When the rod building craft lost Andy's creative and high quality minded input, this craft lost a vital innovator. To me, a guy thats been out of rod making for some time, his abscence and loss of input is very obvious. I miss him. Andy come back....

Andy made his money and got out. A lot of good, creative rod builders have come upon the scene since then, and many of the most creative ones have been around and are still here.

Fred,
Would you care to elaborate? What is "very obvious"? I have only been doing this for a couple of years but it seems to me innovation and creativity abound. Thanks.

Cork.

Much more cork in many greater styles and types than ever before, right now.

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While I agree that Andy was a great innovator and introduced a lot of us to the wood lathe for rod building there are plenty more that push the envelope even further. Just look at Billy Vivona's work and mark Blaubaum to name a couple.

Freddwhy (Rapt-Ryte)

Fred Duncan Wrote:
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> Cork.


Thanks for clearing that up. Very informative. Good Luck with your endeavors.

I agree with Tom, much more in cork out there. However, that being said, the quality of natural cork has gone way down. What we buy today as Flor grade would not have passed as AAA grade 5 years ago. I've been very disappointed in the quality of natural and burnt burl I've been buying for some time now, regardless of where I buy it.

Jerry Cook
J-Cook Fly Rods

Which brings up another point - what is Flor grade? Does that "grade" mean a high or low grade of cork? That's the bigger problem. There is nothing anywhere that puts any sort of standard on "Flor" which can be as good or as bad as the seller deems it to be. Until there is a standard with some sort of numerical percent clarity or quality behind it, Flor remains a subjective term.

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You're absolutely correct Tom. There is no industry standard and therein lies the big problem. What XYZ company calls Flor grads ABC company may call "Select grade" or even AAAA or AAA. Until there is an industry standard, we will continue to have this discussion. There needs to be an industry standard, but then, who is going to determine that "standard"?

Actually there is such a standard and more consumers should insist that their dealers use it:

[www.rodbuilding.org]

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