Yuku free message boards

I did comment before on these blanks but let me restate the gist of it. My understanding of this is that Jeff Hatton, an ex-employee of Scott, bailed out a Montrose storage locker on which Scott, during some confusing and difficult times (which seem to be well in the past, by the way) had not paid rent. The locker contents included many glass blanks, mostly brown Fibertouch and the yellow stock they made for a Japanese customer's anniversary, both of which dated from the mid to late 1990s. Apparently, the container also stored some old glass control blanks and some remnant glass stock from SF days.

The brown Fibertouch blanks may be either prototypes, rejects or, possibly, buildable stock. Same with the yellow blanks. The Fibertouch brown blanks were developed as I was leaving Scott, were s-glass instead of e-glass, and are probably similar to the black glass that Scott currently sells. The yellow blanks were developed after I left the company in 1995.

The old control blanks are pretty much useless since they relate to SF era e-glass models, which were made by a blank manufacturer who Scott stopped using in 1981. That company, California Tackle, is also out of business. My suggestion to Mike, when he contacted me about what he'd purchased, was that the generous thing to do would be to offer the control blanks to Scott, who had no intention of losing them, and for whom they have historical value.

As to any remnant SF era blanks, in either yellow or brown, my feeling is that they're likely to be, at best, problematical. Scott discontinued glass as a catalog item after 1982, though we continued to build a few until we ran out of useful stock. Apart from the issue of placement of internal sleeves, which were important to casting performance, and for which specs were likely not in the container, by the early 1990s what was left of light line trout glass were blanks we wouldn't put the Scott name on. We got frequent requests for discontinued models and we had to refuse the orders. I recall looking through what was there in the late 1980s and only finding a couple of usable #4 line blanks, one of which I built for myself. There were a few #7s which were OK, and some #8, #9 and #10 line blanks, since these were models that didn't sell particularly well, a mix of brown and yellow glass. Even those got picked through heavily by employees, particularly as the company prepared to move to Colorado. Mario Wojnicki also looked through the remaining glass and was given about a dozen blanks he'd culled as usable, all of which were heavier than #6s. By the time Scott was established in Telluride, "seeds and stems" wouldn't begin to describe what was left.

Mike McFarland is a talented builder and I don't have a bone to pick with him about buying what he bought. It was legal and, despite the less than ideal circumstances that put those blanks on the market, that's that. There may be some good stuff in the blanks from the 1990s. But I do think it's fair to say that any SF era glass blanks in that locker, with the possible exception of some heavy line stuff, are something very different from the blanks on which Scott built its reputation.

Larry Kenney

I stand by my comments. The image shown, with the Sabre 4D label, indeed confirms that some blanks for medium line weight rods were SF Scott glass, as those were run on mandrel 4D. Some may well be of decent quality, just as some won't be, and that's what I stated. But please note that I suggested Mike "offer" the control blanks to Scott, not donate them. What Mike will craft from what he bought will no doubt reflect his own standards and expectations, and they'll likely be both attractive and effective rods. But they'll be McFarlands, not Scotts. Nothing wrong with that.
Larry Kenney