On arrival the rod pretty much met up to my impressions of the pictures with the slight additional problem of the reel fitting being somehow jammed on the handle. Slightly more worrying was the damage to the cork that had been done by someone trying to unstick the reel fitting.
Here are some quick snaps I took on receipt:
I put the rod aside for a while until I had time to work on it. When I picked it up again a couple of months ago I was resigned to removing all the corks and making a new handle. After a bit of tugging and pulling I decided to try a bit of heat, reasoning that even if it didn't work I was going to remove the corks anyway. Surprisingly, after heating the it until whatever was under it began to smoke, I was able to pull the reel fitting off the handle. What had happened was that someone had wrapped the bottom of the handle with insulating tape and then pulled the reel fitting down over it - mighty strange!
The good news was that I was able to clean the cork up and, by altering the shape of the top of the handle slightly, remove much of the damage to the corks. One other strange thing was that the reel fitting didn't look right. If you look at the bottom picture above you'll see that the slit in the fitting is in the same plane as the reel would be when fitted. This means that the fitting won't grip the handle when tightened around the foot of the reel. I do wonder if this is why the insulating tape was applied, but why round the bottom of the handle?
I decided to have a play with the fitting to see if I could move the reel holder on the tube. After a bit of vice work I managed to move the fixed reel holder 90 degrees around the tube. I then refitted the fitting "upside down" so that the fixed bit was at the top putting the reel in a more modern position on the handle:
The rest of the restoration was pretty straightforward. I removed and re-glued the ferrules, tightened them up a bit and then blued them. I repaired the chipped FT Williams logo with a dab of green felt tip and I hand lettered the "de Luxe" as the transfer was beyond saving. I had a set of Bells Life rings from a MARCO Test and some bobbins of thread of approximately the right colour so off we went.
Here is the result:
I've got a bit of tidying up of the varnish (Ronseal Outdoor) to do before giving it a final coat. The thread is D grade, but that is close to the original and the colours have come out just right (I used banana oil to seal the whippings). The Bells Life rings are a good compromise on a rod like this as they are big enough to pass heavy line easily and they are better for float fishing than bridge rings.
These Dorsets are an under-rated rod. They are a better length than the Mark IVs and their clones for general fishing and they are more than powerful enough for barbel fishing on all but big rivers like the Trent. The cane is of excellent quality and there was no evidence of delamination on this example. I'm looking forward to giving the rod a good workout on some winter barbel at some point in the New Year.
