Interview with Tom Dorsey

Here is a nice, yet short, interview with Tom Dorsey. Dorsey founded the Thomas and Thomas (T&T) rod company together with his (late) brother-in-law Thomas Maxwell in 1969.

They started building bamboo fly rods only with a brief experiment using fiberglass blanks from the Phillipson Rod company.

Tom Dorsey: "The first graphite rods were not built until 1978 when we purchased our graphite manufacturing equipment."

T&T switched owners several times the past decade. It was even briefly owned by a Scottish investment company. Now it's back to American ownership.

The famous picture (probably somewhere in the early 1970's) shown here shows the two Toms testing a new bamboo rod.

Also check my previous posting with a nice video on how bamboo rods are made at T&T.


Update Nov 20, 2013:
Here's the best article on T&T and interview with Tom Dorsey I've read so far.
The brief history on T&T up to the the current owner of T&T, Mark Richens, is very well done.