Snake Brand - About Us

How Agate Stripping Guides Found Their Way Back Into The Market

Chalcedony, or the more common name of Agate, is a form of quartz, but it is vastly different from that of the ordinary crystalline variety. Although it is composed of slender fiber-like crystals, these are so small that billions fit into a mass the size of a hazelnut. Agate is a very common semi-precious gemstone and is described by names like moss agate, cloud agate, plume agate, iris agate, fortification agate and so on. Agate is found in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Agate is a seven in the mohs scale of hardness and is only surpassed by sapphires and diamonds. Because of its superfine structure it cuts well and takes a brilliant polish.

The Greeks and Romans created rings and brooches of beautiful agate. The courtiers of France's King Louis fastidiously dipped snuff from elegant little gold boxes whose panels were made of especially fine agate. Faberge, the fabulous jeweler, utilized numerous varieties of agate to create magnificent carvings for the Tsarist Court. The Indians along the Columbia River crafted some of the most beautiful arrowheads ever to be found from agate. They are so beautiful that they are called Columbia River Gem Points.

My friend Steve Blake, who has seen and restored some of the finest bamboo rods ever made, commented that the Kosmic Rods of the 1870's featured Agate Tunnel Guides. In the book titled Idyl of Split-Bamboo, Dr. George Parker Holden showed examples of agate stripping guides and agate tip-tops. Companies such as F.E. Thomas, Payne, Leonard, Edwards, Varney and Heddon all used agate stripping guides. The agate guides were used extensively in the 1930's to 1940's and to some degree leading up to WWII. After the war there were still some stocks of old guides available as a fellow in California by the name of Weir had some of the guides that were made in Germany.

In 1993, I received a call from Daryll Whitehead who commented that he had been watching my fly tying for sometime and felt that I might have the patience to become a bamboo rod builder. Some months later, Daryll, Steve Gobin, and I were at a rod builders' conclave together in Woodland, Washington and heard that the Mildrum Company was being sold. Daryll made several calls without any success, so I called the Vice President of the Napier Company that was selling off the remaining inventories and negotiated to buy stripping guide frames and the Agatine rings. Then we found ourselves in the business of making stripping guides.

The Agatine rings were very opaque and resembled Campbell's Tomato Soup. One evening Daryll went over to one of his drawers and brought out a cigar box of beautiful agate stripping guides. He declared that there were no more on the market, as he had folks in Europe, Canada, New Zealand, and all over the United States looking for these beautiful guides. Well, this was like waving a red flag in front of a bull - I decided to take on the challenge.

I looked in every hardware store, fly shop, and general store in a five-state area and came up with a few agate spinning guides, but none of the beauties like those found on the highly sought-after collectable rods of the past. I had been very involved in lapidary for years and at the time had six diamond saws up to 24" in diameter, diamond laps, diamond wheels and tumblers, plus about two tons of stone. I figured that I needed to find the source from days gone by.

My search led me to Germany as they had been cutting agate for hundreds of years. It took me five months of writing letters and calling Germany at one and two o'clock in the morning, speaking short German phrases, to locate the company who once manufactured these wonderful guides. I was working for the phone company at the time and had a group who was responsible for deployment of high-tech circuits for Microsoft and, needless to say, I couldn't get off to travel to Germany. So Daryll flew over and while he was in Germany we talked through the night to discuss the items we wanted to purchase.

The following year I negotiated to purchase numerous presses, 600 die sets, 1700 pounds of nickel silver tubing and sizeable quantities of the agate and Agatine rings as well as volumes of old German guides of various types. The German Agatine, unlike the Mildrum material, was very translucent and brilliant. So, what do you know, we were really in the guide business.

I moved to Oregon to work in an engineering group designing hi-cap circuits and about a year later Daryll moved to Stayton, Oregon to be near his mother and sister. We continued to make guides together. After a time, Daryll asked if I wanted to buy his half of the stripping guide business. He wanted to concentrate on his rod building and to work with Al Bellinger in creating machines for bamboo rod builders all over the globe. My immediate answer was "yes" and I was fully immersed in making both the Snake Brand snake guides, tip-tops, and now was responsible for all aspects of the stripping guides.

Susan with Winston's Joan Wulff

At that time, I was still working for the phone company. My wife Susan, myself, as well as a number of individuals from Newberg, Oregon, were making snake guides in the evenings and weekends. I kept this up for several years and finally looked in the mirror one day and said, "Why don't you try to make a living out of something that you have a passion for?" So I listened to myself and quit the job that provided a stable income to focus fully on Snake Brand.

Prior to our introduction into the market, snake guides were made with primarily two wire diameters. Early on, we recognized that a number of improvements could be made to the guides available in the market. We recognized that weight affected the performance of even the best-designed rods and we addressed this problem by creating a series of Light Wire Snake Guides. Wire sizes are graduated so each guide is of a diameter that corresponds perfectly to its location on the rod, thus optimizing the rod design's criteria.

One of the most dreaded tasks of making a fly rod is the time spent in wrapping the rod. The reasons for this are that the guides seldom sit upright, the feet are ground differently on either side and most of the guides available have steep angles from the tip of the foot to the start of the radius, thus resulting in epoxy buildups and the addition of more weight. We decided to radius the top of the guide foot, and taper the toe so that the guide would have a very low profile and eliminate varnish or epoxy buildups thus dampening the action of the rod. Every guide that our customers receive has been individually inspected and every guide will set up straight, the feet are flat and in alignment. At first we utilized 40 hand dies for making our snake guides, however after hand tapering tens of thousands of guides I decided to find a more efficient way to do the tapering. Because of market acceptance and demand, we looked for ways to streamline our operation and committed to automation wherever possible.

Susan and I are excited to announce that we recently met with mine owners from Brazil and are in the final stages of introducing a new series of agate guides that feature the most beautiful agate that we have ever seen. The colors are intense and the banding is awesome. We have also created our own tooling and equipment to process this beautiful material. We offer stripping guides in 8mm, 9mm, 10mm, 12mm, 14mm, and 16mm in a multitude of colors. Many may ask why we chose the Brazilian Agate over those of Asia or Africa, or why we don't offer Jasper. The answer is very simple - the Brazilian material is the finest in the world and Jasper is opaque and not translucent.

When we set out on this venture it was our desire to show the market that components of the highest quality could once again be made here in the United States in that time-honored tradition of American craftsmanship. Susan and I are committed to quality, uniformity, and consistency and we believe that World Class Rods Deserve World Class Guides.