A lot of years back, probably late 70’s, there was a rod builder name of Wilhelm von Luscomb in Deland, FL. The name of his shop was Die Werke international. A very long story I’ll shorten as best I can. A lot of what we use today hadn’t been made yet and I think he was on the cutting edge, the beginning of lots of the materials we now use. He might have ripped off the info and called it his own, IDK. He mixed his rod coating resin in 5 gallon quantities to get the parts per million right, so I was told. He dyed his own salt water streamer hair and bucktail because the market stuff would wash out in salt water. He tied flies, very nice ones, and built rods. He showed me the first 12wt tarpon rod I’d ever seen. It was on its way to Western Africa for the 300 pounders that come there to spawn. Every rod he built for anyone had matching butt windings, with 2 of this color and 1 of that and 3 of this and so on, in a pattern of the customers choice. No one else got those colors in that succession, so every customers rods could be identified easily. He had the first G Loomis blanks I ever saw, no complete rods available yet. He built my brother a 7’ g loomis flippin stick that he had for years til a fire took it and everything else in the garage. My point, what I saw when I was in my young 20’s in his shop has set the standard for what I think a rod should be built to. I don’t do near the quality work he did but it is engrained in my head. I wish he was still around, we could all learn something from him, and he would teach all you wanted to learn. I hope y’all find someone like him to stir your creative juices.