DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

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John Harding
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DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by John Harding »

Good evening all,

Last week I had a couple of successful bids in an auction, one of the lots being quite a large collection of The Fishing Gazette magazine, I have not had a chance to have a good look through them yet but in the first one I picked up, a letter in the letters page caught my eye. It was a letter to the editor from Richard Walker entitled :- The Relative Merits of Cane, Glass and Steel Rods I thought the contents of the letter may be of interest to the members so I scanned the article in, unfortunately I have been unable to find how to increase the size of the typeface, I will insert the article but in case you are unable to zoom in I will also type it out, it is quite a long letter, it appeared in the January 3rd 1953 issue.
Image

This is the letter :-

The Relative Merits of Cane, Glass and Steel Rods.
"Dear Sir,
There are several points to consider in assessing the relative merits of rods made of split cane, glass and tubular steel.

One is the question of variability, and of the three, split cane is very much more variable, in the sense that its quality varies considerably according to how it is made. There are some very poor split-cane rods about, and a few very good ones. Your correspondent, R. Hill, says he has tested a hollow glass spinning rod against the pick of English split-cane and steel rods. I am open to correction, but I doubt very much indeed if he has even seen a rod which I would class as the pick of English split-cane rods. The vast majority of rod-makers are still using animal glue to cement the sections and are still using unbaked bamboo. Compared to this type of rod, the more modern kind, using baked bamboo and modern cements, and built by first-class craftsmen, are a very different proposition. I, too, have handled rods of steel and glass and I consider them inferior for fishing purposes.

Anglers are very prone to judge materials when they should be judging rod-action. They acquire a rod which has an action which suits them better than that of the rod they had used previously and if the materials happen to differ, promptly sing the praises of the material of which the new rod is made without pausing to consider if the improvement is not, after all, due to a different taper. Perhaps this is understandable when one realises how few anglers have the least glimmering of an idea about rod actions and how changes of taper affect them.

One of the things I find rather irritating about the "sales talk" of vendors of glass rods is the continual harping on the subject of running rods into brick walls or dashing them on to the ground. Glass rods, we are told, will stand this treatment without damage.

Since I require fishing rods for fishing alone, I am content with a material which will stand up faithfully to fishing stresses with a reasonable margin of safety. Split bamboo entirely meets this requirement. Should I ever become so dissatisfied with fishing as to turn to tilting at brick walls, I promise the manufacturers of glass rods that I will buy one of their products.

Perhaps a few facts about these new rod materials may not come amiss, as they seem to be little known.

Because of their comparatively high specific gravity, glass and steel are unsatisfactory, used solid, for anything but very short rods. Steel is worse than glass, but a length of 7ft. at most marks the limit for either.

Any hollow construction suffers from the drawback that under stress its section tends to change from a circle to an ellipse, and since the moment of an inertia of an ellipse in the plane we are considering is less than a circle of equal cross-sectional area, the more a tubular rod bends, the less it takes to bend it further : i.e., its deflection per unit load increases with increasing load. This is a disadvantage for fishing-rod construction, as it limits the range of weights a rod can successfully cast, and it also reduces the control over a fish. The effect, however, is not of enormous magnitude.

It is quite untrue that fibre-glass rods cannot take a set and it is untrue that they are not affected by moisture and by temperature. Improvements in these respects have been effected since glass was first used for rods ; further improvements are possible.

Another feature of glass and steel rods is that in order to manufacture them economically it is necessary to make quite a large number of any one model, and there must obviously be a limit to the number of models, which is determined by the total of the potential market. For obvious reasons, each model is designed to appeal to as many anglers as possible and we thus find that glass and steel rods especially are all types which are more suitable for the average than the above average angler. Since the average angler has only the haziest idea of what a good rod should be, he usually gets the rod which is most easily manufactured, very often with straight tapers. This is not intended to infer that he gets a bad rod; but it is most unlikely that he will be unable to get one better !

Whether he will ever be convinced of the latter possibility is dubious, for to him the rod he has is always the best; so much so that he will at the least provocation sing its praises loud and clear in the correspondence columns of the angling Press and by testimonials to its makers, even when his knowledge of rod design and materialsis of the smallest.

In point of fact there is no real difficulty in finding out whether glass, tubular steel, or split-bamboo is the best material from which to make fishing rods. A series of tests at the National Physical Laboratory would tell us all that is necessary, and I suggest that manufactureers of glass and steel rods might well give us figures obtained from that source showing how their materials compare with the best split-bamboo, for samples of which latter they can refer the N.P.L. to me.

Yours faithfully,
Richard Walker.

Hitchen
Herts. "
===============================================

I find it intresting to think how Richard Walker's opinion of glass fibre rods must have changed as they developed when you consider how many rods of that material carry his name, both coarse and game rods. Also how he progressed from glass fibre to carbon, indeed, he being one of the pioneers in the development of that material.

I hope this is of interest.

Regrds,
John

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Marc
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Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by Marc »

That’s telling them, Dick.
Marc. (Prince of Durham)

“A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'...”

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PershoreHarrier
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Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by PershoreHarrier »

Many thanks for sharing I very much appreciate that.

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Olly
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Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by Olly »

I love it! How technology has moved on since then in 50 odd years.

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PeteD
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Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by PeteD »

Thanks for sharing that. Very interesting. Of course Richard went on to promote the virtues of modern rod building materials in subsequent years.

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Wallys-Cast
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Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by Wallys-Cast »

He certainly did change his tune just a few years later. I wonder how he would look at cane rods today and I doubt very much if glass rods would even be considered worthy of using now that lighter/stronger materials have become more readily available.

Wal.

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Troydog
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Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by Troydog »

Brilliant - that is so Dick Walker! His writing is a compulsive read for me and I am sure many other TFF members. That is very good of you to spend the time typing the letter out _ I couldn't read the original, not even with a magnifying glass....
Trouble is, the fish just don't read the books......
John Harding

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Kevin
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Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by Kevin »

I think possibly he would like tffers have shyed away from modernism in materials and rejoiced in returning to bamboo.

Paul D

Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by Paul D »

Thank you so much for that :Hat: Personally I think he would think us all very odd but harmless types (or am I just describing myself :Tongue: )

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Santiago
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Re: DICK WALKER 1953 LETTER

Post by Santiago »

He was so innovative he would have progressed to looking at graphene to make rods with. Super super light and strong compared to any other man made material.
"....he felt the gentle touch on the line and he was happy"

Hemingway

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