Prelude

From TK Rod Project

In September 2002 my fiancee (then girlfriend) Lisa and I attended our first rodmaker's gathering in the Catskills. It was there I truly began to realize what wonderful folks comprise the bamboo rodmaking community. I met several wonderful people that year, but too many of those were only in passing, and juggling names and information was a bit overwhelming. The following year's attendees saw us as an engaged couple feeling much more at ease (we didn't feel like we had to run around and do everything at one time). It was at this particular gathering that Lisa and I met Ted Knott. Ted was a wonderful person to talk to, and by the end of it all, he indicated that he would send Lisa, care of me, an early wedding present. A short time after the gathering, the reel seat pictured arrived in the mail. When I asked, Ted wrote that he had made the seat, and that the wood had come from a nice burl in a woodpile. Lisa and I were taken by its elegance, and I was charged with building a rod around it.

About a year and a half ago news of Ted's death reached my ears. It was one of those moments that forces a pause in your existence to contemplate those things one contemplates during events of magnitude. I had been rather out of touch with most of the rodmaking community from August 2004 until January of this year (2006). Except for an unexpected last-minute dash to Roscoe, NY for the 2005 gathering I hadn't done much of anything rodmaking related. I had neither the time (true) nor the space (semi-true; rather excuse-like). Lisa was also saddened by the news, and we talked about Ted and the rod which had yet to be built. I remember mentioning to Lisa that it might be fitting to make a rod based on a taper Ted had given me of a rod he was most fond of.

Ted called the rod in question the "Ontario Classic," and it was basically a Payne 98 taper with some special modifications. The rod is one featured in Ed Engle's book "Splitting Cane: Conversations With Bamboo Rodmakers." In this book Engle describes the rod and some of Ted's standard touches on his rods.

Fast forward to January, 2006. Having started my beloved hobby back up, and finding myself in a position to at last build Lisa her rod, I broached the subject and challenged her to think about what she wanted her rod to be. I again suggested that the "Ontario Classic" might be a fitting choice with a great deal of karma behind it, this time reading Engle's chapter on Ted to her. She was immediately in agreement, and we were both excited to start the project.

And that is what this is all about. This small corner of the modern information realm will serve to chronicle the making of Lisa's rod. It is an interesting thing to be building a fly rod around a reel seat. Though I cannot say it is the most backward thing I have done as a fly fisherman. In this case I believe quite the opposite is true; the rod would never have been conceived of without the gift of a kind, generous man.