Ever play the kids game where you take about 10 people and whisper a sentence into the ear of the first and then have them repeat it to the next kid and then so on down the line? By the time it makes its way through the 10th kid the sentence will be completely different. So it is with a lot of the rod building info given on the internet.

Case in point - when I wrote the article outlining the Simple Spiral and how to set it up, it came out in late April. Since then, I"ve had over 145 e-mails from people wanting me to explain the system to them. The VAST majority has been very upfront about the fact that they do not take the magazine and have not read the article. I didn't mind helping those who had read it and might have had a specific question or two, but those who did't buy the magazine and read the article were just plain being cheap in my mind. Why should I take my time to teach them how to set up the system when they won't take 5 or 6 bucks and get that same information that I've already had put in print??

Now I see the system being discussed on many rod building sites and more often than not, the instructions given are WRONG. I have to assume that those giving a lot of the info haven't read the info either. They just pick up bits and pieces from the internet and are trying to teach people about a system that even they don't have a good grasp of. No you cannot get the same info from the web as you can from the magazine.

It does my heart good when I see someone teaching the system that does know how to set it up correctly. I know they've read it, but the ones who ask about it but won't buy and read the article are just plain cheap. Sorry to be harsh, but that's my experience with this single article. I can imagine Tom goes through much worse on all the other ones.