I earn a living and a life hanging on to a busy Seattle fire truck and from splitting and wrapping bamboo into fly rods, and from writing.  It is a stretch to identify my working-self as anything more than a tradesman, certainly not an artist.  A blue collar life, I have to shower after work, not before.  At the same time, there is an impulse toward art; the attempt to mend ideals, aesthetics and craft into something of value and use; and to make it beautiful.

If a Shuksan splitcane flyrod is anything, it is just and only that.  The rod is tool of utility and purpose.

Each rod is custom made.  And they are made to be more than just a fly rod.  If I make you a rod, consider us friends.

It starts from a single culm of Tonkin bamboo.   The culm is tempered over an open fire -I don’t make blond rods, which allows me to bring out deep coffee tones.  Next the culm is hand split and hand planed into tapered strips, glued together, and the guides wrapped with silk. The stripping guide is always an agate. No machinery is used in the process. No two rods are the same.  The make takes approximately eighty-hours, plus extensive cure times for the glues and the varnish.  Finished rods are dipped in the highest grade marine spar. It takes months for the varnish to fully cure.