Vintage gem?..Or Junk

[John Wade]

8 Weight 9' found in an estate sale.
Custom Rod with very nice guides and a run of the mill grip, cheesy reel seat and no butt. The rod is slow as Christmas-brings out every problem in my cast like a magnifying glass
The blank is Graftek Exxon. A bit of research and I find that this company was a branch of Exxon doing early research on graphite and composite stuff. Their only claim to fame was one of the first graphite racing bikes. According to what I read, the bike was superlight (for the early 70s) and great to ride. The downside was, since the technology was so new, it would follow catastrophically apart without warning! Oh well. There is no mention of any other products from them as best I could find.
Insight? Opinions? Knowledge?

[LeonR]

Nobody seems to know much I did find this though. I think its worth more as a conversation piece and from this clip you should not be flinging it around much... :(
This is a small extract:

Is the William Mills & Sons of New York (tackle house that used to owntheHL
Leonard Co.) still in business?

Subject: Re: Mills & Sons - HL Leonard Co

I thought that Ted Simroe recreated the tapers post fire, but what
happenedto them I don't know. Also my understanding, is that it was
graphite that putthem under. they were producing graphite rods with blanks
made by Exxon, Ithink and they had problems with "exploding"

Leonard stood by them, but Exxon didn't and Leonard went under. I knew
aguy who was a sales rep for them at the time- Doug Davidson, but I
haven'ttalked to him in years.

[John Wade]

E mailed HL Leonard Co and a guy responded and he had no recollection of having used the Exxon blanks, but he said hed check aruond. Interesting!

[dudley]

Schwiebert discuses this rod line in his epic "Trout" calling the line "ill-fated,using carbon-fiber blanks from a manufacturer with little tacklemaking experience".
He goes on to say that the blank manufacturer had problems with quality controll just as several other tacklemakers experienced trouble in their first production runs.
Leonard's next line was called Golden Shadow and was imported from the U.K.
You can find thus info and more in the chapter called The Synthetic Fly Rods Of The Future.