rod, they have absolute and immediate permission to break the blank over their knee and throw it away. Quality is a first priority, and imperfections are not tolerated, maybe almost to a fault.
After being baked, the rods are then pulled off the mandrels they were rolled onto and sent to get ferrules. I hadn ' t realized that ferrules needed to be made so exact to each blank. Winston makes rods with two types of ferrules. A sleeve over ferrule is the most common and transfers energy well. The other, more traditional ferrule is a spigot ferrule. A spigot ferrule is made to be a male end ferrule and fits inside the blanks and creates a continuous taper and a smooth action in the rod. However, they do wear over the lifetime of the rod.
Winston is famous for their finish work. Their corks are nearly flawless and made with extremely fine Portuguese cork. Their finish coating room is laboratory-run by Barb who makes sure no mistakes are made. Their wraps are meticulously analyzed by head rod wrapper and supervisor Elaine, who has been wrapping rods for nearly 30 years. She still wraps her rods on the same rod wrapper she started with 30 years ago. If you want to use Winston ' s thread wrap color, too bad, it ' s made exclusively for them. Elaine now employs other people in the community to wrap rods, so if you can pass her quality control, you can work for Winston at home and wrap rods.
The final step is to apply the reel seat and put them in a rod sock that perfectly lines up with the tube it ships in. What attention to detail! When we went back to the factory to get a few more pieces of detail to make sure we really understood the Winston story, we ran into Joe, the production manager. Joe was a little concerned that Jeff and the guys were burning the BBQ that they were getting ready for lunch. However, when I asked Joe what it was that he does here, his facial expression immediately changed to one of extreme pride and said,“ I ' m the Winston fly rod production manager. This is my house.”