Author: Matt West
Making Bamboo Chopsticks
Chopsticks. Love bamboo & Asian cuisine? You can craft hexagonal bamboo chopsticks. For novice rodmakers, they represent a good way to practice setting up and using a planing form on something arguably less important (and intimidating) than a first set of rod blanks.For every maker, chopsticks represent an incredibly useful way of productively using scrap bamboo from the rodmaking process. And what a teaching tool, too,
Bamboo Rodmaking for Beginners
In 1997 or so, Frank Armbruster of Colorado Bootstrap published a Free Report on the basics of how to build a bamboo fly rod. He advertised it in the classifieds of a popular national fishing rag for the price of one SASE and a couple of unused stamps. Our own Matt West responded to that ad, and that was the first day of the rest of his life.
GW Ain’t Just for Bamboo
Cameron Mortenson, over at The Fiberglass Manifesto, has featured GW in a blog post. Killer. Thanks, Cameron!
Take a Peak at The Planing Form to Read About Bamboo
Peak Bamboo is in The Planing Form, Issue #161 October/September 2016.
Peak Bamboo is in Angling International
Peak Bamboo is in the October 2016 Angling International magazine. Read about us on page 26 of the online issue!
angling-international.com/virtual-magazine/october-2016-issue-105/
The Planing Form Put a Hex on the News
Kirk recently did a review of our Hex products in The Planing Form, Issue #160 July/August 2016.
Ferrule Advice
If you have the least question about ferrules – if you’re new to ferrules or only moderately experienced – please, please read this information at least once. I promise, it will help to prevent mistakes and misunderstandings. Thanks!
Welcome to the Golden Witch Ferrule Advice Ramble! I need to let you, the rodmaker or restorationist reading this page, know that I have lost clients because of ferrules. Ferrules are finicky, challenging, yet almost invariably necessary and worthwhile little beasts.
Making Silk Fly Lines
Special Thanks to Daniel Klepac for taking the time to put together a tutorial on how to furl silk fly lines!
Before fishing lines were braided, they were furled. Horse hair, some sort of grass and silk were the materials of the day. The difference between the silk line I made and how most furled leaders are made is the number of legs. Most furled leaders have two legs (strands). My silk line has three, this results in a more round shape.
The bits and pieces of “how to” were gathered from the web, nothing copyrighted or proprietary. I think most folks avoid silk lines due to cost of commercial lines, upkeep, and lack of DIY. I’m going to do my best to explain the process, if anything doesn’t make sense or you have any questions…let me know!
We’re on Instagram!
We’ll be posting pictures of cool rods and applications of our stuff and new components, and… who knows?
Agates and Agatines and… Oh, My!
Arcane Component Works has added fresh-cut agatines to the mix of options. We felt you needed some text to explain natural stone stripping guides, versus those that are not, you guessed it, perfectly natural stone. In fact, some rings are almost entirely unnatural, almost.
Let’s start with the real stuff, unadulterated, truly natural stone. We actually offer a ring variant called “Natural Agate” and it’s the real deal…plain, faintly figured, semi-precious rock harvested from the earth, cut into slabs, slabs carved into rings, rings polished, then bezelled, and finally soldered into frames. Nice. Another group of natural stone we offer is the plain ROY Agate, which is actually carnelian, itself a specific form of cryptocrystalline chalcedony…and chalcedonies are commonly termed “agate” even though agate is actually a sub-variety of chalcedony, not an equivalent term for the entire family of these stones. But, rodmakers and guide makers have been calling carnelian “agate” long before we arrived, so we’re sticking with the name, but giving you a head’s up to the proper term for this mineral.