Precision Equipment

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Thomas, I agree that nice tools are a pleasure to work with.

As to the fishing rod you pine for Clive, as an art piece a $1500 fly rod might make sense.

There are other good reasons too. One of my co-workers has a son who is in the fly fishing guide business who picked up one of these rods this summer. It provides two things that his old rod didn't, 1-he can catch more high dollar client trips because of the magic bullet BS brag line he can spin around it and 2-he gets bigger tips from clients & favors from the shops he refers his clients to.

I enjoy the savvy of your colleague.

 

[Trond]

This is part of the reason I so enjoy a good old Pentax Spotmatic. When I get a really good 16x20 from it, it feels better, because I feel like I applied a lot more skill to get there.

I'm not sure if I follow you here Thomas. The level of precision in a Spotmatic and a M2 should be the same, if not something is wrong with the camera. Apart from the obvious difference in cost and the rangefinder/SLR difference I can't see why it would require more skill with a Spotmatic. Or perhaps it it just the feeling?

Trond

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Thomas, I agree that nice tools are a pleasure to work with.

As to the fishing rod you pine for Clive, as an art piece a $1500 fly rod might make sense.

There are other good reasons too. One of my co-workers has a son who is in the fly fishing guide business who picked up one of these rods this summer. It provides two things that his old rod didn't, 1-he can catch more high dollar client trips because of the magic bullet BS brag line he can spin around it and 2-he gets bigger tips from clients & favors from the shops he refers his clients to.

A bit like the wedding, portrait, and commercial photographers who shoot Hasselblad to impress the clients, or at least they used to.

 

[markbarendt]

I enjoy the savvy of your colleague.

Me too.

 

[markbarendt]

A bit like the wedding, portrait, and commercial photographers who shoot Hasselblad to impress the clients, or at least they used to.

Exactly.

 

[LumbisK]

Why not combine a lust for precision equipment and fly fishing....build bamboo flyrods? I have been a bamboo rod builder for many years now and acquiring metal lathes, planes, measuring devices, etc and trying to building bamboo rods to the 1/1000 of an inch is lots of fun. My standard is if I'm less than 5/1000 from the target taper, I'm happy and I don't think the fish care!! In addition this past time allows you to design and build your own "precision" tools, like planing forms, for rod construction. At the end of the day, I can't really say a bamboo rod is better than a modern graphite rod. It just does things in a different way and both will catch fish. But to be out on the stream with a beautiful rod you've built yourself, flies from your own bench and catching fish, it's a pretty fulfilling endeavour.

Also having all this equipment has come in handy for my other passion, photography. Building pinhole and view cameras has been lots of fun over the last couple of years. The metal lathe came in handy for turning a battery adapter for a Nikon F Photomic battery compartment.

I think for me having precision equipment fulfills the same desire for the actual hands on involvement with a an endeavour that film has for photography.

 

[cliveh]

Why not combine a lust for precision equipment and fly fishing....build bamboo flyrods? I have been a bamboo rod builder for many years now and acquiring metal lathes, planes, measuring devices, etc and trying to building bamboo rods to the 1/1000 of an inch is lots of fun. My standard is if I'm less than 5/1000 from the target taper, I'm happy and I don't think the fish care!! In addition this past time allows you to design and build your own "precision" tools, like planing forms, for rod construction. At the end of the day, I can't really say a bamboo rod is better than a modern graphite rod. It just does things in a different way and both will catch fish. But to be out on the stream with a beautiful rod you've built yourself, flies from your own bench and catching fish, it's a pretty fulfilling endeavour.

Also having all this equipment has come in handy for my other passion, photography. Building pinhole and view cameras has been lots of fun over the last couple of years. The metal lathe came in handy for turning a battery adapter for a Nikon F Photomic battery compartment.

I think for me having precision equipment fulfills the same desire for the actual hands on involvement with a an endeavour that film has for photography.

Nice post and an interesting idea, but I don't think I would have the skill to do something like that, but others may wish to have a go at this.