The company: With more than 25 years in the rod-building world, we at C.F. Burkheimer have created what we feel is a pretty special process. We have designed our business to be nimble and flexible, allowing us to build exceptional-quality rods on what we call a “one at a time, one of a kind” basis. Our manufacturing set-up allows us to design new tapers as we feel the need, and our tightly-knit facility also gives us the ability to rapidly tweak existing designs whenever inspiration strikes.
Quality is a compulsion at C.F. Burkheimer. All of our rods, no matter what the action or build-grade, receive the same attention to detail. We use the materials and machinery that we feel provide us with what we need to produce exceptional fly-fishing tools. Our curing oven was custom-designed by C.F. Burkheimer’s founder, Kerry Burkheimer, in order to provide a degree of temperature control and heat spread that was simply not available otherwise. Similar attention to detail can be found in the way we sand our blanks. While it is commonplace to machine-sand a rod blank to a “finished” state in a single pass, C.F. Burkheimer blanks only enter our precision sander in order to get the process started. Our blanks are then fully hand-sanded, which is time-consuming, but which also ensures that our blanks better retain their intended actions and strength. Our cork handles are also hand-finished from the finest grades of cork that we can buy. Indeed, we often find ourselves rejecting cork that might be considered high-grade elsewhere.
While we offer a broad selection of standard rod models and builds, we are always open to new challenges from our customers. We create rods from scratch, and that gives us the internal agility to handle a wide range of custom requests. If you want a truly specific rod for a truly specific task, contact us to discuss your needs. If you feel that a custom C.F. Burkheimer is in your future, please be aware that the custom process requires a greater investment of both time and resources.
Kerry Burkheimer: It was almost a genetic inevitability that Kerry Burkheimer would end up in the rod-making business. After catching his first fish at the ripe old age of two, a flame was lit in Kerry that burns brightly to this day. Always a passionate angler and a tinkerer, Kerry spent years learning the rod design and manufacturing business. That included time at Loomis Composites, and nearly a decade under the watchful eye of the late, legendary rod-maker Russ Peak, the man Kerry considers his mentor. While Peak’s name may not be well-known among modern anglers, his influence on rod design was wide-reaching in his time. Kerry eventually purchased Peak’s business and inventory, and those assets morphed into the C.F. Burkheimer Fly Rod Company of today.
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