Matchmaster and Flex Lite

[Wagtail]

Here is a picture of my weekend bulk purchase.



As you can probably tell from the picture the 12ft Matchmaster is in a horrendous state. So far I have removed the rings and about 30ft of ancient sellotape which covered all the whippings and half the handle. Some of the original whippings had sellotape over them, and then additional whippings on top of that?! There are some splits in the whole cane sections which I think (hope!) cascamite will sort and the handle needs some shrives replacing. After some cleaning at least the ferrules seem OK. The original butt ring is useable but all of the others will need replacing. Allowing for my inexperience this will be a long refurb but I'm going to enjoy the experience and hope to end up with a useable rod - eventually.

The Flex Lite has probably the thickest butt section of any glass rod I have ever seen, but isn't as heavy as I expected. It is in pretty good nick, some light corrosion on the rings and a surprisingly big butt ring for what I assume to be a float rod. Pleasingly it has the original bag complete with Milwards swingtag. It might not get used much but caught my interest as I didn't know they did fibreglass rods.

Also included were 2x 4ft whole cane landing net handles. One has flame decoration and just needs a clean and varnish, the other is split all the way along so will provide a useful spare threaded ferrule when I get round to making a longer handle.

All in all £2 well spent

[NiceRoach]

Superb well done

[Mark]

A bargain.

[Vole]

I like the splice down to the top spigot of the flex Lite; someone was obviously thinking hard about how to get the old-style match-rod action out of a relatively new material. Most just put joints wherever they saw fit on a straight-taper blank, and the usual result was a heavy, floppy beast that might have served well as a "Castleconnell" style, salmon-fly rod, self-loading and slow, but was horrid to float-fish with, and carbon's greatest advert.

[Nobby]

Milwards were one of the first to offer fibreglass rods though they are pretty rare to find...especially in that fine condition. They were horrendously expensive which probably explains their rarity.

I'd heard of the rod, but hadn't grasped their complexity with that 'splice' arrangement there. I bet that's a nice fast roach rod.

I have an early Sealey pre-gel coat fibreglass rod and it too has a huge butt section diameter. I suppose this achieves rigidity without having thicker fibreglass? Would it save weight? Probably not in that huge diameter, but it must simplify manufacture compared to amking changes in the wall thickness.

The Sealey rod, probably from around 1967, is actually quite nice, but your rod pre-dates it considerably I think.

[Wagtail]

Pleasantly surprised to find the Flex Lite is a rarity, I will have to take it more seriously now and not strip it for the fittings
Below is a picture of the tag, showing the rod details. I hadn't thought of it as being an early glass rod, but the reverse of the tag gives 'care of rod' advice which is more appropriate for cane, so presumably it came out when cane was still the mainstay of production.

[Ljm183]

My Matchmaster, one of my favorite cane rod,s





Wagtail What,s the serial number on your Matchmaker ?

And my Flex Lite

Don,t think this ones been used in anger













Looking at the two Makers tickets these two rods serial numbers are only 20 apart and passed by the same person but Wagtail,s has 4 piece and mine has 3 piece written on the ticket,s

Wagtail Don,t strip it

[Wagtail]

The Matchmaster is a 12ft model (less a couple of inches broken from the tip), the serial number is 51813

Wow, that flex lite looks brand new

[Ljm183]

Put together the flexlite is more than 13ft but it is nice and light, i should really use mine one day just to see what it,s like.