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When precision becomes art
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| John Jones wraps thin strands of silk around the guides on a bamboo fly rod he is assembling in his shop. Jones retired from his career years ago and began anew with his business, Double Hook Rod Company. - News-Record photos by Nathan Payne |
By ANDY CHAPMAN, News-Record Writer achapman@gillettenewsrecord.net
Nearly every morning, John Jones takes a walk to his office.It’s not a long one. He takes a few steps out of his house and he’s at the door next to his garage.
He flips on the lights as he walks over to his bench and starts the coffee. A flip of a radio switch and classic rock pumps through the speakers.
The shop gleams, every detail immaculate, everything in its place. He can tell you exactly where any one of the innumerable catalogs or books are. This is his world, with the charts, scales and cabinets filled with twine, cork and glue.
The walls of his workshop are lined with fishing rods — so many that it looks like a sporting goods store.
Those rods are both his vocation and avocation, a dream that he waited 28 years for.
The collection of machines that surround the 66-year-old Jones is a combination of professional tools and self-made mechanisms.
The oven to cure the wood? He built that. The cabinet that dips and seals the rod with urethane? Another Jones creation.
The countless drills, presses, lathes and grinders are a product of industry.
But the canvas for his craft? That’s something that nature provided.
His specialty is bamboo. It’s tonkin cane from southern China and took three years to grow enough to harvest.
It allows little room for error. Everything is measured incrementally. A one-sixty-fourth of an inch here, a one-one hundredth of an inch there.
That’s why Jones liked the idea of it. Everything is carefully measured, and he can control even the smallest detail, from the eyes to the varnish.
Precision is his nature. He can wrap his mind around something that lends itself to complete perfection.
Jones has learned how to control many things. He worked in his home state of California until the 1970s, where he assembled ignition systems for race cars. Everything had to be just so, or the system would be flawed.
He applies the same principle to his rod making.
“You never know what it’s going to be until it’s finished,” he said. “It’s my obsession. I want to make them good enough that people want them.”
Bamboo has its own personality, and the rod maker must be patient and understand the process. Each piece of bamboo also has its own curvature that Jones must find and work out of the wood, using heat and pressure.
It hasn’t been easy. He will show a rod with a slight defect or almost imperceptible flaw.
“I can’t sell this one. It has a seam showing right there,” he says.
As the eye strains to pick it out, his weathered hands hold the rod and the fingers point to the spot.
It wouldn’t make a difference to the untrained eye.
“When you’re building rods, you can’t have anything go wrong,” he said. “I’m always looking for perfection.”
He might make 12 to 15 rods per year. He’s assembled 48, and completed 32, so obviously, they’re not for the masses. These fly rods are for a select group of people who appreciate quality and the knowledge that human hands crafted their creation. They cost anywhere from $1,000 to $1,800.
Each one comes with a signature, a trademark that denotes the length, weight and sections. It also has a distinctive “JJ” on it. His initials serve as his company’s namesake, Double Hook Rod Company.
Daryl Orbeck has been Jones’ fishing buddy for years. In addition to that, he also is a certified casting instructor.
He’s seen thousands of rods in his day, and none are better than Jones’.
“John builds as fine a bamboo rod as I’ve ever cast,” Orbeck said. “What most rod makers would say is a good rod, he wouldn’t sell. He is a perfectionist.
“Which sometimes makes him a pain,” Orbeck added with a laugh.
Jones remembers it vividly. The year was 1973. He was home from work one day, watching ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” when a segment that highlighted the lost art of bamboo rod making came on. He thought to himself, “I’d like to learn how to do that.”
But he never found time or motivation to do it.
He moved from California and ended up in Gillette working first as a plumber and then as an electrician, retiring in 2005. It wasn’t until then that he really began teaching himself through books and magazines the art of rod making.
“I fought it the whole way,” he said. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
He built his first rod in 2001. It took him a month to finish. Now, he’ll take 40 hours to finish one.
He isn’t strictly a bamboo rod guy. He’s made several graphite rods over the years.
“Graphite is a great substitute, but it’s still not bamboo,” he said. “Each rod has a personality, little quirks or traits that make the bamboo rod unique.
“With graphite, all the play is in the tip,” Jones said. “With bamboo, the whole rod has a feel.”
He gets even more poetic. He mentions the sound from the rub of steel wool on the wood, the squeal as he finishes one.
“Bamboo rods make music. Graphite doesn’t,” he said.
He’s honed his skill set well over the past eight years. Now, he says “It’s as good as anybody’s. I’m much better at my craft. I feel I’m a player now.”
Yet that quest for the best rod ever still motivates him. Every rod has a story, an influence.
“I want them to be a replica of the one I made before,” Jones said. “These are my babies. It’s hard to let go.”
It sounds a lot like work, but you get the feeling Jones doesn’t mind.
The process
What does it take to make a bamboo rod? It’s probably more complex than you might think.
The process: Split a long piece of bamboo into elongated sections and knock the “nodes” or seams out. Split it into six thinner pieces.
Soak it in water and bleach for two days.
Heat and straighten the pieces in the vice.
Slot the sides and put a straight taper on it.
Flatten it more, groove it and sand it.
Plane it rough. Take the six pieces, wrap it and bind it.
Put it in the oven and heat it at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes.
Take it out and recheck the measurements and finish the planing.
Bind it up and glue it, let it dry overnight.
Cook it for four more hours to bind the epoxy.
Sand it again and dip it in urethane gloss.
Make the cork grip and put the reel seat on.
After all that?
“Then I go out and go fishing,” John Jones said.
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