55 on the fly

This past winter found me restoring a vintage Kingfisher bamboo fly rod... I posted progress of the work here on my blog. I completely stripped and then rebuilt this old cane rod to it's former glory. Well today, the circle is complete and the old girl caught 7 Yellowstone River trout this morning... I was very happy with the way the rod performed and enjoyed every minute of the hiking and fishing back in my old stomping grounds.... Here's a couple of photos... the gear the first fish a Cutthroat on the Kingfisher this is what we came for 17 inches of Cutty...

Today's project was to "try" and repair the Kingfisher's butt section's cracked ferrule. Background: A fellow turkey hunter and good friend gave me these two fly rods in the hopes that I could bring them back to life. When completed, I will get to keep the Kingfisher and he gets the Horrocks and Ibbotson Featherlight. Update: Both rods cleaned up nicely. The varnish stripper did it's job with 3 coats and a bunch of wiping and scrubbing with rags and a tooth brush. But in the end the bamboo is in nice shape and all sections look good. There was just a little thread dye that had bled into the bamboo from some of the original guide wraps that I could not remove and I can live with that. All the ferrules are okay except for two on the Kingfisher.... One has to be remounted and realigned, not a big deal, but the other is cracked badly on the butt section. Right or wrong I decided to take a "crack", pun intended, at fixing it. And since it was on the...

A friend gave me two old fly rods awhile ago. Today, I dug them out and got to work on them. One is a  Horrocks and Ibbotson Featherlight and the other is a Kingfisher Fly Rod both 8 1/2' long. Both will be stripped and rebuilt as "user" fly rods.... The good news is all the bamboo seems to be in fairly good shape. I am starting with the H and I.  Pictured here is the H and I, but both grips have been heavily varnished by the original owner and were very dried out, soft and punky, they crumbled when I tried to clean them.  They both have loose and/or cracked ferrules as-well-as some bent or missing line guides. All the line guides will need to be replaced anyway with larger versions as these were for silk fly lines of the day and are too small for modern fly lines. I will reuse the reel seats and any ferrules that are not cracked. I am going to strip the rod completely; turn a new cork grip on the lathe, remove all of the line guides, remove the old varnish and ...