Tobacco = Phenol + Formaldehyde

[philaroman]

aren't the fancy pens (MontBlanc, Pelikan, Pilot) similar resin?

[David Hall]

Great information Steve.

[Donnyboat]

Thanks Steve, very informative, & thanks Sid for the factory tour, I think the first silid fibre glass rods made in Australia were made by Butterworth. cheers Don

[Midway Tommy]

There came a time that rather than pitch the inferior quality brown natural blanks many manufacturers opted to paint them different colors. I've got an original white Shakespeare Howald and also a light, mint, green Shakespeare Howald. The light green one is clearly a less expensive model. The cork grip has cheap plastic caps on both ends rather than a regular quality cork handle. I also have an early Narmco Conlon, a mid '60s Heddon Mark I & a Heddon Mark IV fly rod and an Airex slip ring spinning rod, all which have quality brown natural finishes. Heddon's lower quality Pal lines were all painted rods. South Bend was one of the companies that pushed their painted rod lines as high quality.   Here's some examples, one of which is the first spinning rod I ever owned. I used it for years. Maybe the original finish was inferior so it required paint to hide that, but it really is a high quality fiberglass spinning rod.  

[Ron Jones]

What I have found interesting about this story for many years is how each individual engineer (represented by a company) came up with a piece of the puzzle and then the industry included that piece. Fenwick made the ferrules, Silaflex figured out that a much lighter and better handling rod could be produced by vacuum bagging (that one changed EVERYTHING), everyone wanted Cal Tackles mandrels. Of course I'm missing a few. Pick up a rod from the late 70s and you can see the child of many great minds.
Ron

[Crow]

Thanks for the info....very interesting !