just finished viewing it, and well............i don't know. as a rank amatuer having only done 10 rods so far i hardly feel qualified to comment, but will anyway. it was maybe worth the price to me, to learn about adding and dropping threads, but as far as an instructional rod building dvd, what it left out could fill an entire new dvd. for instance, nothing at all about grinding guide feet or fitting the guide to the blank. nada. you could see when he wrapped it that the foot was ground, but the subject was ignored. no making handles at all, just fitting an EVA grip on a blank. mixing finishing epoxy properly is critical to its success, and all he said and i quote "pour out equal amounts and mix for about a minute". this dvd is nowhere near on par with andy dears and flex coats offerings. i have to say though that the cars honking and dogs barking in the background give it a true-to-life feeling. yes i will keep it because i learned something. but if i had never built a rod before i would be very confused about the process having watched this.

I'm truely sorry you didn't get more than that out of it or that it fell so far short of your expectations. Unfortunately there are only so many minutes that will fit on any medium.

I felt the same way after I finished up my book for Amato. On the one hand, rod building is very simple and doesn't require much instruction, but on other hand, if you want to you can certainly get into much greater detail. I could have used another hundred pages and still not covered everything that I had wanted to cover.

................

I haven't seen Ken's DVD, but I'm still considering buying it just to learn even one more thing from him, so I can't comment on specifics, but I can say that to get what you were looking for could easily fill a library of DVD's.

By trade, I write aircraft maintenance manuals so I know a little bit about how to provide an instructional outline. For rodbuilding, this would be quite a task. You can make a DVD of nothing else except making a grip and still not cover everything. For finish, I would think that Ken assumed that people would read the directions on the finish of their choice to get the correct mix. Too many finishes out there to cover. I could spend 20 minutes easy, explaining guide foot preparation and the multitude of possibilities to do it. It would also make for some very boring video.

I've been doing this for many years and I still haven't figured it out entirely. I learned the basics from many many hours of watching and instruction from my granduncle, and am still learning each day I come here.

A single DVD simply cannot cover every aspect of building in any sort of detail. Not trying to slam you for an honest opinion by any means. I'm just saying that there is no holy grail of instruction that can explain every aspect of rodbuilding in one volume. I'd love to see a complete set of DVDs put out on handles, buttwraps, weaves, inlays, reel seats, marbellizing, etc.. (Tom, get with the masters on this... $$ka-ching$$....I'd buy the set)
Also, a lot of has to do with personal experience and opinion. I disagree with a lot of the instruction that is in the tutorial of a well respected catalog. Some swear by it though.

well, you guys are all correct. this was just my impression of it, and i realize that if 100 people see one thing they will all get something different out of it. what i got out of it was tips on wrapping techniques and like i said earlier i will keep it because of that. i hope he sells a million copies of it and a million people benefit from it. btw-my wife watched it w/me and she says i am a jerk for posting my impressions of it and i should have to go clean up kens work shop for him. whats you address ken?

John,
No hard feelings, none at all. I will be among the first to admit that that DVD was pretty amateurish - and from the background shots you can see exactly why I tore apart the entire shop and rebuilt it. Your wife was spot on that the shop needed a serious clean up. It was "down" for a nearly a month between the tear out and make over. What it was is the first video out there in a fully world-wide exportable DVD format. Yours was not the only comment about "organization". When we were done we had something like three hours of footage with 70 or so minutes of space and we had to make choices on what to keep and what to eliminate. Other comments that echoed yours were on doing one that showed a "start to finish" on a fishing rod and people asked for different language tracks (Spanish, German, Japanese) and/or subtitles for hearing impaired. I listened to everyone and we did a second DVD totally focused on one type of fishing rod - saltwater fly rod - applicable to any fly rod really but using a heavier blank and components and did a "cradle to grave" from parts/components, hand tools, guide spacing, blank selection, spine finding, guide foot preparation, guide placement, handle assembly (still only using pre-made parts not "building a handle"), subtitles in English still at this point right through to clips of the rod in action in Mexico catching mahi-mahi. This time - again as part of a learning experience I sent out pre-release copies to several people to look at / comment on and incorporated changes prior to finalizing / reproduction. The video - angles are better, the sound is better (although I do love my dog she was banished and all the "taping" was done in a single new area that was'quieted' for video production and much less distracting (cleaner backgrounds). Does it contain EVERYTHING? - No. Again we wound up with an hour or so of "extra stuff" (sectioning cork, cutting/piecing cork, EVA inserts, "fancy" thread work/butt wrap layout and a section on building your own hand tools and working with wood - Andy's is better anyway - had to be dropped). Will I do another one after #2? Likely "yes" - on either stand-up / trolling rods or surf rods. Am I making money off the first one? No, I have not broken even from the initial investment in reproduction/distribution costs. The return from the first one got ploughed right back into new/better lighting, cameras, video production area etc. Why continue if I'm not turning a profit? Partly because I feel like I'm forcing some of the "big boys" to invest too in teaching and picking up on some of those other requests like multilanguage tracks... Ok enough "commercialization". Again - no hard feelings here I knew there were improvements needed and I'd love to redo the whole thing 000 anyone got an extra $3,000 around - for those who might be interested that was the approximate cost for the first one through reproduction of 1,000 copies. With the costs for new camera(s), lighting, staging/backgrounds the second one is looking like another $3,500 invested.

Just a thought Ken. Maybe you should have kept it simple. The main things that " newbees " need to know is ( after picking there parts ) maybe a little on why a certain blank is used,
Finding the spine-locating guides according to spine.
Reeming cork handles-glueing handles and seats to the blank.
Preping the guides-spacing them on the blank-how to place them rubber bands whatever-static testing
Wrapping the guids-thread sizes-how to wrap
Mixing and appling epoxy
If ya have time then get into butt wraps and some of the " pretty " stuff
Making handles, coloring blanks, fancy butt or just butt wraps would take another vidio
Taking a " plane Jane " rod and just putting it together so it can be fished

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder -

You look at an alligator and see teeth - I look at an alligator and see sauce piquante over rice!

I waited about a year before I bought the Flexcoat Rodbuilder little four page pamphlet for four bucks and thought Roger got to me pretty bad. It is a wonder that Mudhole does not sell the thing that is in the front of their catalog which is pretty complete for a newbie.

All this information is valuable to someone who needs it at some point in their rodbuilding endeavor. Sometime visual instruction is the final link - for those who do not have SOMEONE to WATCH. A library of well done DVDs will prove to be invaluable to many. Sections of the dvd should be short, track numbered, complete and task specific.

Gon Fishn

OK, as the rankest of beginners, (I have yet to build my first rod), I would like to weigh in on Ken's DVD.

After having read Tom Kirkman's book, the Mudhole catalog, and scouring this website, I found the visual aspects of rod wrapping very informative.
Being, as I said, the rankest novice, I would like to have seen more info on the wrapping tool, jigs, etc. Ken was obviously using a powered device, and some commentary & demonstration on the more rudimentary (manual) setups would have been appreciated. Some info on thread tension would have been helpful, as well.

All in all, as Bill Stevens said, the visual instruction is the final link. The DVD was worth the price for me, but I have only scratched the surface in my quest for knowledge on this subject.

Rusty Hodnett
Columbia, SC

I got Ken's DVD for Christmas, as I asked my wife to get it for me and she did. I found it informative, and felt like if I learned 2 or 3 things from it, which I did, it was worth the money. One nice thing about the DVD is I can rewind it as many times as I need to until I can go to my shop and add and drop a thread the first time I try.
I think if you want to get the full experience of building a rod from scratch, you need to go see someone who knows how to do it, and who is willing to let you watch and answer your questions. There is no substitute for hands on experience.

I would love to see the "extra footage" that did not make the cut, though. Maybe a second disk on "the making of" would be nice. Something like they do with movies on DVD. I'm sure it would cost more, but I think it would be worth it.

Larry Laurent

Got the sql error and now I see why there are so many double posts.

Larry



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2005 12:44PM by Larry Laurent.

Pile on all the ideas - I'll try to meet them all. As I said the first one was a total "experience" - and had a very steep learning curve - near retrograde. The quest is to produce the absolute finest product. If it takes a couple of iterations well, so be it. The "making of" / editing floor stuff would be amusing. You would likely not believe how many times a person can screw up a simple operation because the angle was bad, the lighting bad, the dog barking, kids walking in in the middle of a demonstration. If nothing else the "bloopers" might have been interesting. Just like trailers at the end of feature films when the actors break up or forget their lines. Unfortunately some of it would definitely be in the PG category. " &#$*@Y_ thread won't go through the tie off loop - done this thousands of times Why not now?" etc.

Because you want it to!!!! Your trying to show people how to do it!!! Murphy rears his ugly head again. LOL

Bill in WV

Ken- Haven't seen you DVD yet. What I'd really be interested is a series of quality DVD's. Maybe one for shaping grips, one for wrapping butt wraps that actually walks you through the layout and wrapping of a somewhat complicated butt wrap (Still haven't figured them out after building rods for 3 years), one for guide wraps, etc. @#$%&, I'd subscribe to them and probably pick up every one in a series.

I've already purchased VHS tapes on basic rod building. I have one that I bought in Japan, if I remember it was done at the Lamiglas factory. I thought it was horrible. Left out way too many details, basically described the whole process. I already know the basics, now I want to master some things that I keep screwing up and trial and error becoming too costly.

Just my ideas... you asked for it. Hehehe.

Phil

G'day Guys,
I got Tom's book before I found this site, I already new the basics of what was required in preperation. Ken produced a stream videos from his website what where free and very,very popular to the beginer, Ken was constantly being asked to add more and more streamvideos. I learned speedier ways from Ken's streamvideos and I think would know only a fraction of what I know now from from getting a visual explanation. I am lucky enought to have both of his DVD's his first one and the preproduction test DVD, both I continue to learn from. Of course people won't agree with everyone veiw on doing things, this is Ken's veiw. I can remember when marblising hit the scene alot of people did not like it until they started to see what could be done. I would recomend Ken's DVDs to any newbie or experienced rodbuilder, if Ken can make your life easier as he did with me as I'm all thumbs its worth the few dollars.
Ken, your DVD's won't be the same without your epoxied dog.

All of these things will continue to get better and better. I think the quality of Ken's new Saltwater Fly Rod Building and Andy's Dear's Turning DVDs have set new standards for anyone who wishes to produce instructional rod building DVDs. As Ken pointed out, these things do cost money and lots of it. What we're up against is the cost against the expected return. There are only so many rod builders who will buy these DVDs.

Still, I think the future for such things is brighter than ever before and knowing Ken, he'll take your suggestions and use them to make his next one just that much better.

..........

Ken just wanted you to know although production quality was questionable I myself learned thing from watching it I was having a hard time doing just by reading about them, keep up the good work.
thanks ,Jim

PS. Im glad im not the only one who works in the dungeon

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2005 07:08AM by JIm Rosch.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2005 07:07AM by JIm Rosch.