Every Winter I put up a rod factory video, and this year its Blackhole's turn:

[Leprechaun]

I've seen lots of these vids, but never one as detailed. This illustrates why a BH costs a bit more than
the average run-of-the-mill rod. That machinery has to cost a good bit of coin, and the workers appear to be pretty darned skilled. Properly trained techs don't come cheap, not here and not in S. Korea. They ain't flippin' burgers in that plant, that's for sure.

Best to turn on your "CC" closed captions to know what the narrator is saying.

 

[live bait]

A combination of specialized machinery, & skilled hands.
John

 

[captmike28]

I've seen lots of these vids, but never one as detailed. This illustrates why a BH costs a bit more than
the average run-of-the-mill rod. That machinery has to cost a good bit of coin, and the workers appear to be pretty darned skilled. Properly trained techs don't come cheap, not here and not in S. Korea. They ain't flippin' burgers in that plant, that's for sure.

Best to turn on your "CC" closed captions to know what the narrator is saying.

Seeing how much hand labor and craftsmanship goes into making a high-end rod like this make it much easier understand the price structure. Very informative!

The same can be said for many other top shelf products besides fishing tackle. When I saw firsthand how many man hours went into the manufacturing of the highest quality lenses made by Nikon it was much easier to justify the more expensive price for a potential customer. So many folks think everything today is just "popped off" an assembly line! This video shows quite the opposite!

Thaks, Lep.

 

[MakoMatt]

Interesting video.

What I did not see in the video is locating the spline in the blank to know where to locate the guides. I believe doing this reduces the twisting & contortion a rod will go through when loaded. I own 2-3 Black Hole rods and not experienced any of these issues. But they are lighter class rods. I know on big game rods this twisting/contortion can be a problem.

 

[Leprechaun]

This whole "put the guides on the spline" thing has been largely discredited in the rod building community for many years now. Instead they recommend building on the straightest axis. Just go over to www.rodbuilding.org and put spine, or as many incorrectly call is "spline," into the search engine there.

My understanding is that the whole "spline" misnomer was started by a misspelling in the old Dale Clemens rod building book from like 35 years ago. It stuck and has been mis-applied ever since.

Incidentally, many, if not most of the inshore (and tuna jigging) rods put out by Black Hole and others (like Jigging World) are spiral wrapped. This totally negates any need to wrap on the spine. Again, find the straightest axis and wrap away.

Example, spline:

Spine:

LOL! Anyways, Merry Christmas Matt!

 

[MakoMatt]

Maybe Lep….. maybe……. but if you put “locating the spine on a fishing rod blank” into Google you’ll get 8,490,000 results in 0.36 seconds. I‘m not sure how largely discredited that is.

I remember being taught the “locating the spine thing” at a rod building seminar held at what is called the “Jones Beach Environmental Center” I believe? The teacher of that course
, who shall remain nameless, was/is a well respected rod builder that most on NYAngler would associate his name exclusively with rod building.

But that seminar had to be at least 20 years ago as as you mentioned it has “been largely discredited for many years now” so 20 years ago fits the “many years ago” notion you refer to.

And a Merry Christmas to you too, Lep!!