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want footballs on the guides.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want just them up, finish that my thread is covered that I can't feel texture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more finish you're adding on-special and apply run, the more weight the more weight it doesn't help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dude, what's going to hinder you in loading and unloading?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I take the time, people say it takes too much time, and says, well, I tell people right away, when I start finishing the run, you have to wait a week.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do every 24 hours one coat that well and it's beautiful work.
[SPEAKER_01]: You also I can't remember exactly how this went down mark.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been 20 years, but somebody said it's impossible to get Matt finish instead of glossy finish.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I do that on the whole time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's going to say, and you, you've figured that out and prove that wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, if you've not seen one of these, one of Marks met finished rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: I personally think it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think again, it's kind of one of these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't do it on every rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's rods where glossy looks better.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, you're always building the rod with a very specific customer and specific design aesthetic and a specific thing in mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, talk to me a little bit about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That comes from my past history.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been to Germany.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you ever see glitzzy boats?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're traditional green, brown clothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Boats are usually brown, very traditional.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing loud.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a gloss finish is loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're like, say, you got a nice fly rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're on a little mountain screen in the Alps, what is crystal clear water.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're waving something through the air, what is reflecting light like crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So talk to me about the Matt finish journey because you've tried a bunch of different things and you've actually found multiple things that work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what do you tell people now when they come to you and they climb the thousands steps asking about Matt finish what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, there's two work 100%.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're not available in a fishing store.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Say it that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ones that are available in the stores are honestly none of them work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, none of them, and I tried them all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even some of the salespeople told me they don't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me try it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, an honest salesperson.
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's Ian out of Australia.
[SPEAKER_00]: He invented the finished called stealth.
[SPEAKER_01]: stealth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a two party proxy.
[SPEAKER_00]: One, two, uh,
[SPEAKER_00]: one part of epoxy, 10% of that in cardinal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a very minor, very very minor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very different than our typical one to one by all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you apply your regular finish on your rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you put that over it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's just a top coat.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK. And it turns it mount.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it takes a week, completely hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's dry within 10 minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: it cures within a day but complete hardening is a minimum of 72 hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a really different chemical.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So not comes the part.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's from Ian on Australia since two years Ian is M. I.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody knows where he's at.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not that he because he sent me birthday greetings.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I know he's not that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you look up the bottle and on the direction,
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, I want to what it's used for in California as it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, you can call the company and told him, look, I got a lot of clients in the U.S. can you not just send it directly to them, they refused.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not sold in the U.S. Only in California.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's made in California and it's called stealth and it works
[SPEAKER_00]: K2 maps from max.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, K2 map.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in a spray can.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a resin.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to break both valves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it works really, really good, and it's really good scratch-resistant, all K2 finishes are very scratch-resistant.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only problem is the moment you break that valve, you only have that cam for a bit on the clock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you don't have a lot to spray, it was expensive because the cam cost 35 bucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a lot for a finish on one route, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But those two work 100%.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, and again, this is this is going to escape a lot of people and they won't be interested in the tune out, but if you've ever seen it and you like it and again to me, it's just another trick to have another skill to have as a rod builder.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to try some of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's definitely just imagine you're doing a black map.
[SPEAKER_00]: blank from CTS.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's just what I was thinking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty as black on the blanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you're doing all your parts in your finish and you get that glossy part from your guides.
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually looks awful on that map blank.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then if you put them on map,
[SPEAKER_01]: It works.
[SPEAKER_01]: It flows.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And especially if you fish in shallow streams like we do up here in northeast, our streams, even our steel head streams are shallow there, but they're deep and they're gin colored, meaning they're more than clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're absolutely clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're flashing something around with glossy on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're spooking the fish.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I started then to do math.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, it's my history.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't wear loud clothing when I'm fishing my wife always says drama says, can you buy something else and all if I said no, please.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as soon as this one quits working, as soon as I quit catching fish, I'll buy something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the most of my closing now is just hammer all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just use everything for fishing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Mark is just always a pleasure to talk to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I learned something every time we talk and I'm grateful for every conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're very kind to
[SPEAKER_01]: indulge us and come give us a fast track on all your learning on this 3D printing stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm telling you, and Mark knows this, Mark's ahead of the curve.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to see this more and more in the future.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to build it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and this notion of DIY and taking more and more components that we can make ourselves rather than buy from a factory, especially for one off custom specialty jobs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I just think this has so much
[SPEAKER_01]: As does laser etching, as does, you know, there's a lot of things that we're getting access to desktop, laids and mills and things they used to be unheard of, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, one more thing is you just mentioned it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go and buy the bamboo printer to H2C, not to S the C, it does laser engraving too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Huh, I'm writing that down because you know I'm in the market.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna get one.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's already with the safety glass to green glass and everything different hot plates and since a couple of weeks to have a 360 rotary for it to So meaning your 3D printer can also laser and grave and laser cut.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's crazy man bamboo HTC
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, every time I have one of you guys on an episode, it costs me money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, wait, we'll be doing this next time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The scalar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're going to talk about it, all right, we're going to, we'll talk Scanners in part two, have about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm checking them out right now, which, you know, I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm waiting for you to tell me what the right one is.
[SPEAKER_01]: You, you, you fart on that road, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we'll say that conversation for another day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of builders.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have parts at home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, uh, I have a lot because I've been building so long.
[SPEAKER_00]: I probably do have I would say a thousand mining checks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, every time I build a new blanket.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen your shot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll take the over.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got more than a thousand.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got two thousand at least.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's size.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I need them for that rub.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have with all those windy tricks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have praise.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now with the printer, I just make two steps over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pull up my file with winding checks, change the size, print, ten minutes later, I'm back in the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, and for me, like you went down this road, because like you're talking about custom printing bigger seats for people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm doing so much stuff with like BFS and ultra light these days.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't get them small enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, so you can put them smaller in print them small as I want right that and that so it's just it really is something fascinating and I think For serious professional rod builders it just and not saying everybody needs to do it but If you're interested in absolute customization if you're interested in truly making a be spoke made to order rod that's one of a kind for a single individual Never having any two of your rods the same having every rod you make
[SPEAKER_01]: feature at least one completely custom-made part.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Mark, I just you've always been so generous sharing information and so patient with questions and man, I really appreciate you and thank you so much for sharing so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: One more thing for your listeners, imagine you built your rod, you bought your parts, et cetera, you did a nice wrap, you built fish.
[SPEAKER_00]: And first thing you see somebody with identical rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not that it would happen, but it could happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I tell in my seminars never copy somebody else's work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make your own style.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't do somebody else's work.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a builder in Germany.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can put his rods on the floor with 1000 other rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you exactly which one it says.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's impressive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I know his style.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's his style and nobody else's might can pick it out out of a thousand rods and and due to that he's booked Yeah, because nobody else has that style right
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And nobody else will have that saw because that's his, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think Mark I'd even go further.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think when we look at some of the people we consider among the most talented and decorated rod builders currently, they're like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a style, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think for a lot of guys who've been building this long as you have, it's your style.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what you see is some of us who are disciples of people like you and Doxki and Jim Trilikus, and it's like we, we fuse styles, like we're using some, some of both
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_00]: I built a fly rod for a jeweler.
[SPEAKER_00]: He went fishing in Alaska.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's standing in the middle of a stream in the middle of Alaska Another fisherman comes up to him and goes, can I see that rod?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he goes, yeah, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: He looks at it and he goes, that's a more cross rod
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the chances?
[SPEAKER_01]: He must have lost his mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had to shoot off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they got recognized it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a builder in Alaska, but he knew what's style I built.
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw it right away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a more cross-run.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what a moment, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's what a moment of arrival for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was funny for me to hear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I mean, it was an armor.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I know the recognized my style.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's the recognition of your life's work.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, man, Mark, thank you so much for all you do for the community.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're such a generous teacher and share of information and such an inspirational artist.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to share a lot of pictures with Mark.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll link you to all his socials and all his information.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you've never seen his work or all the techniques, I mean, I'm telling you, he's doing some really cool stuff with this 3D printing on handles and seats.
[SPEAKER_01]: combination handles grip seats like I mean there's a lot of stuff you're doing it's very cool stuff and I really appreciate you showing up and sort of sharing us some things to think about if we want to head down that path.
[SPEAKER_01]: For me I think I'm going to go need to check the current retail price of a bamboo H2C that may have to be in my future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for being here, Mark.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great to talk with you as always.
[SPEAKER_01]: And thanks everybody for tuning in.
[SPEAKER_01]: We appreciate you joining us for the Mastering Rod Building podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Please remember to like, subscribe, and download wherever you get your podcast content.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you right here next time on Mastering Rod Building.