Bryan......i didn't know the bit about Richard Walker and the 25% carbon content......perhaps he was right?

 My main gripe with Modern day Hardy, is how can they justify the price of todays rods.....IF, as i believe,they are made in the far East?

 In RW's day they were truely inovative and the price they commanded was relavant....is it now?

Thanks for the kind words evrybody. Will have another go soon at something else.

I would give this film 11/10 - in fact, despite the somewhat specialised 'minority interest' of the subject matter, it is so well produced it could even be shown on terrestrial TV. Like the Hardy tackle it discusses, the price is indeed irrelevant.

It is also, as Bryan says, a very poignant reminder of how easy it is to lose (or destroy) something of immense value, as the new management at Hardy appear to have done. Now it is just another 'volume business' outsourcing much of its product from other manufacturers (mostly overseas) and trading on the Hardy name with all its associations.

Even for those who do not and have never owned a single piece of Hardy tackle it is worth watching; for the rest of us who hold British-made Hardy tackle in high regard - especially those who remember the Pall Mall shop - well, you'll have to be a cold and emotionless individual not to be moved by it.

Walker and Carbon Fibre.

About 1978, I recieved a letter from Dick Walker on several subjects. One of them commenting on how I had smashed a carbon fly rod made from an American Fenwick blank. I must say that I have forgotten much of what was in the letter as it is a long time ago but Walker went on to say in various articles to the angling press how carbon fibre could be easily broken if waved around vigourously in the air with no casting load.

He certainly advocated putting a percentage of glass fibre in a blank to prevent it from being so brittle.

But in later years, high carbon blanks were developed that were able to take more abuse. So Walker was perhaps wrong after all.