Yes. Sam Druckman traveled to Kerry Burkheimer's shop to work out the rod tapers. Burkheimer is building the blanks and Druckman is building the rods.

Cameron borrowed the 8'3" four piece from Sweetgrass. He let me borrow if too. It's a great rod. It casts from in close to way out there without missing any distance in between. The rod has a lot of touch along the way. The build quality is what you would expect from Sweetgrass.

I'm hoping Cameron can borrow a three weight also ...

Tom

What? No Five Weights?

I know that this is approaching the "uncomfortable" zone, but are these fiberglass rods being built by guys whose primary interest is cane really $400 better than a Steffen who has been dedicated to the art of building fiberglass flyrods for his entire career? It seems presumptuous to start a new project and price it at the head of the class. Kind of like the "emperor's new clothes", or perhaps it's more like the reason why dogs lick their testicles ... because they can.

After looking at Sam's glass comments on the link, I have to say more power to him.

I couldn't afford one, but to see him, with his experience, experimenting with and putting together a fresh line of glass is inspiring.

For someone who wants and can afford that "certain something" it may be the ticket ...

and one of my business advisers insists that some of us Yuppies won't buy anything unless it's expensive

Wow, there was a time when Wojnickis sat alone at the top spot for most expensive modern glass. It looks it is getting crowded up there with $1200 Morgans and $800+ Sweetgrasses/Carpenters.

A trend seems to be emerging that high end bamboo builders are offering glass options lately.

Nice, Chris. Looks like you broke Sweetgrass' mold to start offering other configurations!

How would you compare your Sweetgrass to your Wojnicki experience?

I thought I'd add a little to this thread. ..

I stopped today at the Boo Boys' new shop (Sweetwater) in Twin Bridges to look around. The new shop is much larger with a nice display area where many of their bamboo rods are displayed. As most people know, these guys are just unbelievably hospitable and before I knew it I was on a tour of the entire facility from the bamboo culm storage area to the finish area where I ran into Sam Drukman. Sam, as usual, was very patient with me. He allowed me to take photos and talked about glass in general and also about the time spent with Kerry Burkheimer last year when he made his current blanks. He told me he actually designed the mandrels and rolled the blanks on Kerry's equipment. He said that some of the blanks had a little color added to them but Sam said that he prefers to work with white blanks as more can be done with them. I had a chance to closely inspect the glass rod that Sam was working on and I have to say it was drop-dead gorgeous.

At the moment, Sam was working on one of the last production glass rod from the Burkheimer blanks. Sam is hoping to do his next run of blanks on his own in-house equipment feeling that he would have much more control over the entire process. He allowed that it may take a while before the finances could be put together to start this endeavor.

When I was taking some shots of the blank (pictured on his bench) I noticed that the "S" in Sweetgrass looked familiar. It turns out Sam had done the writing on the Scott rods built in Berkeley. I told him that I had always wondered why the writing got better on the rods when they moved over to Berkley. He said it takes a lot of practice to write on a round blank and that the hardest part is to learn to move the rod as you write. I have to say that his script is about as elegant as I have seen. (Sam has a degree in art.)



FWIW. .. I noticed a rod in the display area that was for sale along with some used bamboo. It was a dead mint San Francisco Winston fiberglass fly rod - 8 1/2' #6 in four-piece. I almost bought it but Glenn couldn't find the original tube and sock so I passed - probably shouldn't have at $350. It really is in new condition and was built in 1974. It is fitted with a gold tone aluminum reel seat which was pretty standard at that time. The seat actually is very nice. If anybody wants it just call Sweetgrass. BTW, Glenn said he'd make a tube and sock for it for no charge. I actually felt terrible because Glenn was tearing the place apart looking for the tube. He did find two SF tubes but not the right one. I hadn't seen Glenn Brackett for at least 25 years and he looked just the same. What the &^%$ happened to me during that time!

PS: Sorry about the fuzzy shots. I didn't use flash and I guess there was less light than I thought.

There are some good pictures of the new Sweetgrass shop on their website too.

Didn't the Sweetgrass fiberglass rod that Cameron test drive have a burgundy colored blank?

I thought that the gray colored Sweetgrass rods were the graphite rods?

Did something change?

When in Red River, NM last year, I met some men who were friends with a few of the Boo Boys. I got to show off my glass rods. They didn't even know that Sweetgrass had glass rods. I just wish I had one that I could have shown them.