|
vFish.net |
Anglers Collectibles Exchange |
|
|
On-Line STORE INFORMATION
Bishop Rodmakers Mid-Atlantic '99 Rod Makers Gathering
E-Mail Darrell |
The History of the Super Z Ferrule The famous and now-historic Super Z ferrule was the brainchild of Louis Feierabend, inventor of a revolutionary new concept in ferrules, often said to be the only original concept in ferrule design since before 1900. Feierabend was a mechanical engineer with an established career in aeronautical engineering and worked for a naval armament plant during World War II. However, before the war Feierabend found himself unemployed as the nation struggled to recover from the Depression, and he ended up owning and operating a small retail fishing shop, Rockland Tackle Co. in Hillburn, N.Y. This brief venture exposed him to fishing tackle and introduced him to many local fishermen and craftsmen building bamboo fly rods. He had the opportunity to work with Nat Uslan designing milling and rod winding equipment for the unique 5-strip Uslan rods. He also worked for a brief period of time with Jim Payne, whom he says was the greatest natural craftsman he ever met. During the final years of the war, Feierabend decided to go into the business of producing ferrules to meet the demand of increased rod production in the U. S. He realized even then that fiberglass rods were the coming trend and that existing ferrule designs with serrated flats to accommodate bamboo would not work on the round shaft of production glass rods. By 1948 he had completed the master drawings for a complete series of his new round ferrules and submitted them for patent. The major advantage of his new design was that, in addition to being shorter and stronger, it used the same diameter for both the tip and the butt ferrules -- reducing the tooling required to make ferrules of two different sizes. Finally U. S. Patent #2,600,629 was issued on June 17, 1952. By then, the three had set up business as Super Z Manufacturing Co. in Pearl River, N. Y. The Super Z name was derived from an engineering term wherein "Z" is a contraction symbol for section modulus, which is what gives his ferrule its superior strength. Feierabend also designed the logo with the word Super running through the large Z. The initial Super Z ferrules produced by the company sold for $1.65 per set. Everett Garrison, whose rod shop was just across the Hudson River, was the first major rod maker to realize the advantage of the Super Z. Garrison was a structural engineer who immediately understood the concept of the new ferrule. He contacted Feierabend and began using the Super Z on all of his rods. Other famous rod makers to use Super Z ferrules included Uslan, Pinky Gillum, Paul Young and Orvis, mainly on Model 99 and Wes Jordan rods. In 1965, Feierabend turned his interest in the company over to his two partners and went back to engineering. In 1965, he hired on with IBM as a new product draftsman and moved West to the company's facility in Boulder, Colorado. One of the two remaining partners was seriously injured in an auto accident, so they sold the company and the rights to the Super Z patent to Conolon, a major producer of fiberglass rods on the West Coast. The new owners planned to mass produce the ferrules but soon realized that the close tolerances required for a perfect fit could not be maintained under mass production conditions using screw machines. Conolon soon sold out to the Garcia Corp., who almost immediately came up against the same problem, and in turn sold the Super Z patent rights to Rodon. Rodon was a smaller operation and had more success producing Super Z ferrules, although their product required hand finishing by the buyer to achieve the perfect fit for which the Super Z had become famous. Eventually, Rodon was acquired by Cortland Line Co., and descendants of the original Super Z are currently still being produced. |
