Sweetwater Fly Rods

This gallery shows Lemke & Struble reel seats with various domestic US and other exotic wood inserts. The wood has been dried to approximately 5% moisture or less, then under almost full vacuum for up to 8 hours, remove as much air from the wood as possible. Then, at atmospheric pressure with the vacuum pot open, allow the wood to absorb the resins for at least 36 hours and up to 72 depending on how open-grained or porous the wood is. The inserts are then "baked" to at least 190°F to cure the resins (stabilized) and then cleaned-up and staged for use in making beautiful fly rods as you have seen on this site. The exotic woods that by nature contain natural oils do not get stabilized with this vacuum process. All domestic US woods are stabilized.

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NOTE: Select the large images to see the variety of wood for the insert