Product Description
LIMITED TO STOCK ON HAND.
PRODUCTION HAS BEEN PAUSED.
Founders Series™ Guides
12mm Fluted Okapi Agate Rings; Precious Silver Rope Twisted Bezels; Heavy-Duty Hydro-Welded Frames.
These guides feature narrow fluted Okapi Agate rings, each carefully wrapped in a rope twisted, precious silver bezel. The frames are our new Heavy Duty “Guide Weight” Hydro-Welded Frames. If the frames were to be blued, the bezel, like the precious silver seam running down the center of each foot, would remain bright – a fine contrast.
The Precious Silver Weld Seam Is More Prominent On Our Heavy Duty “Guide” Weight Frames.
The guides in this batch feature my ten favorite rings from the entire bin full of these stones. If nothing else, you’ll get a sense for what sorts of patterns catch my eye. Generally speaking, they aren’t the evenly banded rings. I prefer the quirky stones.
As I have time to photograph them, I will list the ten guides each with a Roman Numeral, I – X. The drop-down list should allow each guide, one through ten, to be sold individually. Beware: In the course of an evening, seven individuals could each order the seventh (VII) guide. Not likely, but possible. If you order one of these, please type a second choice into the comments section of your order form, if other choices exist. Please pay using PayPal, so we can make prompt refunds if your guide (or alternate selection) is unavailable. If this system creates too many duplicate sales, I may have to create a separate page for every single guide, which would be even more time consuming. Anyway, please bear with me as I try to offer specific guides for sale.
I am charging a premium for these guides. They are, at least to my eye, the finest of the rings. I also took the time to photograph them and post them to the website, something I don’t normally do for the bulk of the guides I make. If you buy one, you’re buying my time to do this. In return, you get to see the finished guide before you buy it…something you don’t have the opportunity to do with most of the custom guides on this site. If you like the style, but not the price, you can buy a similar guide, sight unseen, for under a hundred dollars on this page.
As of 1/20/21 we have ten of these in stock. Grab one while we’ve got them. The Bright/Natural format can ship promptly; if you opt for the Blued finish, the guide will go onto our custom work list and should be ready to ship in a few weeks.
Each one of these is going to vary slightly in specifications, but figure the guide ring is about 12mm OD x 6.5mm ID x 2mm Wide. Each guide will stand about 0.895″ tall and be about 1.465″ long, foot tip to foot tip.
12mm Guides are ideal for 6-8 weight bamboo fly rods; Graphite and Glass makers might use them on a 5 weight. Imagine one of these guides on your next Dickerson 901812, singing as a seven weight line, double hauled, reaches for a distant smallmouth on the Susquehanna!
Trout? Absolutely. Bass? In High Style!
Use #50 Tire Silk to lash this guide down traditionally.
Full Stop. Discussion. My most trusted advisor, a man who considers himself reasonably well educated, hurled vulgarities in the direction of Roman Numerals. He fumes when he sees the production year of a film, on a poster or DVD jacket, and it’s a string of letters. I get it. I have a few years of Latin under my belt – from three decades back, so please don’t email me in Latin – and like most moderns I cringe when I have to sort out 1943. Roman Numerals aren’t intuitive the way, say, romantic love is. Odi et amo. By the way, that’s MCMXLIII if my Roman Numerals are functioning today. For the purposes of this web page and all its clones, I promise I won’t count past ten. That’s where my fingers stop anyway, and I’m not much of a mathematician. Here’s the super short tutorial. I=1. V=5. X=10. Roman Numerals are often added, but sometimes subtracted, to achieve their goals of indicating this number or that, so 1 – 10 is represented thus: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X. Back up there in 1943, you’ll see the subtractive notation in action twice (CM=900 & XL=40) because no digit should be repeated more than three times; in other words VIII represents eight, but VIIII does not represent nine, although the more concise IX does.
Long Live The Romans! (I live for lost causes…)
My friend suggested I use English letters instead of Roman Numerals to mark each guide, but our letters were Roman, for the most part, long before the Angles got hold of them, so I’m sticking with Roman letters used in a numeric sense. Yes, I’m difficult.
I did heed the advice to achieve more clarity by actually sticking a letter (or a number, as the case may be) into the top left of each image so there’s no mistaking which guide is which. If you pay close attention, you’ll note that I Italicized each Roman Numeral, which was as close as I could get, visually, with my rudimentary computer skills, to hacking each figure out of marble with a chisel and sledge. Tell a truth, but tell it slant, right? We see her words typed upright, but maybe Emily was chiseling out her canted lines with a bold – and tipped – nib.
Yes, my advisor responded. “Oh my God, you insufferable son of a bitch….That will work; those who enjoy the words will read them and those who don’t will just ignore them. The first time somebody complains that you sent them the wrong guide, though, because they chose IV when they meant to choose VI, you’d better fess up and send me a prize.” Italics, mine.
So, for all you who read this, please learn to count in Latin, one through ten, and don’t mis-order. Thanks!
Guide I
Guide II
More images to follow…they’re made, but I need to polish and photograph them.
Guide III
Guide IV
Guide V
Guide VI
Guide VII
Guide VIII
Guide IX
Guide X
Read More About The Founders Series™ Guides!
