my rod is peeling, I can see the graphite

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

I was lucky enough to have (then fiberglass) a local blank maker as a source for my early rodbuilding efforts. It was the old GatorGlass facility (a one man operation run by an old man named Gus - I never knew his last name...) in North Miami Beach. He'd build you anything you wanted (and lay an extra layer of glass cloth here or there if you asked). He was kind enough to walk me through his facility that included it all the vertical baking oven with chain drive to draw the ready wrapped mandrels through after they'd also been wrapped in cellophane tape, the hydraulic puller that removed the mandrel (a steel form carefully lathed into the taper that each rod blank would eventually hold....)from the cured blank, then he'd hand peel the cellophane tape before the sanding process using a centerless, water bathed, sander that smoothed blanks needed to remove the "ridges" (and yes, ridged blanks were slightly tougher than the snooth sanded version), etc. He'd also make pushpole blanks in any length desired (they were only $30 or slightly more way back then). Those early pushpoles were originally meant to be "hot sticks" for power company workers to handle hot lines with (dry fiberglass is an insulator, not a conductor) and were pretty limber. We had to make our own forks and points for them (at that time I used green mangrove forks, carefully oven dried before being epoxied into place...). I used to check in occasionally with him and got to see his first efforts at graphite and composite graphite/glass rods. I still have a few of those old blanks in a corner somewhere...

 

All of this was pretty primitive against today's standards with computerized lathes and all the automated processes currently in use. Wonder what old Gus (always with a cigar in his mouth) would have said about today's world where most rods are built offshore...

 

Tight lines

Bob LeMay

(954) 435-5666