Here are some links I used to restore the line. I actually used bits and pieces from each of the links.
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/feature ... part87.php
http://www.overmywaders.com/index.php?cleaningsilk
http://www.flyfishinghistory.com/refini ... _lines.htm
The line might be close to 40 years old possibly even 10-20 years older than that, its amazing how durable that stuff was.
I walked over to the local river, brought along a pocket full of some home brewed flies and was out on the water for a little less than 2 hours. I was lucky enough to get into a few schools and landed about 35-40 small fish. Here are a few pics of the big ones . ........
I remember it was a nice relaxing way to spend the evening after a day of work. No monsters were caught that night. It still felt pretty cool to give this old combo some recent action, who knows the last time any of these components were put to work. It actually fished much nicer than you would think.
Here is another pic of the rod with some refrigerator magnets demonstrating the magnetic properties of the metal blank.
My research indicates that the Fork and Hoe company produced these metal rods sometime between the 30's and 50's.The rod is tubular steel and has a agate stripping guide, so I'm thinking its fairly early, but have not been able to pinpoint an exact year of production. The Rod it self surprisingly only weighs 4.6 oz. Its actually pretty light in the hand for what you would suspect out of a steel rod.
Fly fishing is known to be a expensive hobby, it doesn't have to be. If you show up with a restored combo like this, I bet even the die hard fly fishing elitists would respect your choice in gear. They might secretly wonder why your fishing it, but I bet they would also be interested in seeing how well it can work.