Up to that time, fishing rods were built of various woods and varnished to
protect the material. The varnishes of the day were easily chipped or cracked,
and exposed wood could rot and weaken quickly. What Wes Jordan sought was a way
to treat the bamboo deeper than its surface. He wanted to impregnate the fibers
themselves with some durable substance that would protect them (other
manufacturers, including Horrocks-Ibbotson, had been experimenting with various
impregnation processes before the war; Wes may have picked up the idea from
them).
First steps, with the assistance of the Bakelite Company, followed a procedure whereby strips were completely impregnated at the Bakelite
experimental laboratories and then returned to Jordan for gluing and assembly.
The bamboo consistently misbehaved, resulting in a mottled appearance. The
glues, in addition, often refused to bond correctly with the synthetic, and the
Bakelite Company eventually considered the experiment a dead end.
Jordan, with characteristic stubbornness, made a new start. After the cane
poles were sawed in half, he tempered them over open gas flames to remove all
excess moisture. The flame treatment also darkened the wood. Then the halves
were split into individual strips, but rather than impregnating each strip
separately, he glued them up first with a phenolic resin-based cement. The
assembled stick was then immersed in a Bakelite phenolic resin under precisely
controlled heat. This was the impregnation process. The impregnated stick was
then cured in a thermostatically regulated oven, so the wood pores were filled
with the resin; no moisture could enter the wood. The impregnation and curing
processes further d
