It is currently 19 Apr 2024, 13:30


New Topic Add Reply
Author Message
Early NARMCO Conolon rod
Post 20 Aug 2008, 04:06 • #1 
Sport
Joined: 08/18/08
Posts: 62
Location: US-MA
This is a 9'0", 2/1 Conolon Live Fiber Trojan 416, pat. pend. by NARMCO, Inc. of Costa Mesa, CA, built on a brown blank that shows a rather coarse fiberglass mesh pattern, with gold metal cap and single ring over blue metal, blue metal winding check, quality metal ferrule, and decorative blue spiral wraps with twin red accent wraps.

This web page -

http://www.geocities.com/ ... y_narmco_conolon_rods.htm

- reproduces a circa 1950's NARMCO catalog in which this claim is made:

Soon after World War II Narmco was fortunately able to introduce the first tubular fiberglass fishing rod invented by Dr. Glenn G. Havens, noted physicist and head of Narmco Research.

I have no idea whether NARMCO's claim can be substantiated or not, but this fiberglass rod would seem to be an early one, built well before Garcia's involvement with the Conolon line of rods. More information or ideas about this rod would be very welcome. This is not my area of expertise so I'm prepared for comments ranging from "What a rare and unique rod!" to "Dude there's a million of these old beaters out there."

Image


Top
  
Quote
Early NARMCO Conolon rod
Post 20 Aug 2008, 05:10 • #2 
Glass Fanatic
Joined: 03/20/07
Posts: 2544
Location: Wofford Heights, Calif. Kern River
Nice rod, especially sense it has the spiral wraps, that makes it easy to date as late 1959 or 1960 before the move to Santa Anna California. Your rod was a takeoff of the older (1955) Blue ribbon (Atlas 6100 series) of rods, being the third from the best available. At 9ft it would have been built for D, HCH, GBG fly lines, weighed 5.5 ounces and retailed for around $19.00. Although its not a super high grade rod its extremely well made with machined aluminum reel seat, Super-Z nickle steel ferrules and sports those spiral wraps which are extremely hard to find, in that they were only available for a very short while with the Costa Mesa Decaling.
Your rod looks to be in excellent condition, as such it should bring around $60-75 from a Conolon Collector and would make a great vintage bass or Salmon-Steelhead rod. It would have been shipped in a cloth sock by the way. After the move to Santa Anna in December 1960, the next generation of Narmco rods didn't have the Narmco name, only Conolon decaling in preperation for the sale in mid 1961 to Garcia. Also the Conolon rods (pre Garcia) have unique wraps like yours. Those made for that 6 month period are the hardest to find.
After the move to Santa Anna Conolon (Narmco had the patient) started using a process called Conoguard which included a UV protectant in their final finishing. As such if you expect to fish that rod much or expect it to see alot of exposure to sunlight, you should give it a fine coat or two of Varnish with UV protectant.
As a bit of trivia, Dr Havens is credited with a patient dating back into late 1943 or early 1944 for the manufacture of hollow fiberglass fishing rods (the Conolon process, thus the rod line name), he was head of fiberglass developement in San Diego at the time (WWII) working on the manufacture of hollow fiberglass aircraft antenna's when he got the idea for a hollow fishing rod. Several of his developement team moved onto Shakespeare before the end of WWII after Germany's surrender to work with and helped develope Dr Howards patiented and slightly different process just about the same time. Dr Havens leaving his envolvement in the aircraft industry (Consolidated Aircraft) until slightly later to found the Narmco Corperation, didn't actually start producing fishing rods till about the same time as Shakespeare or slightly afterwards.
My earliest Narmco-Conolon rod from San Diego dates to late 1946 and uses the earliest type of Hexel pre-preg cloth. Around 1947 Narmco Research developed the nylon-penolic pre-preg cloth and spun off yet another Narmco Industry which then supplied Conolon (your style cloth weave). This company was quickly sold, and subsequently produced pre-preg cloth to the Industry thereafter being located by 1951 to Anaheim California. This was one of the reasons the Narmco Narmco Research and Manufacturing Company (parent corp) moved their subsidiary, the National Rod Company (Narmco Conolon) to their first location in Costa Mesa in 1951.

Richard


Last edited by flyfishing4goldentrout on 20 Aug 2008, 05:13, edited 1 time in total.

Top
  
Quote
Early NARMCO Conolon rod
Post 20 Aug 2008, 11:38 • #3 
Sport
Joined: 08/18/08
Posts: 62
Location: US-MA
Thank you, Richard, for your extremely detailed reply. The history of fishing tackle means a tremendous lot to me, so I greatly appreciate your explanations. I had heard about Shakespeare and Howald, but previously had no idea about how Conolon and Havens fit into the story. The ferrules are indeed Super-Z; the female ferrule has the encircled-Z logo very lightly marked on it. The rod does show UV damage here and there; it looks very much like the slight peeling that occurs after you forget your sunscreen and get a mild sunburn. I'm sure you saw a bit of this damage on the glass to the left of the decal in the bottom photo. Many thanks again!


Top
  
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  

New Topic Add Reply



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 26 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Jump to:  
Google
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group