[SPEAKER_00]: Hey Rod Builders, join us, August 14th through 16th, 2026 for the Mastering Rod Building seminar at the Orange Beach Event Center at the Warf in Orange Beach, Alabama.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a great chance to learn from the very best in the Rod Building industry while enjoying a full week and of hands-on education, great food and community fellowship.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to feed you well breakfast lunch in a crawfish boil and shrimp dinner on Saturday, plus breakfast and lunch on Sunday, both days packed with seminars from the best in the business, tons of shopping, discounted products, and there are going to be a few major new product reveals at this event.
[SPEAKER_00]: discounted lodging is available just one minute walk from the venue.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can grab your tickets now and if you're bringing others be sure to include all attending names that check out.
[SPEAKER_00]: For more information, email Jack Baron at J. Baron at anglersresource.net or call 251-943-4491.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see you in orange beach.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Mastering Rod Gulling Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Bill Faulkner, and I'm delighted to be here today again with a dear friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe I'm counting this as like work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not work.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just me chatting with an old friend and he's one who needs no introduction.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the man, probably one of my longest running rod building buddies at least 30 years,
[SPEAKER_00]: hacking around together and learn a bunch from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the guys you taught me how to turn wood, the guy who invented the carbon fiber grip, the formulator behind Threadmaster finish, and then Gen 4 and Gen 5 finish and Fusion VMAX and Fusion 15 and Blade Bon and any number of other things, the man, the myth, the legend, Texas's own Andrew Miribu Bonaparte Lamar deer.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's up, Andy, dear?
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you, buddy?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good to see you, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, you're coming from your, like, I love your people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what we're listening to this and they won't be able to look at it, but you're, like, your den in your living room where you're recording from is beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very homie and wizzy and sort of, like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I had to angle the right way because my son getting ready to go off to Texas A and M and about three weeks, and there's a pile of crap in the corner that I Was going to his door move.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like kind of anglic just the right way looks like a book and vanilla and rich colliding leather.
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks gorgeous and rich rich mahogany
[SPEAKER_00]: rich mahogany.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's been a minute since we talked.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have been a repeat guest to great effect on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that I love about you is you think about things differently than a lot of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You think sort of outside the box.
[SPEAKER_00]: You come out of from a different perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this time we're like, man, we get so much demand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's like getting any deer on again, and tell more stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, we sort of schedule, we're going to talk some more about epoxy, and then we're both kind of like, I don't want to talk anymore about epoxy, like let's talk about something more interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you had the great idea of talking about some of these more interesting lateral or peripheral aspects of the building, which is an idea I absolutely loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm super excited to, uh, to, um, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, go through this with you, but I have to give you an update and we'll put it on tape.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I owe you a big thanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I owe you thanks for many things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the things I wanted to let you know we did end up anglers ended up sponsoring team USA flycast for the world championships in Italy next month.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we've had Steve Rageff on and that's been great and got Kaylin and you have taught Henry Middle and got everybody scored away with all these titanium tours like guides that everybody's going to be using from all the countries and everything but I just I wanted to thank you for making that connection to the industry because without you it never would have happened and ironically that was one where I was like please let me help you let me give you food you guys so you can go win a world championship and we can be on the podium together but it took
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my pleasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm still built.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just built Whitney erod and Whitney.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's going to she's throwing a 10-way tornado next month.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm still doing a lot of work for Rick Hartman down the valley.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: is interested in researching Rick I mean he's one of the original core lords in this business that incredible angler incredible fishermen too right like he's not just a pastor and and that's not the disparaging anybody else I mean I love that about radio he's the same way some of the folks don't fish that much they cast they're interested in the mechanical aspects of the casting and that's fine but yeah Rick is a coastal legend in Texas why are we jokingly say that
[SPEAKER_01]: when when Rick is on his game and figures out the minutia of what he's trying to do nobody else has a chance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, he's incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, Rick and I become good friends and I value his friendship dearly.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what, speaking to that bill before we go any further, I wanted to bring something up that is pertinent to what we're talking about here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you knew Bill Gamble at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you know Bill Gamble?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard that name.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know Bill personally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, probably heard it from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Bill unfortunately passed away.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it was maybe a month or two ago and he was like our age, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean he was young.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill was not a rod builder per se.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, but he, Bill and his dad were instrumental in developing the curriculum for the Federation of Fly Fisters casting sort of a case.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I know his name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, he has, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he calls it like the five essentials of fly casting and he's done some video instruction back in the late 90s early to Yeah, it was him and Ray Jeff and maybe yeah, and his dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and that's like well basically everyone still gets certified as casting instructors using this Right, and Bill you know when when when Bill came on my radar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I obviously knew Bill is a is a very
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, and back then, you know, like, fly fishing in Texas isn't what it is now, you know, we've got this discussion last the last time we spoke, and Bill came on my radar, probably about 2001, because I was neck deep in doing distribution for all star composites over that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: there they had a really successful line of well let me back that up here they had a line of fly rods called the Austin series yeah that had gone through a couple of different incarnations with various designers and consultants I think it started off with Tim Grinn and who had a history at FinWake
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, Don Moke came into the picture somewhere in the late 90s, early 2000s.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he commented, Bill's help in the redesign of the Austin series.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when those rods really came into their own as when Bill came into the equation there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had never met Bill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess it was about, you know, two years ago in October, we had a little...
[SPEAKER_01]: get together here in Sigean, Texas for a bunch of the local casting nerds, and Bill came over from Baytown.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, he was sort of like me.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had spent decades in this business and had kind of grown weary of the social media aspect of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he's like, in fact, we shared some very, you know, some sort of,
[SPEAKER_01]: time together where we lamented about all of the heartbreak that we've experienced in this business right and then but also it was like man you know these days I just kind of want to go fishing with my kid you know like that's that's kind of where we're we're at you know that's the real yeah so Bill I'm at Bill and Sagan October before last and I just say that I want to go fishing with your kid you got more slams on the fly rod than me yeah like oh I had to show you
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got this spot down in part of Oca where we go off the bank and he caught a 43 and a half inch black drum Not on fly, but last last Friday night we were down there.
[SPEAKER_01]: He caught this as long as my 90-year-old.
[SPEAKER_01]: Big ugly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah Anyway, Bill, Bill and I became pretty good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't say we were really close friends because there wasn't Timperally there wasn't enough of a time span there for us to You know, but over the last year and a half we would talk on the phone every couple of months and
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, share some stories about our faith and stuff with one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was sad to hear that Bill passed away because even though that he is not in any way to shape or form a rod builder, he certainly, like, dude had one, I don't know if I told the story, but Jimmy Green had told me back years ago that he was building spay rods in his garage, and they were.
[SPEAKER_01]: they were carbon fiber solid spray rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were not too to be there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were solid rods and he was kind of trying to he was kind of trying to mix the bamboo sort of technology with carbon fiber technology by building a solid carbon one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Bill had one of those rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill had a whole bunch of stuff that he lost when Hurricane Harvey came through in 2016 and inflated that whole area over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, I just wanted to bring light to that that unfortunately bills no longer with us and any of you any of your listeners who are fly fishing to fishing out of those are casting nerds like myself and Rick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So don't really know the details of it, but they did have a funeral service over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you real quick a story that tell you everything you need to know about Bill in July of 2025 when we had the really catastrophic floods over here in Kerville.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where there was like 140 people that died 24 hours had an even past and Bill called me up and said Amen, do you know anybody that needs any money to rebuild their lives over there?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, well, as a matter of fact, I do, there's a young lady that used to work with me that lost her home.
[SPEAKER_01]: And and he said, well, I'm going to send you some money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, well, I'll match whatever you sent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the caveat to that is that this young lady was she didn't want to accept the money.
[SPEAKER_01]: She wanted to do it on her own, which you know, but that tells you everything you need to know about it will forget the fishing in the rod building and all that he was just to find him in being.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's trained that he'd never met who lost everything he was willing to help because he could.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, anyway, so, uh, yeah, I hated to hear that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but he was a good man, left a good legacy here and certainly appreciate you bringing it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't heard it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm, rest in peace, Bill Gamble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, and maybe we should do an episode about him in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know we got some mutual friends who could talk about him, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, heart, you know, Rick Hartman spent more time with Bill than anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: They okay, they they they used to have a I was I can I forget what it was it was some kind of an as I can ice hockey ring or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ironically enough down in you know in South Texas on the on the Mexico border and somehow Rick got access to this
[SPEAKER_01]: this indoor facility that was big enough that you could throw 150 foot five pounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: These guys need a pretty big facility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, there was, there's some really cool pictures of Rick and Bill developing the technique would go on to be used by everyone in the high performance fly casting world.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he was, he was at the, he was at the core of that with Rick and, and a few others.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: No, what I wanted to talk to you about is something I've thought about for a long time, my wife likes to watch the food network cooking channel, whatever you want to call it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I do too, but it makes me hungry.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're always talking about they're on these shifts.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're always talking about how they have a culinary point of view, you know, which is where they come from, you know, and it got me to thinking like,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, I think a lot of us or maybe most of us are all of us have sort of a rod building point of view.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I know where mine comes from, but I don't know that that's something I guess we've never talked about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've never talked about this once, not once, but I'm 100% reductionist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to say, I was going to say, I'm just a guy who wrapped string on a stick.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I've always had a dollar for every time you said that to me when we get in the weeds on something or I'm frustrated about something you're like, hey man, I'm just a guy wrapped string on a string.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no string on a stick.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, but reductionist is kind of right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have described people, I've described your building style to people multiple times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always say he is an extremely good builder.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the people who made me start to pay really close attention to execution of like finish.
[SPEAKER_00]: and quality of thread wraps just I'm gonna talk about inlay turns and multi-color thread wraps and faves I'm talking about no gaps clean even per night you know what I mean like and so I would say you're I put you almost in that F1 race car or fighter jet mentality yeah right everything it needs nothing it doesn't and absolutely no embellishment in any form that doesn't help performance or durability or something or at least hinder it
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you've got won't hinder it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I got into this game because I was looking for a way and I've and I've maybe alluded to this before, but I got into this game because I was just looking for a way to have a more intimate experience when I was out on the water with the fish, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've always kind of had this weird personality flaw.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to call it a flaw of, you know, you and I have spoke about my history as a musician.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was every much, every bit as much of a Lutheran as I was a musician.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I built several guitars back, you know, back in the 80s and early 90s.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I built firearms over the years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not really heavy into golf.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was building my own golf clubs and sitting.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, you're a maker, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're a, you're a, you know, like, you know, and you know, when I was young in the 80s and, and, you know, playing guitar a lot, he had a lot of hair to people and tell you it's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there was less here and more here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Such was the fashion of the day, my friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I was every bit as fascinated with people like Paul Reed Smith, as I was,
[SPEAKER_00]: it even hayland or Steve by you know people who had you know people or you know like nowadays I don't really play anymore for y'all that Paul Readsmith is a brand of guitars these alluthier he's very famous is a very influential and a very influential in a lot of ways construction techniques electronizing techniques and it's a lot of stuff right he was an absolute pioneer in and it's not just solid body and electric guitars but semi halibody's halibody acoustics like kind of across the board yes sorry
[SPEAKER_00]: might not be musicians.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and it's funny because I don't really play anymore to do some hearing issues, self-induced hearing issues, third row from Metallica at the Master of Puppets Tour at the Majestic Theatre in 85.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I still listen to podcast with predominantly Dave Friedman, who is the premier boutique guitar amplifier designer and
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really like I say I don't really play anymore, but my heart is kind of still still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well there you go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe, maybe, but anyway, so I'm interested to hear what your point of view is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, mine comes from just strictly wanting to have a more intimate experience when I was on the water with whatever I happen to be doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's, you know, I mean, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: entire own flies you build your own rods you know right do a lot of things yeah and um you know it um i think that's what i i think that's a big part of it for me you refer to it as the intimacy of the experience and i really like that actually i've often talked about it as like the level of engagement right or
[SPEAKER_00]: Or like, I don't know, but something like it is part of time flies, which we both do, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is part of, and I've furled leaders and built leaders.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have built rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have mess with lures and plugs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still twist micro chatterbaits and some ultra light BFS little tricky stuff that you can't buy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, at some level that,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a part of me that just wants to see what works and there's a part of it wants to find a better mouse trap But there's also it definitely like you hit it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a it just strikes a chord with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: No guitar or conversation pun intended about I don't know it to me in enriches and deepens the experience what you're referring to as the intimacy with it It gives me a way to spend time close to it when I'm off the water because we can't all be fishing all the time right So like one of my favorite things in the world is to plan a trip like I know I'm going to Arkansas in this state and all the
[SPEAKER_00]: tie-in-flies and building rods and gearing up and spoon-reels like I love that in a way it's almost it's a it's a integral part of the trip right and so for me the tackle and the tackle crafting and the gear and especially the rods
[SPEAKER_00]: was that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was also like, when I really went through my fly fishing, and I spent, when I first started building rods, I went to a period of about 10 years where all I did was fly fish.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't, I wasn't looking down on any other kinds of fishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, have my carp and cat fish fishing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, yeah, I'm not, I'm not one of those kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not looking down on anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I got really fascinated with it and I was fascinated with tying flies and I was fascinated with,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, figuring out rivers and hatches and catching fish and the river that was accessible to me, most easily was the Cainey fork river, which is like about an hour, almost an hour door to door from my apartment when I was just out of school to the Cainey where I would want to walk in the access, how was that access called?
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I'll think of it in a second, I'm not trying to think of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that was super effective year-round, especially in the winter time, but also in the summertime when it got really hot and water was warmer and all that, was midges and soft tackles, tiny little midges and soft tackles, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started part of what
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't find a rod that was as light as I wanted it to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was the very early days of two-hates and one-hates.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think it was zero-hate yet, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, if you wanted to do that, and you were sort of fresh out of college and broke, you know, building your own.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember Diamondback was the only people
[SPEAKER_00]: which I think was part of Cortland back then.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was the first people I ever saw, a two-weight rod bike and probably got it from Clemens, if I think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember, but so I started doing that and then started building heavier stuff for bass, which I'd done a bunch of bass.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so part of my, I would like to think part of my point of view is,
[SPEAKER_00]: special use case, special needs, special things where average factory doesn't fit, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You need something lighter, heavier, longer, shorter, slower, faster, something different where you're doing a, and I always have really enjoyed these weird techniques specific things where you can custom build a rod so much better.
[SPEAKER_00]: because the right tool is just not available period, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or at least not as right, not as close to right as it may be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would also think you've been very consistent or my perception is that you've been very consistent sort of true to your.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've wandered way out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll say this like I built a couple of fly rods for my cousin Justin and Houston who you've met.
[SPEAKER_00]: Big left handed guy that had literally every decorative thread technique on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: on the same rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a cross wrap.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a weave.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a you know to mean like yeah now look back those rods and I'm like
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, I did a lot of that work, but just not on fly rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and it doesn't all need to be on the same rod, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say my, I would say my aesthetic is way pulled back now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will do that if that's something somebody gets really excited about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I have way more sensitivity to what I consider in good taste within that style of fishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: For that diameter rod blank, for that, you know, whatever it is, you know, like a lot of these
[SPEAKER_00]: And with all this thread all over, it's like, you realize that's an 11 foot rod that's this big around at the butt, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's this big around, I mean, it's huge at the tip, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's better than a pool queue, like, all the way up and down the thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it already weighs a ton.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you wouldn't necessarily want to do that to an ultra light spinning rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you're going to have, you know, any weight you put on the diving board, especially towards the tip of the diving board, but it matters, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I've definitely gotten, as I've gotten older and I do more weighing and measuring,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know paying attention to the performance stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have definitely dialed back my I've definitely dialed back my performance Dialed back my visual aesthetic stuff to yeah to be minimalized so as to not impact performance or have a absolutely minimal impact on performance if that makes you know early on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I you know I was
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not nearly like what so many of the folks are nowadays, but you know, I did some, I did some diamond wraps and some Chevrons and I even did a few weeds.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it never really resonated with me, you know, I think, you know, I come from sort of a 1980s punk rock mentality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's very, you know, like, do it yourself kind of thing, you know, and it, and then, and I don't mind getting a little dirty, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, I was telling Paul Arden from sexy Loubsy of the day I did a podcast with him that should be published pretty soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, one of my favorite guitar players that I had the pleasure of meeting and seeing before they blew up really big was Nuno Bettencourt from extreme, and Nuno, you know, for the longest time, he had a kit guitar that he had put together, together out of a warm off body and a warm off neck, and you know, and it wasn't painted, it didn't even have, I mean, it was just bare wood.
[SPEAKER_01]: and like it was dirty and grungy and it I actually had blood on it, you know, where he had played and his fingers bled and then that got on the wood.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were all in head bled and yeah, and that, I mean, not the blood partner necessarily, but that kind of appeals to me, you know, I was listening to um, there's a podcast that I listen to here recently that I that I enjoy and you probably don't know this about me bill, but there was a period of time back in the late 80s, early 90s, where I spent a couple of summers
[SPEAKER_01]: I've always really wanted to learn how to serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wouldn't ever consider myself a surfer, but we did some way of writing and some body boarding and some body surfing and stuff down at the coast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I started building rods and all that went to hell and a hand basket.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I've always been fascinated with the culture, the technology of surfboard manufacturer and the techniques involved in that are exactly the same as what inspired the carbon fiber grip or how they lay up boat holes or right like you know it's all foam quarry poxie stuff with stuff overlaid right lay up on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, and I was listening to Sterling Spencer the other day who was talking about how, you know, the most hardcore of the hardcore surfers, they don't, they don't plaster their board with a bunch of decals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, like, though, if you want to be like the hardest of the hardcore, it's a white board with no decals and the white has started to yellow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and one of the guys was like, I don't like it when a board turns yellow.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, I love it because that's what you've been out in the water doing what you're supposed to do with that board.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's kind of the way I always felt about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, even though I kind of built my career around non-yellow.
[SPEAKER_00]: We still have that in the back of my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you know, the irony, the humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, I've never, I've never looked at it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, to me, it's like, you know, I want to see something that's being used.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and, you know, I love a lot of these guys nowadays build these rods that are that have so much going on aesthetically and artistically and there's a whole.
[SPEAKER_01]: contingent of rod builders out there that look at a rod blank as a pallet for their art which I can appreciate because you know surfboard shapers do the same thing and I wouldn't say that golf club makers do that but certainly you know in the last 20 or 30 years with the advent of the carbon fiber golf shaft.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know there have been the addition of graphics on the shaft now you know it's not just a stainless steel true temper you know right so you know so visually I mean a lot of equipment and sporting goods has evolved that way and I certainly don't have a you know I'm not against that in any way and the second the rods I'm building for sexy loops now have you know have saw blade wraps on yeah which is a
[SPEAKER_00]: necessarily dramatically adds a lot of thread finished to what it adds none.
[SPEAKER_01]: It adds none, because there's either going to be black thread there, or there's going to be a red saw blade.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so, you know, so what it's interesting too though, and it's interesting analogy that you mentioned the golf clubs and everything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, at least where my head goes when I hear you say that, is that like,
[SPEAKER_00]: commercializing things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like let's not kid ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people are building the cell rods, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just like they're building the cell golf clubs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they can change the color of the shaft and put a new sticker on it, it makes you want to drop your old ones and get your new ones, then they'll do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't really change whether you're how far you can hit them, whether you're a better golfer, whether you're worse golfer, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I hear you talk about your point of view, I feel like
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of this old soul true to the core, nothing extraneous, nothing fashion is going to come and go sort of like the core elements.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I do think neither one of us have been pressed to sell rods forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we're not trying to pay our bills from doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can build mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I never wanted to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: no right like but but that's also probably makes us think it differently about it like that and then maybe that's part of why I was so keen to master all these thread techniques when I was younger when I was trying to build rods because it was my it was my slush fund it was how I paid for hunting and fishing trips right well you know it's I was very fortunate because you know I only I only tried to build rods for sale will not try it I did build rods for sale for about two or three years yeah and then I just sort of
[SPEAKER_01]: just stumbled into the whole product development thing and was able to sort of leave that behind me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that I didn't enjoy the rod building part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't enjoy the warranty part of it, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We used to have a...
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, Sharon Johnson over at all starts another one that passed away not long ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sharon, Sharon used to always talk about how they used to call him Bubba Bass Fisherman.
[SPEAKER_01]: She used to say, I'd get these Bubba's that coming here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's obvious that they broke that rod over their knee three weeks before the war until you expired.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they want a new one, you know, and it's like, yeah, I didn't enjoy that part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, um, but.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I tried to gear my stuff more towards maybe a different level of clientele that what you're going to do that through a pricing structure that's sort of facilitated people that you know you spend 1200 bucks on a fly rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, um, but uh, but yeah, I don't I don't have an aversion to any of that aesthetic stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I'm grateful that those guys are out there, um, because they buy more epoxy than anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, seriously, it's good for business, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but, uh, they buy thread too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm happy with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me personally, you know, my dear friend, Captain Freddie Lynch that I've been fly fishing with since 2006 and I used to build all of Freddie's tournament rods and we have a very close relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can tell you right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: that putting an A to access diamond wrap on a fly rod is not what gets kept in Freddy Lynch all frost up on the polling platform being able to you've been able to drop a size for it 80 feet in a pipeline you know so you know and it's kind of the same with me you know I mean I've always jokingly said that if you're out on the boat and you got a school of tailors at 60 feet and you're looking down at your weave that's a problem
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a problem that needs to be addressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is if you're a fisherman first, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which presumably you are to build this wrong way to get a full and platform for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to be honest with you, Bill, I try not to take any of this stuff too seriously.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I still have one of these drink on a stone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I see these guys out on social media arguing for days over where to place the spine and it's like,
[SPEAKER_01]: you'll have fun with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, or you could just wrap it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's go.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, you know, I use a modified guide spacing system by rich forehand, you know, back about 25 years ago, he had that equidistant, equal distant guide spacing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I use sort of a modified version of that because I worked on that time to mentally for me to go out and like screw around with the static distribution test.
[SPEAKER_01]: I,
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the guys on the internet can have that, you know, I mean, yeah, but I remember in rich it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember in rich is article When he wrote for Rod Mager, he said something about while the rest of you guys are screwing around with static distribution tests I'll be out on the deck of that ranger fish, you know, yeah, and he meant it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He meant it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know 100% you know, and I've never met rich, but I don't remember I think we've talked on the phone once
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would love facilitate introducing y'all if you want to talk to him because he'd love to hear from you And he's he's a straight ahead and is efficient as you can imagine Yeah, I return points pilot who's an engineer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, who's like minimalist as I mean yeah, short sweet to the point
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you look at, if you look at a rod blank as your, as your palate to do art, I think that that's, it can certainly be that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, it can, it can certainly be that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, the art is the,
[SPEAKER_01]: experience of being on the water.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where I find the art and angling is creating the experience, you know, and I wrote a whole series on that for sexy loops back a number of years ago during COVID.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I mean, everybody has their own point of view and that happens to be mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the things I learned from you that I like and I would like to think I've been
[SPEAKER_00]: trip down minimalist or how fancy and elaborate you want it to be if you don't execute well it doesn't matter it's garbage right well and and so that's the thing that probably that's the number one thing that I learned from you at a very young age is like hey we should be really picky and deliberate about this right yeah I learned that from way we want it to turn out every single time or else we don't have yet
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, and that was reinforced to me by Tom Morgan.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I've always kind of been that way, you know, I've always kind of been personality about details and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Doing it right Tom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tom was so, so hard core.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of stuff, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Tom, you know, I mean, his wife was the one who built all those rides.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I was just going to say was so crazy as he's sitting in the chair, yelling at her about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, interesting dynamic, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, well, you know, I mean, they got it right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They may not know this, but Tom was a, you know, wheel chair bound with a very massive form of multiple sclerosis and could, you know, and I've actually been in touch with Jerry several times in the last couple of years, and she's been very kind enough to share with some things with me about how they built rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I just, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, Tom Morgan, Kerry Burkheimer, press pal, those guys that, you know, that, that, that wanted their rods to look good, but they want to, they wanted them to be good from a minimalist aesthetic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, again, I, you know, I mean, I, on some level, I'm deeply jealous of people that do like those really intricate we use in Diamond Labs, because my ADD will, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, let me sit there for that log in my family's side doesn't need it, but yeah, amen to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to your point though, if it doesn't necessarily feed the engagement in the experience you're after, then it's not necessarily the best use of your time, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you think commanded a higher price point for you and a rod you were trying to sell, or it sold rods that would otherwise sell, or it, uh, it was your signature that helped you compete or be known or whatever, then that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's another thing I was sitting
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is interesting to me, and again, this is when you point it out, so this is not original to me, and I can't take any credit for it, but it is, so you and I got to know each other through Rod building, but we're also guitar players and very interested in guitars and music, and also very interested in wood turning, and you were way ahead of me on that deal, I learned, that was a one-way street, where I learned everything from you, and you kind of helped me not mess it up in the early news, but, um, but, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: it's interesting how many times when you start getting rod builders together and talking how many times people have the same in similar interests and I'm always fascinated by what is this so you you had mentioned talking about, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: one of the things that's fascinating about you and you just kind of set it a second ago your rod builder but you really only built rods as a as a craft as a cell sort of an ancillary activity for a few years and then all the rest of your time in the industry has been an innovation and all these other things right so it's like your your rod builder but it got you into carbon fiber it got you into poxies it got you into chemistry it got you into your it was talking about that
[SPEAKER_00]: They got you in a model making and molding, it got you into all kinds of stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and it's interesting how many of us also have those, so it's like chicken or egg, is it like it's the personality type, and that's fed by the rod building, also gets into these other things, or is it the personality that's into these other things that happens upon rod building or goes down that path, like let's talk about that, because I'm sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you a funny story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you and I first met, you know, my, my musical taste range from Miles Davis
[SPEAKER_01]: Slayer and Black Flag and also a number of other extreme bands, but, you know, one of my favorite of all time in fact, I have very strict instructions in my last will and testament for the entire album from Jerry Douglas, Russ Baronberg and Edgar Myers, get pop and wobble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Skip Hop and wobble, baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's one of the finest new grass uh... if anybody's into that sort of thing and and admire was the professor of base at the blaring school of music and the and built when i was here and i was taking classical guitar there and i went to a bunch of they would have recitals he'd have a recital with his students people would come in we saw him play with bell of fleck
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw him play with another one, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a mission.
[SPEAKER_00]: Micheal Vohan, Bauder, whatever this like citar guy from India was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And no one knew who he was.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have walked on campus and everybody was like, who's that nerd?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, dude, that's like the best face player in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, you and I, when we first met, we had a conversation about because skipop and wobble had just come out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was about 94 or 90 people who Jerry Douglas is now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean to this day for the instrumental from Ankara to his mere still gives me chills.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just got chills.
[SPEAKER_01]: You said it like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, me too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, it's funny because a couple of years ago, I ran into a guy, a befriended a guy here, his name is Brian Clark and Brian is not a rod builder.
[SPEAKER_01]: He publishes all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I forgive him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He publishes all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: an online fly fishing magazine out in Houston.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not a rod builder yet in yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep going.
[SPEAKER_01]: But his day at Brian's dad actually used to own Ross Reels.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my goodness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Brian's been in this industry for a long time and he's a great guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's funny because Brian and another fellow named Austin or were the ones that put this fly casting symposium that we had it over in Seguine where I met Bill Gamel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, one of my first conversations with Brian, we got to, because he said, yeah, you know, I forget what instrument Brian plays, I think it's guitar, his son's a really talented pianist, and he said something about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jerry Douglas and he was like, bro, skip pop and wobble and I was like, what are the two people?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that album probably sold 500 copies worldwide.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got two nerds like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got two of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and then in the first thing I thought of was, man, 35 years apart, and I've run into a second fly fisherman who's down with some people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, something there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and Carrie Burkheimer is a musician.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I forget exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say Carrie plays bass, but I'm not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Carrie needs you to correct me on that if I'm wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a lot of us that lean towards the sort of artistic into the spectrum.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe the autistic into the spectrum a little bit too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the two overlap a lot, they do, and they can, yeah, 100% and you know, I've run into a number of people like that Mike Geer, who is a friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, Mike has a talented fly.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a full-life fisherman.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not older, but he and I, he and I both fished with Freddie Lance for a long time and Mike has a musician.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is a common thread of these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: and like woodworking I get because turning and doing stuff that's for making handles that's for makes sense for all different types of rods like that's close to Jason music's a little bit of a harder leap fly tying is close to Jason like arguably that's kind of what led me and I think it's easier to get a flash someone's already time flies and into it it's easier to get them to build a rod than a normal person in a lot of cases right
[SPEAKER_00]: because they've seen the value and this, what do we want called the intimacy or the engagement or whatever this is about and getting this different picture experience out of this work, but when you participate in it more, but it's interesting how many of these things come across over and over, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a vein like it's shocking how many of these retired builders are all, you know, old carpenter shop teachers, Roger Seeders, shop teachers, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they just have the
[SPEAKER_00]: a major a practical figure it out do it yourself may I'm going to go buy that I could build one better you know what I mean well and you know when Dale Clemens sold Clemens in return he became an incredibly talented wood turner well Kirkman has told me that again you guys were both way better turners and way more into that than I ever was but
[SPEAKER_01]: I was really close with, I mean, we never met face-to-face, but Dale and I corresponded when I interviewed him for Rodmaker, we stayed in touch.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I still got Christmas cards in there that he sent me every year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember I sent him a copy of my wood turning DVD and he was just over the moon.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he thought it was, you know, because they didn't have anything like that when he went back in the 80s and 90s.
[SPEAKER_01]: That technology wasn't available to do your own instructional DVD.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Dale was a really good wood turner.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he can, sorry go ahead, no go ahead, sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I was just going to say he kind of, I don't know that he was actually building rods much after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think he, or that was sort of his thing was, was, was wood.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a wood turning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now a lot of bowls.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you get into those bowls?
[SPEAKER_00]: You were building the guitars and it done the Lutory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you get into turning through that woodwork or did you get turning because of the rods?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's because of rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: What happened there was when I first started building rods, I was pretty adamant about
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there's two ways you can do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can blew up the rings on the blank and turn the entire blank or you can turn it off the blank on some sort of a fixture.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first couple of rods I did, I turned on the blank and I was like, man, this is some bull crap.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's too much risk for damage and it's like if you get a bad piece of cork that you couldn't see the pit and the whole dad gum thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just with Mike Geron at ICAS two weeks ago and he had this incredible rod with another sorry contribution of yours at least in my opinion the very first person who brought a lot of this stuff to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Burrell Cork, Cork, regular Cork, stabilized hardwood all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's turning it all together in one grip, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot that can go wrong there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's turned it on the blank and he's like yeah, I know when people ask me how to do it and how to do it I'm like don't do it like this put it on a man like don't do it like this But it's like that's the way I do it and he's like everyone's and while I get a really painful and expensive mistake But most of the time it turns out fine so the way I got involved in that was when I decided that I was gonna turn off the blank You know, Clements used to advertise turning mandrels in their catalog, but they never had them in stock right never
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I went through like a year and a half of waiting for them to get that thing and I finally said this is ridiculous So I've told the story on the previous version of your podcast I was working next door to a guy named Scott Wallace who was a prototype engineer and he was a all you know Equal parts machinist Carbon fiber fiber glass guy mold maker making profit You know one week you'd go over there and he'd be making a luge for the Jamaican Olympic team and then the next week you'd go over there
[SPEAKER_01]: No, not maybe not the funniest one, but maybe the most interesting one.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had built a fixture for a local grocery store chain down here that was about 10 feet tall and it was a waterfall that shot gummy bears.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it was like, yeah, you go over there and like you turn this thing on and it was like thousands of gummy bears that would come up in these tubes and fall out of the top like,
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, he never knew what you were going to get into when you went over to Wallace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's seriously, but I went over there and Scott had been a customer of mine when I was a banker when I was in college and so I knew Scott and when we figured out we worked next door to one another, we started riding mountain bikes together and yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you went over to Unicycle, too?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, mountain Unicycle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll never forget I used to I used to go up there my employer gave me some shop space up in the front of the warehouse to run my rod thing and we weren't a cold a sack and Scott would he worked all hours on the night and I remember I was up there about 11 o'clock midnight I looked out and Scott was riding his unicycle around the cold a sack and I went out there and I said, man, I got a freaking problem here and he was like what and I said, well, I need
[SPEAKER_01]: here's what I need you know I need to stick with a 60 degree hole in the end of it you know to mount in a lathe that will match up with a six-lives center right and he was like ah no problem you know so we went over there like at one o'clock in the morning and he had an old atlas machinist lathe and he said here's how to do this
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just made some from myself and then it was funny because when I told Kirkman, Kirkman was like, many need to sell these and I thought, you think they'll sell?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we put them up, I bought a sponsorship on Tom's board.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I put them up and you know, one of my very first orders was from John Tabbett, my old friend, John Tabbett, RIP.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I still have, I still have Dr. John.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still have an, I still have the printout of the rodbuilding.org page where I made that post about me selling mandrels.
[SPEAKER_01]: And John was like the first one.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like send me a set.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care how much they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I ended up making thousands of those things over the next eight years or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it was really funny during COVID.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a guy call me wanting to know where there was a generation for distributor out in California.
[SPEAKER_01]: His name was Charlie.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember his last name.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, man, you probably don't remember me.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, but I bought a set of mandrels from you back about 2002 and I said, really, you still haven't, and he said, Andy, I use those things almost every week.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the best tools in my shop, but I thought, that's pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that you can build a career out of drilling a hole in the end of a steel stick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, look, man, it takes all kinds, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I just think about how many grips and how many rods have been there over the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's how I got into wood turning was that okay, okay, and then you know that was and it was just you know a blind squirrel finding a nut because
[SPEAKER_01]: that was when jet and delta and reo be they all kind of had their version of the imported mini lathe you know that you could buy for like $300 prior to that you know I mean it was like you're gonna go by a south bin for four grand yeah it wasn't an accessible it wasn't it wasn't really accessible and so I just happened to hit that and I was probably you know I remember you and I got lathe's right around the same time and then
[SPEAKER_01]: That was how I got into that jet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still got that jet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm running downstairs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I ran mine into the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: The motor burnt out on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You couldn't really motors or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: For many more in the tail stock at war now.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I actually inherited John Tabates's variable speed jet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have his lathe that I'm using now.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, the only problem I have with that jet is, and I never have turned as much as you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully I still have some life before mine still runs like a top.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been a great tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I had variable speed, mind just, you know, it was my position.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now that I know how to see a finish, I like a super glue finish on some things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to be able to go much slower, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm my fast, my slowest speed is a little bit faster than I'd like on that deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but but other than it's like am I going to get rid of it for that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know probably not Yeah, no, you know, and I had a machine at least too that I was making all those mandrels on and I went through three motors on that thing Yeah, and find I mean I just wore I just used it so much and There's something about those
[SPEAKER_00]: Those mandrels are you're using a better quality material.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still have mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've never been they've never You get to pop them and be okay like it's harder or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: All it is is oil hardening drill rod is all it is Well, it's it's meant to be turned into drill bits.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well people are using a lesser material I most most of the stuff is relatively soft and easy to bend and flexible right there to that stuff Like I still have all my quarter-inch mandrels that you made because they're the only stiff quarter-inch mandrels right that don't deflect you know
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that's how I got into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I ended up getting hooked up with Mike Ludeman up at Wood's stabilizing specials.
[SPEAKER_01]: I distributed stabilized wood blanks for a long time to a bunch of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: The guys up at Bulo were buying their wood from me, carry Burkheimer bought his wood from me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my cat's such good stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I wasn't there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I perceive him as being the first guy that had good double died stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was, yeah, if you wanted it, if it's certainly where I saw it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now there's a lot of
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that was sort of a knife-maker thing, you know, I mean, they were the ones that really pioneered that technology.
[SPEAKER_01]: Back then, you know, you can only get, you could get stabilized wood from a place called KNG finishing, which was a knife-making knife and gun, I think it's good for KNG finishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's stuff was like, it was not figured.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like a freaking brick.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, like, you had to hold your tools and it was, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Mike's had a very natural feel to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had some kind of lastomer and his acrylic, long chain of lastomer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: made it soft, you know, or softer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was soft, but it was softer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Harley, you really had to have a dull tool and be an idiot to blow it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, either.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, really, and that was helpful for me as someone who wasn't as skilled, you know, now everybody's got carbide tools and all this other stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You back then when we're turning with skewchills and stuff like you, you make one mistake, you can ruin a piece, you know, like, especially all pieces as we're turning.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think he's in business anymore, you know, I bought some, I bought some wood from Mike when I was in the knife making world probably about 2015, 2016, I bought some knife blanks from Mike and we had a great conversation and you know caught up on our families and everything and then that was sort of the last time I haven't talked to like hardly the guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: really nice guy he came out to a guild conclave and that's where he approached me about because i think he saw an opportunity like i was kind of the face of wood turning great turn was like a lathe guy he could put out the video yeah and and and i think he saw an opportunity there to to he was supply and wood blanks to bellinger if i'm not mistaken i don't think he was supplying to struggle at the time no it was bellinger and uh
[SPEAKER_00]: When are you she either I don't think that's what I was trying to think of and I know he I know that some guys I need some bamboo guys who got some stuff from him like yeah Bob Vanere up in the cat skills and I mean They got stuff from everywhere, right, but on a large scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know like a man on a manufacturing scale I think he I don't think he had a lot of that business and so I think he maybe saw an opportunity in me like
[SPEAKER_01]: and I sold a lot of that wood over the years.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had really good stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the first Amboina Burrell that I had seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he had the wood Burrell in Amboina.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and was the other one he had that I had some really good spalted made black ash and maple and all kinds of the one that I liked was Madron.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I saw Drone Burrell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're there that I can.
[SPEAKER_00]: go grab in about 20 feet for a while he had some of the best book I've ever seen right yes he hit bought a big old world in the whole thing was just spectacular and he was willing to cut it into small pieces you know there's some of those guys they only want to cut it too far as like a rifle blank rifle stock blank or shotgun stock blank and not go any further micro drip it all the way down and
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you if any story about Mike.
[SPEAKER_01]: He, um, he called me up one day and he said, um, he said I've got this box here of Clara walnut, which is traditionally a gunstock material, you know, and a beautiful gunstock material.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I've got my dad's old Winchester Model 12 back there.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's got a pigeon grade.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not kind of a skit stalker with Clara walnut and he called me up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, I need to get rid of this box of Clara walnut, you know, you want to buy it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You said, I'll basically sell it to you for what I bought it for.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, why are you wanting to get rid of it?
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, I don't forget.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, I found this gun stock maker that had all these off cuts of this beautiful wood.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was perfect for real seats and knife handles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the problem is, is that it wouldn't stabilize because of the acid content because of resonant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, uh, and he said, man, I thought I was going to skin the cat and the cat bit back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I ended up buying a huge box of chloroids and I think I gave all of that to Terry Johnson or sold it to Terry Johnson or so you did that with like that true oil like hand rub And it's on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it'd be gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, with tongue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was like tongue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, but but anyway, so I guess we were going to let's see here on my list of things here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I have a list of things here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to ask you that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was going to, so we haven't talked about this in forever, and I'm trying to find a way to bring this back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is self-serving.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, this is self-serving, but so you and I were there from the very beginning of Rod Maker.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we've been subscribers to everything in every back issue from the jump from the get-go.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were published many times in Rod Maker long before I ever was, and didn't publish many more times in me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's, and there's been some really significant articles, the article where you introduced the world to carbon skin groups.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's the one for me forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the world changed that day, and it's never gone back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm obsessed with that stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I walked into a academy the other day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Academy sporting good story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was some rods in there that had a woven sleeve on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't carbon, but I looked at that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was just kind of giggled to myself like, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, look, look, I talked to Rich forehand about this because it's like, dude, how do you feel when you walk into a best pro shops and you look and every single ride you see a split grip or no for grip like that's all you like hey between rich and I split carbon fiber grips we change the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, seriously, no, but I mean, these were, but these were serious, like, innovations, like big deflection points where the world was never the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody factory or otherwise building rocks the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always jokingly tell Alex Maslow that he needs to be paying me a royalty for all the carbon fiber grips.
[SPEAKER_01]: What he should, and if you can get it out of him, you should get it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I support it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like Alex.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a, we have a,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we have a fun conversation when we talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd be the first to admit he should be, but he's like, at least you got the paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like getting it from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But another thing you did, and this is kind of lost on people, and I like, the older I get the more I think about these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, like Bill Gamble, I mean, the older we get, we lose some of these things, and they're not all around.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you went on a big project, which I think,
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember how you got on to this, whether it was self-directed or whether Tom recommended you do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you sort of went and just interviewed all the legends of Rod Manufacturing and Rod Building, Jean Bowler, but Jim Green, Jimmy Green,
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I can't remember who all, and you were kind of like the, and you were a young guy at the time and they're kind of like, how do you know who I am?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get all these interviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I wish there was a way to bring that back because people, that's like, every time we do any kind of interviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll bring those interviews back?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because every time you... Well, they're published on the Sexy Loops website.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're on the Sexy website.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're on the Sexy website.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get them in the back because she's a Rodmaker and on the CD's a Rodmaker, but like...
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess if you're interested in these conversations and if you're one of these people and I we see you out there I can't I don't know your name, but we see people who like listen to the podcast with Andy over and over and over If you're interested in this content and you're interested in what it was like to be Dale Clemens and how his perspective on things as a rod builder and as a business person and industry person You want to hear from some really great American legend
[SPEAKER_00]: Rod designers and the link designers.
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to hear from really early days people with component stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they were really good interviews like you were very prepared.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were very serious and it's literally like a AD and you're asking a question and then the person answer I'm like these are like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wall Street Journal level caliber interviews right appreciate they're they're fascinating and they're really good but but haven't talked to all those guys right so one of the things you did a really good job of Is you presented them all on a very good light and and and a recognized all that was it I was easy to do they were all it was easy but there's also a bunch of quirky personalities in in and among this industry right and it's a small world after a fashion so like it so I was I've been trying to
[SPEAKER_00]: If there was ever way I could get like you and Roger Seeders and like, I don't know, some of these old people who knew all these cats, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Vickcutter, maybe get y'all, maybe Kirkman, get McCainy, I don't know, get y'all all in on a panel and we just have a fireside chat about these personalities and rod building because like Bullard was,
[SPEAKER_01]: crazy bigger than life personality right and depending on who you asked what they tell you he was a one-of-a-kind very interesting guy I'm not saying it was all positive but um like no I mean it wasn't it wasn't negative you know you know jean it's good for yourself I mean the reason uh you know how I got in touch with jean that was really weird because jean had sort of like me you know when I left the business in O8 I kind of went into witness protection for about six or eight years and you know
[SPEAKER_01]: and Jean did the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really know when Jean retired or when he was at a national American, remarry, Russian woman, am I getting my wife crossed?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how much I want to say about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, then don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just going to invite you to talk about the best stories and it's real.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to talk to Vic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there's a story that Jean told me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know this sounds very cloak and dagger.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've told this to a few people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you all have to forgive me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I don't want to misrepresent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jean told me a story about, he made me turn off my tape recorder, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And serious.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was serious, but I need to talk to Vic just to cover it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Vic would love to hear from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should, and if it's true, let's get the two of you on here and tell the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I told this story at a fly rod thing, and people's jaws were freaking dropping on the table, being able to have to tell the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jean was, so what happened there was that, you know, Tom Kirkman was a big Jean Bullard fan boy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He, you know, he bought a lot from Jean.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when Jean had Bullard International, he, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: He used Diamond to the original Diamond 2 and was said it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I thought Tom was a flesh guy, I didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, Tom, Tom new Jean bought from Jean.
[SPEAKER_01]: We used to talk about Diamond 2, you know, in a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what happened was nobody could find Jean and we thought Jean was dead.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got a phone call from one day.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll never forget this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was standing in my kitchen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Tom called me up and he said, hey, I just got up to phone with
[SPEAKER_01]: And Vick said that Jean is living in a retirement community down in the Texas Hill Country.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, that's where you live.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was living in a little town called Bandera at the time, which is about 40 miles east of where I live, or west of where I live now.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, well, Tom, I live in the Hill country, and he said, we'll see if you can find him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd be good to do an interview with.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I literally picked up, and this was back in the days of the phone book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I picked up the phone book, and I like to see what that is later.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're right there is Gee Bullard in Curville, Texas, which is literally like 25 miles.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the same as St. Park all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and that's where all the bad flooding happened last year, and then just a week and a half ago, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had another terrible flood coming through, and anyway, so I got called Jean, and I said, um, I said, is this the Jean Bullard that used to work in a fishing tackle, but isn't this easy to say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you got him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, well, like here's who I am, here's what I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've all been looking for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We thought you were dead, and he kind of laughed.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said you want to do an interview from magazine?
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, yeah, I'll do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's put together a date and it was like the following day or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll never forget this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got in my truck and I got on Highway 173 to go over to Corville.
[SPEAKER_01]: And about halfway, I'll supposed to meet him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say like at 10 o'clock in the morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I get like halfway over there and my phone rings and it's some rod builder wanting to talk theory for 20 minutes, you know, and back then we didn't have hands free stuff, you know, so I pulled over on the side of the road to answer his questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it ran me about 15 or 20 minutes late, and so I got over to Gene's apartment, which is right on water street, I drove by it just the other day and he ripped my.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, for being late, he was like, when you schedule an interview with me, so I expect you to be on to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I looked at him and I went, hold on brother, I was taking care of a customer that was paying for something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not getting paid to come over here and interview.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he kind of calmed down after I called his bluff a little bit, but he was not.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he was such an interesting guy because he,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he had a lot of expertise and photography and various types of what's the word I'm looking for, like cutting edge photography that they would use like it Los Alamos laboratories, something like that, you know, he knew a lot about, you know, from the 1950s and 60s, you know, he knew a lot about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the funny thing about Jean was that he was truly
[SPEAKER_01]: the cons I mean like he would have flourished in the world of social media out was he was the consumant salesman yeah I mean like I don't know for this yeah one time one time he and he yeah I went over there and we were having lunch and he was fixed in spaghetti and he was like new taste of spaghetti sauce you're never gonna want to eat another get that ragu crap you know and this is gonna be the best spaghetti sauce even but the funniest one was um...
[SPEAKER_01]: I forget this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went over there one day to we I think we did that interview over a period of two or three sessions and
[SPEAKER_00]: He was always trying to sell me something.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, at the time he was selling jewelry on eBay, and he was selling wildflower seeds on eBay, like anything he could get his hands on.
[SPEAKER_01]: He just loved, you know how like there are guys that that's their high as they just love closing his sale.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll never forget this, I was kidding, I'd leave one day.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he tried to sell me this fax machine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, bro, it's 2006, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not 1992, but it was, it was like, it was a max.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a max.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this brother fax machine?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just in the box.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like brand new.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll never forget this bill.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can still see him in my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: He looked at me and he said, if you walk out this front door without this brother fax machine underneath your arm today, you're a damn fool.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just was like I was trying so hard not to laugh because it was like a scene out of like Glendgary Glendross or something like the coffee down Caught the brick or clothes or sloppies for clothes or she didn't I was trying not to laugh so hard and you know and Jean I It's an interesting story because the fact that diamond two came back on the market is kind of my fault
[SPEAKER_01]: however you want to call it I shouldn't say fault but what happened was is that I'm not blaming anybody so that was before I had right before I had the redmaster okay and what and what happened was I was telling Jean like you know nobody's come out with a really good finish in a long time and the original diamond two had some pretty you know some pretty impressive UV in in in in in inhibition properties for for its time if you could come back out with that
[SPEAKER_01]: It, you might be able to sell some of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he saw an opportunity there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what happened was he, he contacted me a week or two later said, I got this finished.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: That escalated quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I went over there and he approached me.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, look, I really don't want to be back in the tackle business.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I would like.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, you've already got a reputation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd really like for you to be sort of my master distributor on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what had happened was the I had stumbled into the whole thread master thing right within weeks of that okay and so they had sent me a sample of what would become thread master and so I didn't really.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't really want to be in the finished business.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was looking for a color preserver.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it just so happened that this company that I contacted said, hey, we've got this rod finished.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd really like you to try it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll make you a color preserver if you sell our rod finish.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's kind of how that evolved.
[SPEAKER_01]: But so Gene says, you know, I really want you to be my master distributor and take this home and test it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I took it home, and I thought, well, now this is good of a time to do a comprehensive U.D.
[SPEAKER_01]: V tests, so I made up these little aluminum test panels that painted them white.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I did jeans finish, and I did glass coat, and I did flex coat, and I did aft coat, and aft coat had to finish there for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and threadmaster just blew them all out of the water.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jeans did not fair well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I went back to him and I said, jean, I said, here's the results after like a week.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the same stuff and I'm afraid if you come out with this.
[SPEAKER_01]: If people are, and you're calling it diamond, too, you know, I mean, if people are expecting a certain level of clarity and performance that they were used to before and this is not that, and so the sad thing was, is that, you know, a,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I figured out what it was that he was selling or that he was packaging.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was just something that you can buy on the open market, you know, that he was repackaging.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he just owned everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he just saw Michaels.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, what happened was, and I wasn't, I mean, I wasn't trying to be a busy body.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had to go to the bathroom one day when I was at his house.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to get to his bathroom,
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I walked through right by his desk and the invoice is sitting right there, you know, and I was like, and I was like, I didn't even mean to look at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just kind of passed by it and went, oh, that's what that is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And look, it wasn't, the diamond too that was being sold here the last 10 or 15 years is not, it's a really good finish.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it levels very well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got a good pot life, the viscosity is right, the bubble release not too bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: was not as bad as what Flexcoat was.
[SPEAKER_01]: It did have a UV inhibitor and I just don't know what the technology was, but it was not current technology.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was, it wasn't as good as what I think the guy that made that original finish for Gene was a fellow by the name of Brian Shoyg, if I'm not mistaken.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say it was in a company called Titan Adhesives, but I'm not sure so that was just sort of what I heard through the great by.
[SPEAKER_01]: But
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not disparaging the second version, the 2.0 version of Diamond 2.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just yellowed quicker than the original version of Diamond 2.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my position was Gene, if you come back out with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It needs to be on par with the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: It needs to be kind of the same, even if it's not the same formula, the performance needs to be the same, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, so I decided to go with Threadmaster and Gene was very kind.
[SPEAKER_01]: He sent me an email one time and it said, look, you know, he said the stuff that you've got is better than what I've got.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said to be honest with you, he said Threadmaster is his exact words, Threadmaster is the only worthy successor to Diamond 2, the original Diamond 2.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we just kind of lost touch after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we didn't ever, you know, I remember going over to his house one time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wanted me to take some pictures of him for the magazine article.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gene was a really talented photographer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm just thinking like, you know, we're just going to take some pictures, you know, and no, man, he went in and like changed clothes and groomed his hair and then we went up the backyard.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would be so funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would be like, he would be like,
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd be like I'm gonna pose for you now, so I'll tell you when to take the picture and he would get like this like he was on the cover of GQ or something man And I was like this is great.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know like this guy's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was very into flowers I remember he wanted his pictures taken on his back porch where he had all these really beautiful hanging baskets on his patio back and it's in the end Yeah, he was very much about presenting a certain type of image, you know one that projected confidence and professionalism and
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it wasn't just because I, because I would have been out there like and cut off shorts and Chuck Taylor gombers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Get your picture.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he was he was very conscientious about that, but yeah, he was he was dying to sell me that fact machine.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're a damn fool if you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's underneath your arm.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so that kind of leads us into some characters in the industry here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were talking about this earlier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me look at my wine here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I didn't know nearly as many of these guys as you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I certainly didn't either interview interact with them over the phone or sit out on some face-to-face like you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, there's a few that stand out like one that is a common of ours was definitely Ralph O'Quinn, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Ralphie was, and it's so interesting because it's like, how do you describe Ralph?
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes I will absolutely do my best to accurately describe somebody to Ralph.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while I'm listening to myself talk, I'm thinking, I wonder if they're thinking I'm saying good things or bad things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't mean like, I'm telling them the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it's so funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that guy was so generous and such a great mentor and so sweet.
[SPEAKER_00]: That he would rip your butt and then like I remember one time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even remember what it was But one of Tom shows and Nashville's okay I was I would be mean you were about to get a fist like no no no no no no It was not McCamey who was not McCamey.
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember what I'm talking about?
[SPEAKER_01]: I a hundred percent I can still see it in my Okay, we do tell that story Okay, so what happened there?
[SPEAKER_01]: This was the first you became he was breaking it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was it that was that so in 1999 This is actually really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got there early
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I went into the bar, the lounge area there at the Holiday Inn, and had a glass of tea, and the person sitting next to me is Tom McNamara, and Tom had just bought mud hole, like it was a nothing business to speak of, and so Tom and I sat down and we sat there and shot the bull for like two hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I would never forget Tom showed up with like one cafeteria table and he had like four real seats and three blanks and a couple sets of guys It was modest beginnings.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we were all like what you know, and that guy turned that thing into a powerhouse God bless him You know, I mean, you know, so what happened was there was probably about 30 or 40 people at that concave.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was me and you
[SPEAKER_01]: and Don Morton was there and I fill up by the name of John Britt from down in Penelis Park for John Britt was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I feel like Jim or Beth was there maybe and Jim Britt from Angler's research.
[SPEAKER_00]: For many years, Angler's workshop in Mr. Angler's workshop, so yeah, I'm Angler's resource in the meat.
[SPEAKER_00]: McCamey was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: McCamey was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but there was a fellow Roger Seeders at that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Roger.
[SPEAKER_01]: Roger.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, he didn't come out until a year or two later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but there was a fellow there who has since passed away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, his name was Doug Weber.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and Doug, um, was a very enthusiastic individual.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I actually liked Doug.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we used to, we used to spend some time on the phone shit chat and about things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for some reason, he rubbed Ralph the wrong way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't remember what the, I don't remember what the core of the disagreement was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Ralph had kind of tolerated, you know, Doug's enthusiasm over the course of the weekend.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was Sunday after
[SPEAKER_01]: and we were in the hotel lobby of the Holliday Inn and Doug said something that lit Ralph up and man there was about to be some cracks laid down you know I mean in round at that time Ralph was how old like it's like eighty eighty and then he was like he was right and he was like there was
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as we sat down here in Texas, he was ready to throaching gossles down here, man, that was a good idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a great idea for everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about the head.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had his arm pulled back like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And McCamey had him like in a half Nelson.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember McCamey.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you and I were there, you know, sort of like referees and a wrestling.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like when you and me and Ralph were staying at my tiny little house in Nashville, and I feel like I had walked out to get the car.
[SPEAKER_00]: to take to drive y'all to dinner drive you home or drive you the airport and I came back and it was like all hell broke loose well and here's like here's the way everything was cool here's the thing about you you know be in the consummate nice guy you are you were like
[SPEAKER_01]: you were going to take me and route to the airport and then you decided it would be a good idea to ask Doug if he needed a ride and Doug was like yeah all right with y'all and I was like oh my god I could not have done a worse thing to route at that time he was chewing nails all the way and the sad thing is that they were both nice guys Doug ended up going on to be the president to the guild I think a couple years later you know and he like he liked to build fly rods he's a good fly rod builder I didn't know him all that well but I don't really understand
[SPEAKER_01]: nature of the disagreement was.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, you know, one of the funniest things that's ever happened to me at one of those conclaves.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is great.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is one of the best jokes that's ever been pulled on.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, I've been haven't told very many people this, but Tom Kirkman will remember this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and Lance Depree.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, it involved Bill Stevens too, but he's no longer with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was a guy the Ralph but it heads with time to time.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I was lying to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I finally had to blow a bill would bill would.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would wake up and put two people in the room that know everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually there's going to be a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill would wake up at like three in when the spirit moved him and send me all these emails about what I was doing wrong in my business and I finally told him I said bill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I fished with bill like I spent two days in Port Solfer with bill.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should do this as pass.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I texted Bill, I was like, Bill, I love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm putting you on the block, sender's list.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he, because I...
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're clogging up my email like my band with that here in the Hill Country's Terrible and you're you're not helping me right by the way who asks thank you Yeah, so when I was doing business with all star
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, Sharon and I, and Mike Welsh, we, I, I, I pushed him with this idea about once a year about having a Rod Builders day and what they would do is they'd open up the factory on a Saturday and anybody who wanted to come could come take a tour through the All Star Factory and see how blanked from AIDS, see how it, Rods were assembled, see how production facility works.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would, you know, I would co-sponsored the event.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would provide the facilities.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd, you know, bring in 600 bucks with a barbecue, you know, and we always had a really good turnout.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that camera came down.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have pictures of Tom McNamara and Tom McNamara and Darren Heim and, and who was that guy's name from Aldala Composites?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where they used to buy their carbon from was from Aldala.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greg Donaldson was his name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greg Donaldson?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a fellow from Pac Bay that came down Tom,
[SPEAKER_01]: Karen Hopke, remember his name, but it was like, I can't remember his name was Tom, but he came down.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was, it was a draw.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was, it was a draw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we now all saw it was such a big deal, too, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like third, third largest in the nation, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, Lance and, and we had a lot of people come over from Louisiana.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, Lance and, Lance and Bill come over, and I'll never forget they showed up this first one that we had.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Bill was, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: He was an interesting guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was always looking to play a practical joke or something and he showed up and I'll never forget We were in the meeting room there and he brings this case out and I still have pictures of this somewhere But he's got this pool queue
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and it's, and it's got Marty Grawebeeds wrapped around it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got guides wrapped on it with masking tape with Marty Grawebeeds like we're a diamond wrap would be and it's got like this plastic and rolled green alligator and it says and it says Cagin flippin stick on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and he was like, I wanted to show you all my Cagin flippin stick, you know, and so everybody kind of got a kick at his Cagin flippin stick and I still got pictures of it in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I knew right then like okay these guys are kind of practical joke or you know your answer you know Lance is sort of a quiet You know he's a little more reserved Yeah, yeah, Bill was
[SPEAKER_01]: So fast forward, about five or six years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got to know Lance really well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, in fact, we're still very close friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I used to fly fish a lot for red fish over home back before back before that fishery got discovered.
[SPEAKER_01]: And remember, I went over there one time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first time I went over there, Bill said, you know what, you come over and have dinner with Lance and I saw I went over to Lance's house.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was still married, Mr. Rachel, at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, they didn't want you to thought that the president was showed up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they had like this 20 course Cajun meal where they took a dirty rice and boiled crawfish and talked to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So other in pound cake, you know, and it was fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've never seen it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I spent about three hours in Lancet shop after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've never seen anybody build rods as fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I saw Lance grip out like 20 rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's faster now than he was in and there, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's safe now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I got to know Lance and Bill pretty well, spent a couple of days with Bill down in Port Solfer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had that house down there that Halle Burton owned, and so he used to take care of the Halle Burton fish and camps down there on the peninsula.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a week before Katrina came through that house that we stayed in, ended up being washed, something like 11 miles away.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the next year, this would have been like 2,000 seconds of Katrina
[SPEAKER_00]: You see they're 0607.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a large presence out at the ICRBE back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't called the ICRBE back then.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think maybe it was, but I didn't get the blanks in the trash cans yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Tom liked for me to do wood turning demos out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would take my wood and I did one at the Guild Conclave in 2001, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the very first one I ever did.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I took my lathe, Emily, and I used to rent a 15 person passenger van, and we'd have the sea chanked out of it, and then we would load that thing up to the guilds with crap.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we get out there and Saturday afternoon,
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was around one o'clock and was my wood turning demo.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm going to show how to turn a real seat and write, you know, a court grip or some rate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's very well attended.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably 50 or 60 people in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: The president of Pac Bay was in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I made it a point to use Pac Bay hardware.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's pretty cool guy from China didn't speak in English, but came over and gave you a hug and, you know, and anyway, so I turn the real seat and I turn the court grip and obviously it makes it a little bit of a mess on the floor, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I go over and I find some hotel employee there and I said, look, you know, some kind of a broom or something and he didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: He brings me back like a little dust pan and a pan broom, which is perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I need.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I swept up the shavings that were on the floor, but obviously there was some sanding dust and some powder that was going to necessitate the use of a vacuum cleaner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so I swept up what I could and I told the guy like, look, if you'll just run over this with a vacuum cleaner.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll be fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll come right up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he said fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: No problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have a great show.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Tom and I and Emily and Sammy Mikkel and some others go out to dinner.
[SPEAKER_01]: We drive back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And about three or four days, five days later, I get this envelope in the mail.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's from like the Omni Hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm thinking it's like, you know, some kind of a, you know, bill for some room service or something that we didn't pat on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I opened it up and it's this form letter like on the letterhead.
[SPEAKER_01]: with this, this thing about how I destroyed the conviction center, how I exposed everybody in that room to hazardous materials and they had to call in a hazmat crew to get all of the sanding dust out of there and it was going to be like a $5,000 charge to have this hazmat crew come out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was living and I called Kirkman.
[SPEAKER_01]: I never again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I called Kirkman.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, what the month, you know, like I was, I lit him up once I'd down the other.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he let me, you know, let you go the whole year.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just let me let me fire all the rounds out of the clip.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he starts cracking up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I go, bro, there's not funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, how's Bill Stevens and Lance that mocked that
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew he knew he was in on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fun right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll play boys and Lance would never you never think Lance would be it on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see you, Lance, do you agree?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing and Lance was probably like, you know, he probably was the one that was instigating it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he was probably like a bill.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to build up for a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was it was so funny, you know, and Lance and I still laugh about that every now and then
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to get the details from him because I don't remember, I just remember I was so pissed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I called Tom up and I was let loose with a string of expletives, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would make Richard Priors, unlike Captain Kangaroo.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was, it was, and Tom just sat there listening to it and then he just died laughing at the end of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, man, that was Lance's bill and come to find out Tom was in on it, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew that at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so, and you might not realize that because Tom comes off some pretty serious guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: he's got a sense of humor too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he does.
[SPEAKER_00]: He does.
[SPEAKER_00]: The dry one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you got to get to know him right and he doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't interject it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not a personal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, there were some characters and you know, a lot of those guys that I interviewed were not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm sure they had sense of humor.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one that comes to mind, that was actually pretty funny, was Tom Dorsey from Thomas and Thomas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he had a good sense of humor.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, well, that's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that makes for a good interview, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a lot more fun to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish I, I wish I kept in touch with Tom, but he still alive.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe so.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't heard enough to be, but I haven't seen her hide and her hair for a minute now.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got to be in his mid 80s now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: If he's still around, but, you know, and I talked to Carrie, not to Carrie's got a good sense of humor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Carrie's, you know, Burke, I tell you, I'm funny story about Carrie.
[SPEAKER_01]: How I, how I found out about Carrie
[SPEAKER_01]: that I still have up in my in my archives and it was a it was a little piece that they did where they profiled some small rod makers okay and it was um they did carry bergheimer mark stuff and who's still around yep and then fill up by the name of Dennis Frank who had a company called glass tech for a while yes remember doing that yeah and um that's how I fit that's how I was found out about carry and so when I called carry up and said hey do you sell blanks
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, yeah, I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I bought some blanks from him and over the course of a couple of years, we sort of struck up a partnership where I did some distribution for him for about two years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hadn't talked to Carrie.
[SPEAKER_01]: Carrie used to by stabilized.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wood from me, he used to by Burl cork from me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I built several rods on Carrie's blanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't talked to Carrie in a really long time, you know, when I got out of the business in 08.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had just, I, I didn't really, you know, I just hadn't talked to him in so long.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have a reason to call him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after enough time goes by, it gets weird to just call out of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so here recently, maybe about four or five months ago, I got a phone call from a guy who, I think, I want to say he worked for Carrie, or he worked part time and Carrie shop or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: and he had been using generation five and he said, hey, look, carries, you know, carries interested in trying your finish, you know, he's got some questions and I said, we'll tell him to call me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, carrying, I spent like two hours on the phone, you know, catching up and whatever and he's a really good guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we got to talking about how, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: how we met and I said, Cari, you know, I first heard about you in this article of fly rod and reel back in 1999.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, Gahali, I forgot about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, well, you know, I still have a copy of that issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ever want to copy the article, let me know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be happy to scan it and send it up to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's a picture of Cari in there cutting a pattern on a cutting table.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, this is like 1999.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got like this blonde mullet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I went and I went and I found that magazine and I snapped a picture of it and I texted it to him and I said I said hey, here's a here's a picture of you in this magazine.
[SPEAKER_01]: He came back and he said She is the sound like it's like Patrick's way because he from dirty dancing
[SPEAKER_01]: you wish looks worse than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was thinking you're being generous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're being way too kind.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're being way too soft on yourself, bro.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Carrie has a great sense of humor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Tom Dorsey did, you know, I feel certain that, you know, I've heard and read some stories about Tom Morgan that he was quite the rounder up there in Montana.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, he was still physically capable of doing so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he was certainly a big personality.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could see that, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, I have a I have a bark.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's still a lot of people and they're not they're not me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're your people.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're the casting nerd people right that are goodcasters that have tried all this stuff right, but there's still a lot of people that feel like those barcom or blanks or, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: is as good as they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know carry and really and Jared Taylor gave me one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I finally have one I've never had one before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he got that from me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think so.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a nine-way or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and he was like So you'll use this in a salt water and pass it on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so those blanks
[SPEAKER_01]: There's kind of an interesting history there that we can discuss off the line.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, those were manufactured by Kerry Burkheimer, but they're not Burkheimer tapers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were designed by someone else and made and Kerry's factory is very good though.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got three of them here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kerry is really known for his two handed stuff and his trout weight stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when I was and to be fair, I'm not a two handed
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I don't fish for fresh water trout down here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think I've been like once or twice.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got a pretty nice little putt and take fishery over in the Guadalupe.
[SPEAKER_01]: About 40 miles to the east to here.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's actually really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people come from all over the nation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Better than I thought it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't, um, I just don't have an interest in that kind of fishing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, I mean, I literally live an eighth of a mile from the Guadalupe here.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we had the flooding last week, it got about 150 yards from my house.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wish I would say that if we had, if they would stock trout here, I'd be down there every day fishing for all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't want to drive 50 miles to the east and fight the crowds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's the crowds of the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know that's that that that fishery over there is not that far from Austin and so you get a lot of the the folks from Austin come down here and it that's it you know it's great for the yeah yeah that's great for the community you know the business community and new brothels but it's just not something that I'm interested in
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my my flat fishing is really gated to salt water and the and the occasional, you know, large mouth bass, you know, if I want to Sure, it's bug or something, you know, we'll do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, um, so I've never been the greatest judge of a trout weight rod, um, But that's what carries known for, but that's not to say his salt water tapers aren't worthy of consideration.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, that's just not what he's, you know, he's Pacific Northwest guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, there's a guy down here that's a customer of Freddie Lynch's John Pettagrove, his name.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a doctor down here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And John had some carries rods down here and I kind of giggled when Freddie asked me, he said, you know what you think about Burke Hermersville?
[SPEAKER_01]: He had a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: A little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have arts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's someone who knows more.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I'd like to, you know, and I'd like for carries name to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Associated more with with salt water type fishing down here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just think because of his geographic proximity and his two handed tapers are so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know that that's that's just kind of where he's built his reputation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it would be sort of like me trying to get into the 130-pound class trolling rod grain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's not
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like me trying to get Randy Penny at United Composites to build a slow-pitch, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, bro, I'm the King of Railroads, like what do I do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need to do there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to be in that place.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, I get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's exactly right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, yeah, so there are some characters in this business, but I'll never forget.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was one of the best jokes that anybody's ever pulled over on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and you know, now that the years have gone by, you can admit that they got you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dude, they hammered me on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: which you've been to we got to get time to listen to this interview because I talked to time in about a year or two you know I took them on his birthday but when he hears this he's probably going to call me and he's going to be like that was one of the best jokes anybody's ever played oh and you know the next best thing to be in the guy who got you was he got the confession like he got to get it first hand right like he
[SPEAKER_00]: He got all the joy out of that, dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, see, I didn't know that it jumped up back up the truck, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know who it was, you know, because the letter came from the hotel and Tom was the one that was sort of represented the hotel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was a, that was a good one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those were, those were fun days, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were fun days, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot of guys that aren't with us anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Mike Barkley.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he was a great guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kim, Kim Preston.
[SPEAKER_01]: You remember Kim Preston?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rod builder to President.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ken was a great guy, a great salesperson to have him dinner with him several times.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, it was a, there's a different world pre-social media back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, it was different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really, you know, I mean, I, I know I sound like some kind of crudgy old, you know, old, gray bearded redneck down here, but as you say, something false, I'll stop you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, it's funny because I texted Abby Lawrence the other day, you know, Abby's ocean enough to be my daughter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, we've sort of struck up a friendship.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, she's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, she's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was young, those talented young builders just get me happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just put the smile on my face, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I say that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not going to, and I'm not trying to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: critical of the Gen Zers here, but if I have one more Facebook reel pop up on my feed with some guy wrapping a guide with big old spaces in between the thread, I think I'm gonna just cut off the internet all together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I'm going to go and call that you're headed there, you're going to cut off the internet at some point if I had to handicap this race, you will eventually cut off the, I don't let it be over that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what I guess on I get so tickled about is Lance, you know, Lance has gotten to be like me, you know, he's sort of angry old man now, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm not angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just keeps himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's a hilarious.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's because you'll see some young, jinsier come on there, you know, and he's rapping again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And look, when I wrap a guide for better or for worse, I stop about every six reps and pack me to
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and especially when you're going up over the little, you know, which is the one beef I have with Fuji is that I wish their guide foot legs were thinner, but you know, it's been fixed.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's that?
[SPEAKER_01]: It has been fixed.
[SPEAKER_01]: good because I was grinding those things down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't kill him.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a ground, but I'd rather have him.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd rather have him too thick and be able to grind stuff off than have him too thin and fail.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to thank you some of the new ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've figured out a process and it's a combination of stamping and, and, uh,
[SPEAKER_00]: finishing where it's literally one wrap of size a thread will wrap up on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They developed for this new salt water MC guide now the rolling across everything and we're already getting stuff shipped to us that have the new.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so I, you know, so I'll send you some stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I stop about every five or six reps and pack, and you probably don't talk to me that.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, you know, I'm not going to mention any names, I don't want to embarrass anybody here, but I see a lot of the young kids that, you know, they're all about speed, which is fine, you know, but it's so funny, as you'll see some young kid and he'll, he'll just stomp that pedal and it goes, and you know, like, and you can see
[SPEAKER_01]: You know the this and it's especially if they use colors or reports going to magnify Yeah, but a lot of guys now they're using in CP thread which I find interesting because back in the old days None of us could stand that stuff right, but it's gotten better.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gotten better Yeah, how look at Chris Carver's rods, and I'm like why am I not using this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know Yeah, cuz that and that's like all he uses and I just think it doesn't go if you want any other food size A new CP.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll send it to you Well, I owe you that at least
[SPEAKER_01]: So the funny thing is, is that I'll see this young kid stomp that pedal in a little golden line.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see the little gap.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, and then like the first, the first response is Lance going.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to stop that pedal and pack those threads.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, Lance is taking over where Ralph left off.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing with Lance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, Lance builds a beautiful rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Lance is one of the fastest starts to finish people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he is so efficient.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he is, I love that guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got nothing but great things to say about him as a friend, as a builder, as a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love Lance, too, pretty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lance, I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Lance uses some heavy thread tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's a threat tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: U.S. Lance has as much as I can get.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like as much as I can get off what I don't have to machine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm using it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I love to see, that's the other thing Lance is good for his getting in on a thing about threat tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like whenever I see a, I literally go get the popcorn when I see someone be like, so I'm trying to figure out threat tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, here's going to come Lance off the top rope as heavy as you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I won't hear from Lance for like a month or two and then I'll get this random text and it goes, there's a way too many idiots in this graph.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, no, after 30 something years ago, you know, like you and I have been in this, you know, collectively, you know, that's an I knew have been in this like 120 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and, but you know, my whole thing, Bill, he also knows how to date you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows exactly how to get you to respond to the text because you're going to respond to that text every time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, it's funny because Joe Heywood and I I had catch the other great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I had had hatch this idea about two years ago and Joe and I and Lance were actually going to start a podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Lance had some health issues and Joe got so busy up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still have the illusions of grandeur of us doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, but, but you know, the whole thing about that thread packing is that, you know, I stop about every six turns pack a little bit because
[SPEAKER_01]: When you get up to where the, you know, where the guide frame goes up into the ring, I, what I do is I, I put an extra turn or two of thread up there to where it goes up and, you know, where it starts to go up.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it looks ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what happens is that you leave yourself some leeway so that you can pack from the frame right there, pack down, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, when I, I sent that to Abby and I said, look, this comes out of your generation of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this really the,
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill of crap that people are putting out there, you know, and she said, well, you know, maybe he's going to pack when he gets up towards the frame.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I went, well, yeah, but the problem with that is that if you've got all of the space to get back all of the pack against now you've got this giant gap up there between where the thread ends in the frame, and that looks more ridiculous than the.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like I don't really care people, you know, I try to like as I've gotten older, one thing I've gotten really good at is I try not to take this shit too seriously.
[SPEAKER_01]: 100% you know like jack's going to be going off to college where we're trying to spend as much time together as we can out in the woods and underwater and when he's gone I'm liable to go back into witness protection down in Port La Vogue again.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go fishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know in orange beast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not it's not that bad, but but you know there's just
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't think that there was any, and this is going to speak a little bit to your little pansy fit that you had with Maslow, if you know about month or two ago when you went on a rampage and you were totally in the right to do so.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just thought it was hilarious because somebody told me, they said, hey, Faulkner mentioned you in there had some nice things to say about, and I hope you don't take this personally.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't listen to podcasts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not a good one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not Rod Building podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't even listen to the ones that I'm on, you know, and, um, but this when I thought, well, what did, what did he, what did jerk say about me, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so, so I went out of the podcast, and I hit like the five times fast forward speed, so you were talking like you were on meth, or something, you know, every just like, oh, you know, and so, and so when I got to the part where I heard Andy Deer, I slowed it down, I rewound it and you said something nice about my jetfall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then right after that is when you went on your tirade and I was like what got into that guy man but the thing about it is is that you are not wrong I just I don't like the negativity in the community it's like if you're saying if you're trying to be constructive be constructive if you got something negative to say about nothing and like people like you know you've been through it and I don't want to send you back into witness protection but like when someone
[SPEAKER_00]: when someone has a bad experience with the product or whatever and the first thing they do is post that on social media not go to the manufacturer who they bought it from it doesn't feel like their goal is to solve the problem and then I don't like that I think that's not the right way to be well I agree but a lot of that is social ignorance it is me like that you know what what I don't like is I don't like
[SPEAKER_01]: The hard lines, stances, that people take about things that they don't really know.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like I see these people pontificating about spine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm telling you, 95% of those people don't even know what causes the spine.
[SPEAKER_01]: The spine, you mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Idiot.
[SPEAKER_01]: They go, you know, they'll say things like, well, that's where the edge of the fabric.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and it's like...
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's one of about eight or nine things that causes the spine, you know, and there's about nine forces that when, and they'll say, well, you can see the spine, it's like, no, the spine is a force, man, it's not a dynamic flexion, it's a dynamic force that is the average of about eight or nine different things that when combined, and they'll say, well, here's what I say, you know, guys will say,
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't get into these discussions anymore because I don't go on and it the only form that I ever went on was my own and now that Haywood's taking that over I still go on there occasionally, but yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, it's so funny because the guy who manufactured our our sexy loops blank over in Spain is a really talented material properties engineer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's also one of the best flycasters in Europe's names Alejandro.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny because when I before I got involved with Paul and I don't mean to make this discussion about the spine, but But it's an example.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, before I got involved with Paul, I said, well, what's your position on the spine?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, we don't pay any attention to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We build on straightest access.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I went perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Lance Dupri and I, as a matter of fact, are talking about having t-shirts made up with an exploitive about the spine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't repeat in good company.
[SPEAKER_01]: But my position on take a large yeah, like a tribal in fashion fit, but I'll take a My position on on this bill is that it just it just makes me want to be puked When I get on the internet and I see these days long arguments about where to place the spine and how you're wrong If you don't place the spine where I place it and it's like First of all, bro, it's a fish and rod.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not carrying the cancer here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just build it the way you want
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the means of authority or you sanctioning everybody else, by the way, let me tell you something and I'm not trying to sound like an arrogant jerk here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm building some of what I would call rods of consequence for people who are taking these around the world to compete against the best of the best.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have to be right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and they have to be built correctly, very precisely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they measure everything so you know what right and what best is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess my point is that if the spy doesn't matter for those guys, well, it's not about the spine.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's what it's that I'm going to build those rods the way that I believe to be correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that doesn't line up with the way that you feel, then you go build those rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's no reason for us to argue about any of this or call names or dissolve friendships.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I would join the line.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, where have we lost the disabled discourse?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I say it all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I joke, but I'm serious.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say God bless America, build it however you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always say there's never there's always more than one way to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's what I guess I would see.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not telling people late on their opinions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not telling people not to care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not telling people not to be passionate.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to like, what's the pot calling the kettle black, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, but we can't stop short of, oh, by the way, I'm right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're wrong in your an idiot, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We can stop short of name calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can stop short of divisive within the community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can stop short of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also have a sensitivity towards innovation, probably, because Fuji spends so much time and always has trying to innovate.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like there's always, we saw it with the carbon fiber grips.
[SPEAKER_00]: people have in a different reaction to the next innovation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's going to be the people that poo poo it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to people that are excited about it and want to try it and most of them are sitting there and watching both of those sides and I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate, I hate the notion of, I'm always thinking about the community and trying to bring more people to the craft.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm always saying, so is the erogolo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like I'm really only have joking about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you join this community when you get on and all it's all bickering on the boards about a bunch of stuff You understand what it seems but antican stupid and you like to your point.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is panantic and stupid.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a hundred percent Be civil.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite guitar players of all time and I actually had the pleasure of owning one of his one of his tour You know one of his tour torn up amplifiers is Jake E. Lee that played with Ozzy Osborne back in the 80s and then had bad lands And now's got red dragon cartel
[SPEAKER_01]: I just loved, I mean, I got a man crush on Jake, and I actually had the pleasure of owning one of his marshals that had been on several world tours with Aussie at one point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember reading an interview with him one time and he said, you know, I just don't understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's such a large contingent of the guitar community that, you know, when somebody puts out an album or puts out some music or makes a post, you know, on one of the media platforms now.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like seven out of ten is
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, this is what you could have done better, you know, your vibrato socks, you know, you're, you know, you need more mids in your tone.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not like, hey, that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, I, he made some remarks.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I thought we were all in this together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how people are just my people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are not your people?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is why I don't go on any Facebook groups or forums anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: And every now and then I have, like, every now and then, abuel tag me and something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I finally had to tell her like, I love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going on there, you know, I mean, what is that saying that you like to say like you can't have a tug of war if you don't pick up the road?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can't have a tug of war if you don't pick up the route.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you something.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Bill, when Bill Gamma and I met in Seguine.
[SPEAKER_01]: and bill could still thump it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I watched bill throw, you know, west coast style arm in front, you know, 110 feet, you know, with a full of five weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a hell of a cast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he and he's not using, you know, the news stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The news stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's doing the old west coast style.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I asked Bill, you know, I said, you still practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, nah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, how come?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he looked at me and he said,
[SPEAKER_01]: I should be able to care anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, that's exactly how I feel about rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I love building rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm having a blast building these sexy loose rods.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I can't wait to get up in the morning because it's taking me a little while to find my footing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the first couple of ones, I was like, I remember having this much trouble with finish.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I figured out, oh, this is what I used to do to make it look the way that I needed to look.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm having a ball doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, good, I'm glad to hear that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
[SPEAKER_01]: like, I don't really care what anybody thinks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if somebody comes to me and goes, well, those rods suck because they're not spined.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, yeah, you're probably right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just go by a sage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go by Thomas Thomas, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a shots fired.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a 187 in progress.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really, I'm like, I really just don't care.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, it did just, it's like,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I heard Steve V. I one time somebody said something that, you know, insinuating that this is another guitar player, by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, as a Frank Zappa, a David Lee Roth, White Snake, a very talented musician.
[SPEAKER_01]: And somebody said to him, some one time about, you know, guitar being his life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, guitars, not my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, that's something I do in my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: But my life is being a husband and a dad and a friend and he's like, you know, guitar is something that I do in my life, but it isn't not my life and I think we all sort of reach that point, you know, I was listening to another surfing podcast the other day with with a guy who was talking about he said, you know, when you get to be a certain age, you start to sort of cross a bridge.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, where you go from being an angry old guy who wants to fight about stuff, to just kind of nodding your head and saying, Yeah, I'm just going to go on about my business and do it the way that makes me happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think that's kind of where I mean, I don't know if you've started on the bridge yet, or I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm probably talking about it on the day asking me tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: every now and then you know I feel like I'm halfway across and sometimes I turn around and go do I want to go back to the beginning of this but my point at all that is that I just hate to see you know I make funny you because I love you and you're my dear friend and you're in the right and you're telling the truth usually and you had you little you had your little outburst yeah but but it was not unfounded or incorrect and like I say I didn't really listen to
[SPEAKER_00]: But God bless my sweet parents, they always listen to every episode and my mom doesn't call me and give me feedback on many of them Yeah, but she did call me and give me feedback on that one and she was like you repeated yourself way too often.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you got to say it, say it and move on don't repeat yourself over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes it really hard to listen to and by the way, that's negative and I don't think that's really what you want us to be negative.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be positive and I'm like, you know what, mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not exactly right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure that it was negative, though, Bill.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like, sometimes, and I hope this doesn't come across those.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes, some people need to be spanked.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have to see the error of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll come today, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's not enough spanking going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean that in a violent bring back, okay, as soon as the city's you're done with your fine shirts, I'm going to bring back, I'm going to get sure to say bring back corporal punishment, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, you know, and and and and I just feel like that social media has facilitated that in such a way that
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, it's always been bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I remember when, do you remember there was a particular fellow that used to call us so much trouble on the old guild board back in the 90s?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know who I'm talking about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a fellow named Sully here somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he probably got who I was ready to dock his teeth in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, that's, you know, I think of Sully when I get been out of shape about something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, that guy was just an idiot and asshole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why don't you even?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, I should have never picked up the rope.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't worth any of our time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would I?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was never going to learn to be a better rod builder from that guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was never going to learn anything about rod building business.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was never going to learn anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: What would I even need to do with that guy?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of that, because of that age, you and I were where a lot of the younger generation is now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we took it so seriously that it became our life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was one of the reasons why I've had people like, I saw something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So funny, every now and then I Google my name
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the day I did a chat GPT search and it was a chat GPT things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm dead Because Caelan that took over my writing slot on sexy loops for a few months when I left He wrote he wrote his first article like it was like I was an it goes in a little bit you Yeah, and so chat GPT things I had and it was so funny because it said something on there It said Andy Deer was a rod builder known for these innovations and he had a running gun style of angling and I showed that to Jackson Jackson was like
[SPEAKER_01]: But how does that mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know what that means.
[SPEAKER_01]: My age and weight.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not running or gun in anywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, look.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe gunning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not so much running.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the last time I had to Google myself, I didn't even make the first page.
[SPEAKER_00]: You forget there's other people with your same name out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't worth my time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: What my point in all that is that.
[SPEAKER_01]: This, the whole social media thing is, you know, it's, I don't understand, you know, on a large, on a large scale, the dynamics of how this is pitted us all against one another in some way.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and even when, even when you and I were growing up in this with, you know, when it was just the old forums and things like the Guild Forum and RodBuilding.org and RodBuilding.com and all that, there was still a lot of infighting on there, but it
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, we said here we talk about Sully being such a jerk.
[SPEAKER_01]: That guy showed up at the first Guild Conclave and he wasn't nearly the jerk in person that he was behind the keyboard.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe we all needed a little grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember thinking like, it is why he was actually lovely as I recall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: we were both ready to throw chin gossles with that guy and then and then it was like well he's not you know i mean you know he's he's no bob mcamey but he's not nearly as bad as what we thought he was you know but it's just that whole thing of you know you can sit in my not going to love him for the rest of my life but i can tell you i don't need to pick up the rope well it's just that thing if you know you can sit behind a keyboard and total anonymity and say and do things where you don't have to be held accountable for when you know i mean like my whole thing is
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm going to build my rods the way that I want, and I'm going to build my guitars the way that I want, and I'm going to build my golf clubs the way that I want, and I just don't really care anymore what, you know, I mean, I've had people over the years tell me, well, you're not a custom rod builder, because you don't do diamond reps.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, whatever, whatever, it's that definition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, why don't you go tell Russ Peak that, you know, and see what Russ Peak, you know, Russ was still alive, you know, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean,
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell Russ, he's not a accomplished rod builder because he doesn't know how to do a frickin' diamond ramp.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like that kind of arrogance is what burned me out in 08.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason I was telling you is because I googled my name the other day, and there was a post from somebody in 2014 on Tom's board.
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy's saying, man, I really miss Andy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish he was back in the industry.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had some really cool products.
[SPEAKER_01]: And somebody came on there, might have been Tom, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember how to go find the post.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care enough to look for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But somebody came on there and said, I really miss Andy, I wish he'd come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And somebody came on there and said, Andy made his money and got out.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't think they meant that in a negative or derogatory way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: he didn't make that much money and that is not why he got out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, he got out because I wanted to be a dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be a 100% no president.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I wasn't going to be able to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I, you know, I mean, as you are aware as a business owner, even a, you know, a little piss ant rod building company like I got down here in the hills.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost a 24 or seven thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take days off, that's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I wouldn't say it offended me when I read that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it kind of hurt my heart a little bit, because I didn't want people to think that this was strictly a money grab for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it wasn't at all more than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you never went anywhere for those of us that are friends of yours.
[SPEAKER_00]: You only went and witnessed protection for the people who didn't want to be in touch with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's an important distinction too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So look, well, and you know, I don't think you got nothing to apologize to anybody for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't, I don't, I don't feel that way, you know, and I make no apologies for not having been involved, you know, as funny because, you know, Tom Kirkman and I we used to talk on the phone sometimes two or three, four times a day and I'll never forget when I left the business in a way, you know, my correspondence with Tom and with you and with Karen Hopkins, people in the land that I was close to kind of faded.
[SPEAKER_01]: over the course of a year or two and they're for a while saying man, I talked to Falconer in 18 months, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, how does that happen, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know, you know, it's just the way that it, it's just the way that it evolves, you know, but I wouldn't, I mean, I wouldn't hide from anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just had other priorities and that's a good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, look at what a proficient fisherman and castor and good young man Jackson is like mission accomplished.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank God for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right right right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a worthy trade off for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all I say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's exhibit a enough enough said like, no, no, I don't need answer any other questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I came back in 2018 into the business, you know, I had a long talk with Karen Hopker because she was like, are you sure you want to do this because this is kind of a different playground we're playing in now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, no, I'm not sure, Karen, but I think there's an opportunity here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've always felt like that there was some unfinished things that I had, you know, that I wasn't able to accomplish before just due to time constraints.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, so you know, so I'm I'm very grateful for the last eight or nine years however long it's been I think I've 2017 is sort of When the gen four thing got off the ground, but um, I just hate to see that kind of Animosity in the community, you know, and you and I have discussed this before it is kind of uncanny in a way
[SPEAKER_01]: Rod building definitely attracts a certain type of personality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and some of those personality traits are good, and some of them are not so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I was involved in the knife-making business for close to seven years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I wasn't nearly as well connected in the knife-making world as I am in the rod building world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, but I never saw that kind of infighting and backstabbing in name calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just downright sort of foolish immature behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's not to say that it wasn't there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't there in the capacity where it was front and center for as many people to see as what I've seen in the raw building world.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, really we're going to get in fights over air,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and the thing that I would submit to people to consider like think about all the need and you and I know a lot of the same people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about a bunch of them think about the bottom of came to the world and the last two trees of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean we could I could go on and on and on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, great people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's all this has been a great thing for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: My life is so much better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, or it having been here and all you guys and gals being in it, then not 100%.
[SPEAKER_00]: So can we just, if that, and so to me, that's what this craft is and that's what this community is and we all have a version of that, a passion that got us into it and people who helped us along the way and something we love about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, y'all, let's just tone it down and keep it about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now one
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be AI stuff to drive engagement and like but yet we let it divide our community as a silly right like put to your point like don't read the comments hang up the phone don't pick up the rope Just talking or actively with your people in your community and and I think if if someone has helped you and really advanced your craft and I can say this because you're one who has for me And I could literally list probably a hundred people who have really
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm not original, I'm learning other people's stuff and I don't come up with the idea, I learned how to do it, execute it well after it's invented and I'm fine with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's who I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's part of your point of view.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's part of your point of view.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have, I don't have the creator gift that the very short list of people have.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if someone has helped you and someone has made it better, then treat everybody else that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Give everybody else to benefit of that doubt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Understand that it could be fear, it could be anxiety, it could be uncertainty, and like you said, it's such a good point.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so easy to come across wrong and written tax compared to spoken or interactive, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, and that's a, it's a, it's a great example, but, you know, So, well, I appreciate your positive, I really appreciate your sort of what to me is a very mature and sort of old soul positive perspective on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, the way I look at it, Bill, and you, you know, where you referenced Bob McCamey and a few others while I go.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I mean, I think back to when I started in this, and I remember laying on my floor at like one o'clock in the morning, reading advanced custom broad building and like 1994.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: I never would have thought that the trajectory and direction of my life would have been into a professional capacity, and I'm so blessed and so fortunate for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even more so, some of the people that have come into my life, the John Tabits and you, and Lance, and some of the newer folks like Abby, I'm very grateful for her friendship.
[SPEAKER_01]: The life would have been a lot more boring without y'all in it, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel that way about you and my life, a hundred percent, you know, I was telling somebody the other night at dinner, kind of a funny story, but a friend of my wife whose son goes to school with Jackson.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's battling breast cancer right now and she, and so we got to talking about breast implants and I said, well, you know, one of my dear friends was the
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, well, you got John Tabiths's legacy walking around and you're just, you know, and so I started telling her Tabith story is 99% of which aren't fit for this podcast lady consumption.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, and, uh, but it just reminded me, like, galley, I mean, if, if I, if I had never, you know, if I had never gone into this in a professional capacity,
[SPEAKER_01]: You never met him.
[SPEAKER_01]: John and Bob McCamey and Gerald McCaslin, I can't forget.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gerald was the best man in my wedding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and, you know, it just, life has been a lot richer because of this craft.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's frustrating to see people treating it like a platform to grow their ego and that's what it's about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, you're talking about the knife community.
[SPEAKER_00]: You and I've had tons of these conversations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, it's always ego and I've just come to hate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so hopefully maybe we can create a little bit of awareness about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, Andy, it is all we can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is, and it's always so good to get time with you, my friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're always so generous with your time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not way too weird, I don't want to say three years.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a last time that we did this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, since we recorded the last podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was still a commercial lender to bank when when we did this last.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, you know what we'll do another one this year I think it was 2023 Well, so two and a half maybe it's like two and a half.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't believe it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds about right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's shocking to me Well, there you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will I will fix it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do another one while it's still 2026 deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know what you're gonna have to help me come up with a topic like you did this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you so much job well done my friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: See You don't get in front of a creative type and tell them what we're gonna talk about you go to a sad need your help What should we talk about?
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll have a great conversation man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will have you dearly and thank you for coming on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate it Man, I love you two.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for all you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely and thanks y'all for listening and please remember to like Download subscribe wherever you get podcasts content.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see you next time right here on the mastering rod building podcast
[UNKNOWN]: You