All About Tenkara Nets

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, the podcast about a simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. It is only possible we create content such as this podcast and all the videos that we create because of your support, so we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara USA rods, lines, and flies. All right, folks, long episode ahead and an hour and 20 minutes, but I cover every single thing about Tenkara Nets in detail here. The making of the Tenkara Nets is going to start on the 17-minute mark, and one hour and six minutes, I cover the finishing, and everything else that you need to know about Tenkara Nets is in between. For more information, visit us at tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. Thank you, and enjoy. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. This is actually going to be the first time I'm doing videos simultaneously because the topic of today's discussion is Tenkara Nets.

1:00And I thought that this would be a very visual kind of topic. I'm going to try my best to convey the information just via audio as well for those of you who are listening. Before this episode, I'll highly encourage you to come to our website, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. and look at the page for the Tenkara Nets episode where I'm going to be trying to show you different things in person. So hopefully it makes sense. I've never tried to do both at the same time. I'm going to be looking a little awkward in the video and I might be sounding a little cumbersome in the audio. So stay with me. Forgive me if I make some blunders today. But here I am. This is the little Tenkara Museum actually that I have set up in my house. This is where I keep my collection of Tenkara nets, as well as a lot of mementos of Tenkara that I've come across over the last 12 years with Tenkara. Things that I've acquired in Japan, you know, friends have given me here, customers have sent us, and so forth.

2:06And actually, by the way, if you're watching this video, might as well ask you at this point. Take a look at this. If you know who sent me this really beautiful miniature tenkara rod with a tenkara net, which is really, really well done, let me know. Somebody sent me this years ago. It's a wooden frame, and the inside has this kind of like fake moss, you know, like miniature moss with a trout, and the detail is incredible. But if you know who sent this, or if you sent this, please let me know, because when it arrived, I couldn't read the name. I forget now it's been a few years. I forget if it was damaged or if I just couldn't read it. But it's beautiful and I never got to thank that person. So if you know who sent this beautiful miniature or if you did it, please let me know because I feel awful. I never got to thank whoever sent me that. And it does have a tenkara net, which I'm going to be covering here today about how to make it. And that person really did a good job with a miniature tenkara net.

3:10So let's start talking first about what is a Tenkara net, you know, how does it differ from a Western fly fishing net and so forth. So the first thing that you're going to notice in pretty much all the nets that I have on my wall here is that one of the main things that they have that is different from a Western fly fishing net or any other fishing net in the market right now is the angle between the frame and the handle and frame. So the net that I have in my hand here, you know, I'm holding the handle vertically, and the frame of the net, the hoop, it's almost at a 90 degree angle from that. You know, the angle can vary a lot. It can be very steep like this. It can be very acute, you know, 90 degrees or much less. You know, this net was one that I got in Japan, you know, maybe a 20 degree angle. So they can vary a lot, but there's pretty much all the nets are going to have a little bit of an angle to them. And the Tenkara nets can be either crafted out of one branch of a tree, which is what I'm going to be focusing on in this episode, or they can be manufactured out of modern materials such as aluminum, carbon fiber, and so forth, which is something that we are actually developing at Tenkara USA, and I'm going to talk a little bit more at the end of the episode.

4:26And there are a couple of things that happen when you put the angle on the net. one is that when you're carrying it one of the most common ways to carry the net is to put it on your weighting belt slide it you know the handle into it and what happens is you're going to have one little point of contact on your back and you can walk around you can move freely and you just have this net sticking out with one tiny point of contact around your hip as opposed to kind of having a flat board you know like it's pretty much always cumbersome to carry a western fly fishing net. You can hang it with magnets, but that thing is flopping. You can, you know, there's different ways to carry. You can tie it to a backpack and so forth. But my favorite thing about Tenkara gnats is the angle that allows me to carry the net this way. If I'm wearing a little backpack, I can just slide it on the side of my belt and the angle is kind of going to conform to my hip a little bit and it's just going to be carrying like I'm going to have this the frame slightly in front of me and the handle is going to be kind of tucked behind me.

5:34I have a backpack and it's completely out of the way. I can move through brush and nothing's going to get caught. So that's kind of the two things in terms of carrying the net that make it very convenient. And then the other thing in terms of functionality is that that angle allows you to hold support the net with your knees in different angles while you can have both hands free to manage fish. So I'm going to do a close up of the video here so that you can see it. But imagine I'm just kind of crouching down and then I'm kind of as I'm crouching down and I'll show you a close up in a minute. You're supporting the frame or the handle behind your knee and all of a sudden you have both hands free for example or you can kind of put it between your legs or your knees so the handle is tucked in between my legs the two arms are going to be propped against my thigh or my knee and I can have both hands free as a managed fish or if I'm in deeper water similar to the carrying the gnat I can tuck the handle right here on the side and I can have the fish right here if I'm in deeper water. Both hands are free. Maybe I tuck the rod under my arm and I can manage the fish right here. So the net that I'm holding in my hand, kind of small. This is a very common kind of size if you're fishing a mountain stream, you know, where you're catching, you know, fish up to maybe 17 inches. And believe it or not, this net here, it's got a diameter of roughly nine inches, nine and a half inches and because the fish is going to be curving you can fit the fish very easily and there's up to 16 or 17 inches even but the frame size can vary a lot you know this one is about nine inches diameter this one here is probably about 11 inches uh very commonly those are kind of like the the main extremes i'm going to show you here in this video one that i never got to finish which is a larger one that I'm hoping to make you know this is going to be something for fish maybe up to 12 maybe 20 inches or so because I have a net that I've developed a prototype before roughly I think it was like a 13 14 inch diameter and I've had fish up to 22 inches in this so fish are going to curve they're going to be sitting in there so I'm going to cover one more thing that you might notice is kind of different on these nets there's two things actually first is that the mash bag is usually like a kind of like a basket you know usually kind of firm it's got a little bit of a firmness to it not a super soft uh mesh even though there are some ones that are really soft like this one most of them have a little bit of a structure to them and the other thing that you'll notice is that the mesh size the little holes are really really really small this one here i think the size of the the little diameter between each little hole is about a millimeter and typically these are handmade you know so it's a super labor intensive process there's a reason they're very expensive uh largely i think you know the the mash bag is what contributes to a lot of the costs because they're so labor intensive to make. But the very fine mesh size, what it does is that it cradles the fish really gently. So sometimes we run across people saying like, oh, it's an island, not a bag. But because the holes are so fine, it's almost like a cloth. You know, like we've never seen a single scale on any of the, you know, the nets that we use and that's because it's just such a fine mash material and typically even though they are knotted the knots are super fine but they're also on the outside so that's the rougher part of the net more often than not so just a little bit about the net what i like about the mash bag the very fine holes is that there's nowhere for your fly to get stuck so the fly is not going to get through a hole and then just kind of get tangled like it does with nets with a larger size and also like some nets with very large hoops or a large hole sizes they can even damage a fish by like i've seen gills of the fish kind of getting damaged you know just kind of hitting the the hole of the mesh because they can kind of fit in there not super common but that happens so i like this mesh style a lot um i'll talk a little bit about in our making part but just since i'm talking about the mesh size uh we have a few mesh bags available for sale at tenkarausa.com but it's hard to find a really good consistent source and they are expensive you know they're like i forgot what the price is i should have looked it up but they're not cheap because they're very very labor intensive um but if you're watching a video you know they just come in this little basket a couple of sizes depending on the hoop size that you're kind of making a net for and that's available on our website we still have a few we don't have a ton of them but you might be able to use other materials or other mesh bags and that kind of thing yes a name that you're going to be seeing thrown around for tenkara nets very commonly it's going to be tamo t-a-m-o so tamo is a it's specifically a fishing net whether it's a iu or tenkara and that's going to be known within fishing circles the other name that people use for nets and i just learned that recently is ami a-m-i that's a general term for nets you know people that don't fish may recognize the term but anglers will call it tamo so oftentimes when you're looking at tenkara discussions people are referring it to as tamil as a way to differentiate these style nets you know with the angle and that kind of thing from other nets so those are a couple of the main differences between tenkara nets and other ones but let me talk a little bit about where they come from so tenkara nets one of the most fascinating thing about them is that they were essentially developed by people with what nature gave them. They were not necessarily designed. I think people over time started kind of picking up little things that made the net a little bit better than others.

12:05But this is something that nature gives the angler to make. And what I mean by that is that the way the traditional tenkara nets are made, they're made from one single branch of a tree. So if you imagine a branch coming out of a tree and that branch coming out is going to be your handle and you know it's going to keep going and you're picking a branch that has two parallel arms somewhere in the in the middle and you're going to be hooping that into your frame and I'm holding the net in my hand here so if you are watching the video you can see that very clearly. More commonly and I'll talk about how to select a branch if you visualize a plus sign you know where the branch keeps on going and you have two parallel arms. That's the ideal branch. You cut off the very middle and then you kind of have a hoop. And that's what nature gave anglers to make nets with. And I love the fact that it's just like something that is so well designed, so functional, yet it's just something that nature provided us.

13:12And that's a beautiful thing. So the nets, we don't know exactly when they were developed, you know by whom and so forth but there's a very very strong chance that the tenkara net was originally not made for tenkara and the reason i say that is that as far as we know tenkara anglers back in the day the professional anglers they were not really catching you know they were not needing a net so they had the rod line fly they caught fish most of their fish were you know under 15 inches or so but even the bigger ones that they caught they would just bring it they were eating the fish they were just taking them for food so they would just kind of take them kill them put them in a creel and that kind of thing but they didn't use gnats as far as we know back in the day however there's a different style of fly or fishing in japan that is called ayu fishing and there's a couple of ways that people catch ayu but one of the most common ways is that they're using a live decoy fish. And they have the super long rods, 20 plus feet.

14:15And the IU are really small fish. They're like seven inches. A nine inch one is actually a big fish. They're really prized for the eating, the flavor of the fish. But the way that the angler will catch an IU, 20 foot long rods, they kind of feel like they have a fish. They lift it really quickly. And the objective that they, the way that they would bring the fish in is that they would lift it quickly and the fish would kind of come flying towards them and they try to get in the net so that's kind of how we still see nowadays people using or catching ayu in japan so when you go there see these people super long rods uh chances are it's not in cut it's going to be ayu fishing that you're watching they have very large nets very large hoops and they bring the fish in and they have large hoops not because of the size of the fish but so that the fish can go in very easily they can they don't have to aim quite as hard but i think the tenkara angler probably took the design and just kind of when we started looking at tenkara more as a sport you know probably in the 70s maybe a bit before that then they started using tenkara nets i think the tenkara nets have been around for much longer for a variety of reasons we don't really know but primarily the nets became more common when people start fishing for sport. So that's where I think the nets come from as far as I discovered in my research.

16:04Thank you. So let's talk about making the Tenkara net. So I was holding in my hand a little earlier the branch that you make it then kind of net out of.

17:09So the first thing is going to be, you know, like let me describe the process as a whole just to kind of give you an overview. You go out to the woods. You look for the ideal branch. That might be, you know, half of the work, especially in the beginning. You look for the branch that's going to work well. You kind of test, you know, see if it's going to form a hoop and that kind of thing. You cut it. I'll talk about when to cut it and how to select a branch but you form a hoop let it dry for a long time in the shape and then you're going to splice the arms of the net in the middle here you're going to glue that together so the splice is going to be really fine hopefully very strong it's going to be a long splice as long as possible and then you finish it if you want to oftentimes I like to use a tongue oil finish and I'll talk a little bit about that as well about finishes. Let it dry so it's a little bit more water resistant. Put a mesh bag and that's it. So that's the process, the overview of the process, which is how long does it take to make the net. So started talking about the walking in the woods, finding the branch. That might be half of your time right there. Could be a couple hours, could be a day, could be a couple weeks.

18:23I don't know. That's going to vary a lot. Then the actual making, we're going to strip the bark, we're going to form the hoop and we're going to let it dry and that's really really important i'll talk a little bit more about drying in a second but for the most part that could take from three months up to a year if you're living in a very humid environment but you don't want to skimp on the drying part and i'll talk a little bit more about that in a second that's really important so So that could take a long time. Once it's kind of done dry, you have most of the shape done. It depends on your skill level at that point and how much work you want to put into it. The hardest part for me was always splicing the branch right here. You know, I didn't have a lot of experience, had to learn some tricks along the way. But splicing the branch kind of took me a little bit of trial and error. after a while it became a little bit better but that always took me an hour two hours to make it kind of properly then i spent uh you know glued it let it dry let it cure and then i spent time either carving a branch you know kind of finishing the handle shaving it that kind of thing that might take me from an hour if the branch was primarily all done if it was a really good branch very smooth and so forth or i've had branches like the juniper one is a very hard wood. I kind of remember spending at least like probably about 10 hours of working, like carving, kind of shaping it and that kind of thing. So that's kind of the answer for how long it takes. Let me preface this whole next part here about making tenkara gnats that I have no woodworking experience whatsoever. Tenkara, I mean, I've made a couple of projects at home, but really no woodworking experience. So if you do have experience with woodworking and I say something that makes no sense, that's why. Because the nets were actually the first project that got me interested in woodworking. And that's actually the only project that I work with wood.

20:38And it just became kind of became interested in making my own. And I started learning a few things and made a bunch of mistakes. I kind of tried to register my making process in the beginning on our website, and I'll put a link in this episode to a couple of posts that I've made in the past about how I kind of went about making them, but no woodworking experience. And to share a little bit about my history with woodworking making nets, I became fascinated with them. And I lived in a small apartment at the time, but the first part of it was finding the proper branch. And that actually took a fair amount of research because you can read the Japanese information, but we don't have the same trees as they do in Japan. So you might read that the trees that are often used for tenkara net making in Japan are kaya. It's a type of tree called a K-A-I-A. In the States or other countries, we don't have that tree. So when I started becoming interested, first thing I was like, I started looking at trees all over the place.

21:46First of all, to see if I could find the right shape. And then I was doing a little reading about water resistance and that kind of quality, you know, durability, all this other stuff that I was reading and to me it became clear that the most important thing is going to be having trees that have the right shape that provide the right shape for you because you might have trees that are really good for water purposes but they don't have the right branch configuration if the branches are you know the different arms are not parallel it's not going to work really well so the first the main most important thing and pretty much the only thing that I really take into account is finding the tree that provides the right shape and the right diameters as well. And I found that primarily pine trees tend to have this configuration where you have one arm, you know, one branch sticking out with two kind of side branches, often sometimes parallel or in line with each other, I should say, not parallel.

22:50You know, a branch is going to the left and to the right and they're completely in line with each other so you can make a hoop. Not all of them are going to have it, but in my experience in America, it has been Jeffrey Pines and Ponderosa Pines have been the easiest trees to find those branches. On my wall here, if you're looking at the video, you'll see this net here. This was actually made out of a juniper tree. So juniper trees tend to be really gnarled, you know, like the branches are all over the place. it's not completely in line but I just I literally and I'll talk about how I started visualizing that but I literally saw the branch when I was driving and I spotted it and I cut it and I made it into one of my favorite gnats actually right there another net that I made there was a different tree or different plant was a manzanita but I will say that right now that I've never found never being able to find another juniper branch or another manzanita branch that would work as well so they're very very very rare to find the right shapes out of other other trees especially manzanitas and junipers you might be able to but it might take a lot of looking so when I kind of first identified that Jeffrey as a matter of fact I'll share this right now as well. The manzanita branch, by the way, was my very first net. And actually it is one of my favorite. I've never used because it's just so cute and pretty. But, you know, it is my first net. So I was just kind of lucky that we spotted this. Actually, I think my wife spotted a branch when we're looking at a bush and I cut it and made a really nice net.

24:40But Jeffrey Pines in Ponderosa Pines, let's talk about branch selection. So when I first started, I started looking at those trees primarily and I would see sometimes that they would have the right configuration and most of what it took was walking in the woods a lot and you also want to be mindful of a couple of things you do not want to be cutting branches out of private property or national parks those would be illegal private property unless you know the owner you have to ask for permission obviously uh definitely don't cut it in any national park most state parks wouldn't allow it as well so be mindful of where you can legally cut a branch national forest different national forests forests might have different regulations the ones the times that are cut branches these were national forests in california primarily although i had some in Colorado as well, where I contacted them or I went to their website and it specifically said something about, you know, if you're collecting less than, I don't remember the numbers now, but less than five pounds or less than a certain number of branches, you can do it as long as it's as a hobby and you're not doing it commercially. If you're doing it commercially, you start having to get licenses and permissions and that kind of thing. So for the most part, there's a lot of places you might be able to collect a branch and in you know they're you're just trimming a tree but i will mention when you're cutting the branch off try to cut the branch as close to the tree as possible or as close to where the last arms of the tree are going to be coming coming out you don't want to cut the branch that the part that's going to form the handle in the very middle because that's going to be a little harder for the tree to heal. So that's, once I started looking at those trees, in the beginning it took me a ton of walking, like hours of walking. And luckily I really enjoyed that part of it. I would spend just a lot of time in the woods looking for the right branch. And I just kind of got my mind really focused. It was just a very pleasant way to spend time in the woods learning about trees. And with time, I started noticing that I was finding those branches quicker and quicker. It didn't take very long. Like in the beginning, it was really hard to spot them because I was kind of learning. But with time, I started spotting them really quickly when they were around to the point where maybe just after like 10 outings or something i started spotting them when i was driving even because you just kind of see what you're looking for and you kind of key in on that and that's how i started kind of picking the branches but what do you want to look for when you're making a tin cutter net out of a branch first thing is going to be the configuration that i mentioned you want to get the plus sign shape branch coming out a tree with two little arms to the sides as in line as possible and you also want to look at the diameters that that branch is going to provide you because the main branch is going to be the handle so you want to have something that's kind of going to be nice and you know just nice to hold that keep in mind though that the tree is going to have bark around it and i'll talk about that in a second but you want to get something that's slightly fatter than you want for both the handle and the frame because you're going to be removing the bark doing some sanding and that kind of thing so you know handle size that's completely a personal preference for the hoop size for the hoop the thickness of the arms here they're going to form the hoop I kind of think of it as a little kind of like the the thickness of a sharpie pan or a pinky finger kind of worth for most people, I suppose. But you can't, you know, go too wrong.

28:46If you get a little bit fatter, you can always cut some off. If you get it too thin, the net might be a little bit harder to, might not have quite as much strength. So that's the main part in there. While the trees, while the branch is still in the tree, you want to get the sidearms and bend them so that you can see that it's going to form a hoop, you know, kind of more or less naturally. So you kind of want to give it a little flex. You want to make sure that the diameter, you know, is going to be kind of appropriate, that the thickness, you know, is kind of consistent throughout until the two branches meet, you know, and that kind of thing. So you want to just kind of test that before you ever cut a branch. I have had branches that look beautiful. The handle was really nice. Branches were, the two side arms were in line with each other and when I bent them, one just wanted to come in a straight line, the other one formed a nice hoop because maybe one side was very thin, not quite as strong as the other side, so I let those be.

29:50You don't want to go cutting things that you're not going to be very proud of because it's going to take a while for you to make the net. You're going to put a lot of effort into it. Talking about handle size, by the way. A lot of people think that an ideal gnat will have a long handle. In my opinion, that couldn't really be farther from the truth. Because with proper technique, when you're fishing with tenkara, your technique in bringing a fish in is always going to be similar. You're going to either angle the rod if you have a short line, or if you have a long line, you're going to hand line the fish. But at that point, you want to bring the fish as close to you as it possibly can so that you can kind of calmly have control over it and you can scoop it. So I bring my fish, if you're watching me, my hand, my hand that is holding the line and the fish is kind of below it, is maybe like 12 inches away from my hand holding the net. That's kind of how close I want to be. I don't want to be with my hand holding the line, kind of extended up, several feet up, and trying to net the fish with a long handle because then I'm going to have less control.

31:03So if you're watching me on the video, long handle, not very useful. And if I'm here, it's really awkward. So for me, the ideal handle size is roughly 10 inches. You know, something that gives me a little room to kind of play with my hands, but never more than 12 inches for me. 10 inches is a really good size short handle because I'm always kind of scooping the fish in close to me. And that's a huge technique tip right here that I want to give you today for tenkara fishing. Just bring the fish as close to you as you can. I know a lot of people are going to have a hesitation to do that because they think the fish is going to break the line. But if you do it gently, if the fish wants to run a little bit, you kind of let it go. But do it gently or kind of bring in this really stubborn dog to you. That's kind of how you want to approach that. one thing that i mentioned a couple of times is that you want to pick a branch that's going to be a plus sign shape and i mentioned that because the most common when people start becoming interested in making tenkara nets the what i see the most is that people will pick a y-shaped branch you know it's uh much easier to find that kind of branch you know you just kind of have this branch kind of coming out and maybe one branch you know going off kind of a similar direction and kind of forming this y and then you kind of form that into a hoop but there's a few reasons that I a couple of main reasons really that I recommend you stay away from that kind of branch for one when it's a y-shaped branch even though it's easier to find and you can make it you can still form it there's a high likelihood that you could have a split in the middle as the branch dries or throughout using that kind of thing because there's a fair amount of stress going on in between those two branches that wants to kind of force it out sometimes.

33:00The other thing is it's going to be harder to form a circular shape. So that's another thing that maybe I didn't talk about but you'll notice that almost all tenkara nets have as circular a shape as you can get. And part of that is just that, you know, you're going to put the fish here, you don't have to worry about orientation. But one of the biggest reasons is that a circle is going to be one of the strongest shapes that you can make this, you know, a net. If you have something that's kind of like Y-shaped and a little bit more rectangular, if you hit it, or if you weigh it, it's going to have stress in different areas. A circle tends to distribute the forces a little bit more evenly. So if you have a large fish here and let's say your branch is not particularly thick, a circular branch is going to take the pressure much better than a thin branch that is not circular. So that's something that you want to keep in mind for sure. Now, so I think I talked about most everything I want to talk about the branch selection.

34:05takes time enjoy walking in the woods that's kind of my main advice actually one more thing let me talk about the the aesthetic part of it which is one of my favorite parts of it i mean the tenkara gnats are just so beautiful that in one of the things that really can make them very beautiful or absolutely stunning in my opinion is finding branches that have character to them That's why I love this juniper branch. I thought it had a lot of character to it. For those of you watching the video, you see a little bit of the pith kind of exposed in a couple of areas. That's natural. I didn't do that. It's as circular as I was able to get it in its uniform, but the branch is gnarled. You know, it's got a little bit of a waviness to it. So that branch has got a lot of character. It's just beautiful, beautiful wood as well. Some gnats that I've seen in Japan, like this, for example.

35:13Some gnats that I've seen in Japan will have like what some people might think of as flaws, you know, in the handle or throughout different parts of the gnat. So the gnat that I'm holding in my hand right now, the handle has this gash. in the middle and you can kind of see it's natural it's not handmade you know you can't quite get that kind of shape if you try to make it so this is a little bit of kind of going to the japanese of wabi philosophy of wabi-sabi you know kind of looking at beauty and the imperfect you know just kind of what is given to you and so forth but after my first couple few branches that I picked primarily based on the shape, I started looking for branches that would have more character to them. And you just kind of have to look, but one insight that I had and I was able to find a really good branch, actually, one of my favorite branches. It's this one right here, which has also the exposed inner layer of the branch.

36:18I forget if it's called a pith or not. Sorry, English is not my first language. but you can completely see the exposed part right here i did not make that that was natural it's got this kind of narrowed stuff and it's got another really nice now part on the underside of that branch and the insight that i had and there's a couple more here as well which is really cool but insight that i had on this one is that i started looking at branches that were going to be really really low close to the ground thinking that they would have a high chance that some animal came and chewed at it this branch you know kind of exposed it eventually got healed but you know it's something that something chewed onto this and the tree kind of the branch kind of healed around it in some way so you know things are kind of smooth and that kind of thing but finding those kind of branches is one of my kind of favorites now that i collected after my my first few ones um you know so something like this one actually in particular or maybe it was no it was this one actually this one in particular was a very low hanging branch in an area that i had seen a lot of cows uh hanging and i just kind of had a hunch it's like i wonder if a cow ever chewed on you know it could be a deer as well but you had this kind of chews on the handle unfortunately this one you broke and I have to fix it. I fell on it. That's one of the downsides of this crafted, you know, tenkara net. Actually, my very first tenkara net I bought in Japan. I had it on the back of my belt and I was walking down a steep bank and I slipped and I fell onto it and I broke it. So that's a downside to the crafted kind of wood. You know, you can break and you have this angle, making the breaking a little bit more easily. I just completely got in the habit of every time now, now that I learned a lesson the hard way, every time I'm going to go down something, like even if it's not very steep, but if there's any slight chance that I might fall, I remove the net from the back and I hold it in my hand because if I fall, I'm just going to toss it, you know, very low chance that I'm going to break it. So something to keep in mind about these as well. When to collect the branch. When you read forums in Japan, you might come across people saying they should collect a branch in the winter because that's when there's going to be less sap going through the tree. I've actually collected all of my branches in spring or summer, potentially fall. I don't think I've ever collected a branch during the winter.

39:05A couple of reasons for that. The main reason is that spring and summer you might find branches, depending on where you are really, but definitely spring, you're going to find branches that are a little bit more flexible. So not only can you test the tree a little bit more before you cut it, but it's going to be much easier to form the hoop when the branch is flexible. You know, it's got some sap kind of flowing through it, I guess. It's greener. I think those are better than trying to pick something that's drier. A drier branch, and I'll talk about shaping, but you might have to steam it and be really careful not to break it. A greener branch is going to be better. So Japanese say winter. I don't know that much about trees, to be honest. Don't know if there's a downside to cutting during the winter in terms of tree hilling. Maybe that's something I'll research next, put a note. But if you know about that, just let me know as well. So let's talk about what you need to make a net now. And this part is actually one of my favorite parts just because, as I mentioned, I didn't have any woodworking experience when I started making nets.

40:15I didn't have, and I still don't have a wood shop, you know, like a lot of tools and that kind of thing. And I also didn't have much space at all. When I first made my first net, lived in a really small apartment with my wife. all I needed was a tiny corner of the house that I put a tarp and I'm gonna guess is like four feet by four feet you know I had this tarp and I had a couple of tools on the floor you know I could get shavings in there it's you know some sanding uh some sawdust and that kind of thing not a bunch you know I try to be kind of careful and vacuum as often as I could but you really don't need much space and you don't need many tools so the first thing that you're going need is a little saw you know some kind of saw for collecting your branch I tried a bunch of different saws you know in the beginning I think I wanted something super lightweight you know like as lightweight as I could because I didn't want to carry much when I was going out and finding the branches with time you know and I also tried like a just a wire which is good because you can had that with you. But if I was dedicating myself to looking for branches, if I was going somewhere with that intention, I loved having a really sturdy, small, you know, this is like six inch blade, very sturdy saw to cut those branches with really kind of aggressive teeth because I could cut it really quickly and just be done and be on my way as opposed to just kind of spending a lot of time on the tree. The other two things that I really liked having on the field when I went to look for branches were a pair of gloves because you're going to be dealing with sap. So a pair of gloves for me was really important. You know, like you don't want to deal with all the sap in your hand and to go along with that, a plastic bag as well, because if you're going to be putting in your car just to kind of keep the sap kind of from going around. So those are the three tools, three things you need when you're going to collect a branch. And then when you get home and you start doing other things, first part of the process is going to be removing the bark of the tree.

42:31And here's a pro tip. You want to do that as quickly and as soon as possible because actually the branch that I was showing earlier in this video, if you're watching, part of the reason I left the part of the reason I left the bark on this partly was to show people you know kind of the the stage at which this branch was in but mostly it was actually because I left it on started letting it dry to see kind of what would happen and it was a pain in the neck to remove the bark so I just kind of did a little bit and I left it at that so remove the bark soon after you get home and to do that you can use a variety of things like a carving knife can be good and when the branches were wet actually all i had to do was usually you don't really need to use the tools that much as a matter of fact you can get away with having no tools at this point because all you need to do is you can kind of with your fingers when they're green you can either cut a little slit or force it with your fingers force it apart and peel it that's a huge advantage to picking this when it's green the knife would come in handy once in a while to open it up a little bit more kind of pry it might be better to not have a particularly sharp knife at this point just because so you don't cut into the tree into the branch but it was pretty easy, you know, just kind of using something to scrape. If there's a little bit of a pithy kind of, if there's like an inner bark kind of layer, sometimes you can use something to kind of scrape it off right away or sand it down the road. So that's the first kind of step when you get home.

44:17Take the bark off, maybe using a little tool to scrape it off or help you peel the bark. The other tools that you're going to need, basic ones, are a fine saw. So a fine saw is going to be either used to cut parts of the branch that you may not want, but you don't want to make it too rough because then you have to spend more time finishing. But primarily, the most important thing, you need a very fine saw. And that can be, the more common, the more easier to find kind of saw would be a dowel saw. saw, you know, something that's just designed to cut something fine, because you're going to need that for your splicing. You know, when you're going to join the two arms together, you don't have a ton of room to make errors there. You can do a little bit of shaving later, but that's going to be a thin branch. So you want to use as fine as a delicate saw as you can find. And this is the only, it's a Japanese saw, the one that I'm holding in my hand. It's actually works the opposite of most saws where it's a pole saw so you just kind of cuts it really fine very effortless you know I just kind of go slowly but works beautifully for making a splice and dowel saw can work the other ones not too sure although I will mention this I spent some time learning from a teacher in Japan where where he was one of the master net makers in Japan and made hundreds and hundreds of nets probably over the years.

45:53His process was a little bit more industrial for making the splice where he used a belt sander, actually. So he would get the branch, kind of like the size that he needed, and he just belt sanded it so that it would be perfectly flat. and he had the skills to make them so that it would match perfectly. I don't have the skills. I've tried that on a couple of ones. I find that using a saw worked better for me, but just to kind of give you something to think about. But mostly a sharp knife. I like this for carving away some parts of the branch. One thing that you'll notice in the design of all the branches or all the 10-cut-and-nats as well is that the bottom end of the handle is going to be pointy for the most part. It's going to have a taper to it. And the reason for that, it kind of goes back to the functionality where we're sliding this onto our belt very often. So the point just kind of makes it easier to slide onto your belt as opposed to if you were to leave it flat. So a carving knife was really nice. Sometimes I use a saw sometimes a kyrie knife to kind of give it some detail but very nice to kind of end the the frame in my hand now i'm holding a actually this is probably the last branch frame that i made before i kind of took a break from it and i want to resume work on my branches on my nets because i haven't done that in a while and i really surprised me because i have a box with branches that had been drying for at this point years and this was in it and i looked at it and i thought it was so beautiful and then i went to look at the splice and i'll try to get a close-up of the splice as well so you can see in the video later could barely find it this is probably after i made like i don't know 10 15 branches uh gnats and had this really beautiful kind of curvy handle and i thought i must have bought in japan I didn't remember it, but then I had my stamp on it. I made this. So I just want to share something with you that I'm getting a complete kick out of. You can see the part of the reason I just picked it up was to show you the taper, very nice taper, but I couldn't believe that I actually made this frame and I never actually got to finish it putting a net frame on it just because I think Maybe I moved. I was in the process of moving when I finished that, I think.

48:30But so, yeah, after a while, even if you have no experience making that, after a while, you can become OK with it. You know, I think I made must be about a dozen to 15 nets that might have been close to my last. And it is the most gorgeous one maybe that I have just in terms of the technical aspects of it, for sure. now other tools that you're going to need sorry I keep going on tangents a file, a coarse file is kind of good and that goes along with sandpaper this one had super aggressive teeth you don't really need this it was nice to have sometimes but what you do need is a set of different types of sandpaper different grits of sandpaper something really coarse in my hand I'm holding one that's kind of like a sponge kind of block you know I can hold it you can just use sandpaper like paper and sometimes you put it around a piece of wood so you have more of a kind of a uniform sanding and you want to get as many grits as you can get a full set of it you know I might start at 200 200 or 220 I forget and you go down to the next one 320, 400.

49:53I think you can get away with those three, but you may want to get also an 800 grit as well. And those are going to allow you to make finer and finer, more polished kind of finishes for your branch, for your net. I had a set as well that I bought of incredibly fine grits. these go to I want to say like 6,000 grit I mean these are like really fine polishing sandpaper and I found them really beautiful to work with primarily at the finishing stage you know you apply a coat of something and then you want to kind of polish it up a little bit before coats, just using really fine ones to kind of get a glossier, more, you know, more finished kind of product. So those three materials primarily, I'm going to go back to this, fine saw, carving kind of knife, sandpaper. Those are the only three materials you really need to make your net.

51:03and maybe some kind of cord or something so you can tie the frame together as it dries I used later in my nets from what I learned from a teacher in Japan I started using inner bike tubes just cutting strips of it because you can stretch it really hard and wrap it around and it keeps it in that shape so that's what I have in my hand right now forced it into shape put the bike tube in there let it dry A couple of optional materials again Some file And one that I kind of liked But it's not really necessary For a lot of branches This one has some little thorns growing Weird But a thing that I found useful For some branches When I was making a lot of them Was a wok holder Which is something that you would find a WAK WOK, something you would find in a restaurant supply store. Coincidentally, the WAK holder usually has two circles, like a smaller one and it kind of funnels up into a larger one.

52:15And coincidentally, they're really close to the diameters that you need for most 10-cut-on-net mesh bags. One is roughly 9 inches in diameter. The top one is a little over 10. Those are the more common kind of net bag sizes. But what you can see here, this was probably a very stubborn branch that I was having a hard time kind of getting into a circular shape. So I used that walk holder to force it into the circular shape and I tied string around it at various points to kind of force that into the shape that I wanted. And that's going to be useful during the drying process. Talking about circular shape, one thing that you can do if you feel like you have a really kind of good branch, you want to work with it because it has a lot of characteristics that you like, but you have a hard time branding that into a circle, like the manzanita branch that I showed earlier, it was really difficult to get this into a nice circle. I used a lot of steam to do this.

53:22woodworkers are going to be familiar with the process but for me it's completely new i would just get a kettle heat it up have a really kind of solid solid jet of steam coming out and i would apply that to specific spots along this branch kind of flex them a little bit and hold for a while kind of let it cool and with enough steaming enough shaping and letting cool eventually i got to a nice circle. Or you can just boil like a large pot of water, let the branch sit there for like 10 minutes with a lid on top so that that frame is going to be absorbing more moisture and you can work with it a little bit more easily. So some techniques you can try that for shaping your branch. I've never had to shape a handle. A handle is kind of like a very important thing it's going to be really hard to shape never had to do that but you can use steam you can just kind of use slow pressure i've never actually broken a branch probably because i work with used to work with them when they were very green but i've bent them and been lucky that i've never broken a branch so the drying process of a net so you shape it into the circle now you have to let it dry. And how long you're going to have to let it dry is going to depend a lot on where you live and what kind of humidity you have where you are. So in Japan, the forums that you read might talk about letting it dry for a year or two years even. I know some netmakers in Japan that might let it dry as long as two years. But Japan is incredibly humid. So that's a huge difference. They try to put in a place in their house like an attic or something where it's going to be a little drier.

55:12but it's still a very humid place, so really hard, takes a long time to dry a branch. In Colorado, I can probably get away with about three months, two to three months even, in dry and branch. When I was in San Francisco, it used to take me about three to six months. One way, I don't know too much about testing the branch, and the first ones I was going by feel, just kind of erring on the side of letting it dry more than less later on for some of the later branches i bought a moisture i think it's a wood specifically for wood but a wood moisture meter which has two little prongs and you put it in the wood and it tells you roughly the percentage and if i remember right about eight to ten percent is kind of what you're shooting for You know, it's always going to have a little bit of humidity there. But that's a good level of humidity to work with. Now, very important.

56:14In the drying process, there's a very good chance that the parts that you have cut, the parts that are kind of exposed, they're going to dry faster and they could crack. So there are two things that you can do with it, in my experience. What I prefer to do is cut the parts that are going to be cut away, the parts that I don't really need, cut them longer than you need by 4 inches, 3 inches. You know, cut them, give them a good amount of room. So, for example, I'm looking at the plus-shaped branch. The, you know, like the, imagine the bottom of the plus coming out of the tree. the two arms are kind of going to the sides of the plus sign the top part of the plus sign is the branch that keeps on going and might have other little branches out of that the part that keeps on going you're going to cut it away as close to the eventually as close to the to the arms as possible just to kind of have a nice finish but in the process of drying I would leave a three to four inch stub in here because that is kind of happening this one it kind of cracks it may potentially go into the tree i haven't into the handle i haven't had that problem so i just cut everything longer than it needs to be so the handle exaggerated in this net that i'm holding in my hand i like a short handle um i would cut leave several inches there that could potentially crack. This one never did. Same thing with the arms. Several inches, room for, you know, room for error here. But this could break and you can do that. The other thing that you can do is put white glue or wax. I preferred white glue when I was making these. Put a coat of white glue, let it dry or wax material and all that's going to do is it's going to slow down the rate of drying of the extremities the ends to kind of match the rest of the net so what causes the cracking is when the extremities you know they're exposed they're going to dry faster than the rest they'll crack so if you put wax or glue you might be able to prevent cracks as well as your branch dries but very important you select a branch you're going to be anticipating it you want to avoid chances of having a break it's actually let me talk a little bit about splicing the net you know it's i'm not the best person about you know to talk about this but here's my process you shape the frame into a hand into a hoop you know the the side that is opposite from the handle you know, the other end of the circle, that's where roughly your splice is going to be made.

59:15And a splice, what I mean is just that the two branches are going to be cut in a diagonal, you know, and both of them are going to be matched so you can glue them together. And it's a hard part to work with. There might be different techniques there that work well. One technique that I made, I think I was making that with most of my nets. I got some kind of cotton line wrapped roughly where I was going to cut it wrapped it around kind of tight and I actually put white glue all around it covering white glue and let it dry so what that does is essentially makes a cast right around here and it kind of holds the two branches together and once it dries you start cutting the two branches in line with each other and your goal here is when you're cutting it your goal is to make your splice go for roughly at least two inches you want to make a very long splice so what that means is that the angle that you're cutting the branch is going to have to be very high you know if you cut it 90 degrees they're just going to be join together like this, not quite as strong. If you cut a little bit less, you're going to have a tiny little bit of overlap between the two, not quite as strong. If you cut it at 60 degrees roughly, that's kind of a gas, high balling, you're going to have a good long splice, you know, like a couple inches overlap. I think there's a rule of thumb. I don't remember what he was, but a multiple of the diameter of what you're trying to join together, you know, so if this is a quarter inch maybe I think it was like a two inch thing you know something like that but I don't remember what the rule of thumb is my goal is to make a long splice so with that cast I was able to cut it diagonally both of them would have the same line already going so I could kind of even if they were to split apart I could just kind of continue going in as perfectly straight a line as I could.

1:01:26Try not to have any angle on your saw. You know, you just kind of keep that angle uniform between the two branches so they can then join them together. And then in terms of joining them, I've tried a bunch of different things. So I tried, primarily I was using some strong wood glue. I don't have a name to recommend right now. But a good wood glue, essentially. You glue them together, wrap it with some line or wrap it with a bike tube or something that's going to hold it together until it really cures. But here's, after I made a lot of nets, I went to Japan and I spent some time with a net maker over there, Yoshimura-san. and I was actually the only person that he's ever besides his staff that he's actually ever taught his secrets I spent a day and a half learning different techniques from him and he passed away a couple of years after I met him unfortunately I was supposed to go back and spend more time learning about net making with him but the day and a half was absolutely magical because I saw all kinds of techniques like things that I never expected as I mentioned earlier using a sand belt to make that splice for example where you know he just had the touch I couldn't quite make it but he would get that pretty simple concept to get one arm put on the sand belt you quickly just kind of you know as long as you're holding the right angle quickly kind of shaves it off do exactly the same angle on the other branch and you're done your splice is done super quick with some practice i'm sure it could get there but i just prefer the sawing technique but here's the other thing that he taught that he did that was really surprising to me and actually here's one of his nets really gorgeous net i've got a couple of them here um beautiful net you know kind of like knurled here i used some raton you know like to decorate the net probably an urushi finish i can kind of feel it a little rubberized it's very rich deep color but here's how he did the splice you know he shaved it off and he used super glue uh he actually showed me the he had a um the chemical name to it. I forget what it is. But, you know, I looked it up later and it's like just super glue.

1:03:59And he put super glue and he wrapped the splice area with a little bit of cellophane wrap or like your kitchen wrap, plastic wrap. And then on top of that, he would get the inner bike tube. He's the one that's topping the trick as well. He'd get strip of inner bike tube and just kind of wrap it really really tight so the super glue just kind of glue together incredibly famous you know he had been making nets i think for 40 years so that was his technique you know not using wood glue which i was really surprised by but so just give you something to think about if you're a woodworker and you have some downsides to that let me know i'd love to learn but the guy was making incredible nets very well renowned and that's what he used. The other thing that you could try as well and possibly you might want to start getting sometimes is some raton, you know, like raton strips. You know, you can get like a little roll of it. You can get thicker or thinner. I think thinner the better. It just looks better, you know, and you can use that to either decorate your net, you know, like the one that he made potentially he was trying to hide a flaw in there and used a little bit more to decorate it.

1:05:23I've used it before to reinforce a splice. So the mazzanita branch that I have here in front of me, I used a super fine raton, wrapped it really tight, and this was a very thin joint here, but I really wanted it to work, so I kind of wrapped that to reinforce that part. I don't remember in this juniper branch don't remember exactly why I put raton here but I put two strips they're a little different sizes so my guess is that in the banding process or the drying process is maybe they develop tiny little cracks so I probably reinforced those with some raton so that's another handy material to have for some net making and this one here this is the one that I mentioned I broke when I was going down a steep bank and I had some raton here already that's where the splice is I never got around to fixing this I broke this a long time ago but I'll probably just try to reinforce it or re-glue them and reinforce it with some raton to kind of hide that scar if you will so that's a handy material to have let's get into the finish part you know that's going to be tools as well in a certain way. But let's talk specifically about the finishing of the net. There's a lot of materials, some tools that you can use, but the primary tools are going to be your finish. And I'll talk about the finishes that I use or have tried in the past.

1:06:59But sandpaper. I didn't bring it here. I think I ran out at some point. really fine steel wool. I really like that. So that kind of goes along with fine sandpaper as well, but I like steel wool, like a triple zero steel wool. Don't absolutely need it, but it kind of goes with my sandpaper kit usually when I work on that. Brushes to apply the finish, depending on the type of finish that you're using. Nice to have gloves as well when you're handling this stuff. so you just don't have much things going on to your fingers. You're not getting sticky hands from different things, but brushing gloves are really nice to have. And depending on the finish that you use, maybe a mask. I never used that because I didn't really use really toxic materials. So that's it for kind of the finishing tools, some sandpaper, steel wool, and potentially brushes.

1:08:04I like a really thick brush that holds a good amount of finish. But for the most part, I actually never even use the brushes because I'll talk about the finishes and what I like to use. My favorite finish was always tongue oil finish. And that's different from pure tongue oil. Similar but different. Tongue oil is something that a lot of people like. I've tried that on a couple of nets as well Or at least one actually But it just took too long for it to dry in my opinion So I don't even know what they say But in my experience The one that I made, if I remember right It was basically a whole day for it to dry So I could potentially apply another coat And then another day And I was typically doing about three coats of finish pretty much with all the finishes that I wanted. So it was just a little too much time for me.

1:09:05So that's why my bottle is still completely full because I never used it. Can't even open it right now. But one really good advantage of tongue oil, pure tongue oil, is that it's really natural. As far as I know, as far as I remember, non-toxic. You can apply it with a soft cloth with no gloves. Some people even use their hands. definitely don't want to consume this or put it in your mouth, but that's a big benefit of the tongue oil. It smells pleasant as well. It's not an unpleasant smell. I wanted something that would dry a little faster between coats, so I just kind of got it done a little quicker. So tongue oil finish is what I used to use. Now, when you're using those oils, and actually let me talk about why I selected tongue oil finish as one of my primary ones. It's one of the two main things that I liked about it. Very water resistant, if not completely waterproof. But if I ever felt the need to recoat a net, with tung oil, as far as I know, again, I don't have too much woodworking experience.

1:10:16But with tung oil, you don't have to strip any of it off. You know, if you have some kind of, I don't know, you scrape it or something and you want to refinish, all you have to do is just apply tung oil on top of that and they kind of combine the fuse. The layers are going to just combine nicely and you're not going to really notice a difference in your finish if you kind of do it properly. So those are the two main reasons I use tung oil, but specifically tung oil finish because it dries faster. now a tongue oil is going to give you a clear coat on the net so the juniper net that i'm holding in my hand a completely clear coat three coats of tongue oil finish but you can completely see the wood as it is and i like that some people love it this little net that i made the mazanita incredibly beautiful colors i mean that's my favorite thing about is because i removed the bark but there's this kind of inner really thin bark that I it was hard to remove and I couldn't completely remove it so there's got this beautiful marbling of red spots around and definitely to conserve to to preserve that characteristic a clear finish was best later on I started playing also with some dyes because I wanted to get some nets a little bit darker you know I just kind of found that the light color net just a little too bright so I kind of wanted to you know because the bark is pretty light color but I wanted to kind of have more of a wood color if you will so I just used different dyes you know like I tried a couple of different ones but I think the ones that I liked the most was this well what I'm holding my hand here I haven't used it in a long time but in a line dye stain this one is a dark fumed oak oil soluble so soluble oil soluble which i was able to dissolve into the tongue oil finish just kind of mix it into a cup perfectly blend it in and that was my first coat didn't really cover it much just a nice little stain you can probably use wood stains as well i just prefer to use the dye and kind of mix it in you can do a second coat using a dye if you want to get it darker richer colors or just a first coat with the dye and the other coats are just pure tongue oil it depends on how dark you want to get your wood one that i made is kind of interesting you know definitely i wouldn't say it's my favorite but it's it's kind of cool if you see this net close up this is a black net so it's just an experimental one where I used some um um trans tint concentrated dye and I if I remember right I did the same thing I mixed a little bit of tung oil with the dye and I applied a couple of coats but what I'll do is I apply the coats when it dry completely I sanded some off and it kind of revealed a little bit of wood here and there so that's really stunning as well so you can have a lot of fun playing with the finishes. Read up some stuff on that online, but that's the stuff that I've experimented with. And the last thing that I will mention is something called Urushi.

1:13:44Urushi is a plant, actually, or at least maybe the resin of a plant that's very toxic, like in terms of allergic that people make ink out of in Japan traditionally. So Urushi is something where some tenkara gnats, bamboo gnats, like sometimes they'll have the color. That's the traditional paint or dye or finish that they use. It comes from a plant, natural material, but kind of toxic as far as I know, or at least you don't want to touch it on your skin. you know I wouldn't recommend it you know but it's just I thought I'd mention the traditional finishes I bought this stuff in Japan I'll put a close up on our website it says cashew on top I think if you look at cashew like the cashew nut die maybe you can find a source in the states I'm not sure I bought a set of them when I visited Japan at one point.

1:14:48And that, it's a little hard to work with. It's kind of gooey, a little thicker. I'm not sure if you're supposed to dilute it. Definitely use a brush for it. But it gave me this really kind of rich, deep, kind of thick finish to the net. And this one was made with that Urushi. I think this would actually be a Urushi imitation, technically speaking. but it's just a you know like a light coat it almost had this rubbery kind of quality to it really nice i enjoy working with that if you're curious about it i thought it would be worth mentioning that kind of finish and then the last part is going to be the attaching the bag i do have a good video that i've made before about attaching the bag and i'm going to be embedding that video on this podcast page as well. And essentially there's a couple of ways to do it. The most common way is to get some kind of strong line. There's a variety of lines you can use.

1:15:51You can use hemp. You can use leather. I bought some kind of like braided nylon line. That was probably my favorite. You go through the top part of the mesh bag and you make little knots every couple of inches. And it's similar to, at least in climbing, if you look up, if you're curious about it, it's really similar to a clove hitch. You know, and the arms are going to different sides. So hopefully the video is going to make it more clear, but there's a lot of different ways to do it. You just have to connect the mesh bag to the frame. And another one just to kind of give you an option. I've only made one net this way and I think I've seen actually as a matter of fact the net that Mr. Yoshimura made was also made this way where you can use this really fine um what do you call them super fine like little eyed pins. I'm sure there's a name for it I'm blanking out I'm sorry but they're just really thin very very thin and they have little eyes and they're no more than like an eighth of an inch you probably can find different sizes but what you're doing is you're putting this essentially tiny screws they're not screws they're just flat or they're straight they're smooth but you're driving them into the wood and do it every, you know, one to two inches.

1:17:29And then you're just kind of getting the line to go through those. It's a little more labor intensive on putting the screws in there or the pins, but a little quicker to connect the mesh that way. And the cool thing about it is that you preserve the top part of the frame. So if you have a particularly beautiful frame on the top, you know like this one has a nice scar here it's got some scars and curves and I the reason I did this is because I didn't want to hide those flaws so that's why I kind of went with a little pin method and usually they're silver and at the time I bought something to essentially turn metal into a dark blue or almost black color just to kind of hide it more blended in with the mesh so that's another thing to give you some room to think. And that's it. A lot of, a lot of, you know, it's funny because I, when I decided to do this episode, I thought I didn't have much to talk about and, you know, it'd be awkward to do it in a podcast because it's such a visual method.

1:18:42But here we are now in 20 minutes and it's going to be a long one. So you may want to break this up into two parts. But there's a lot to be said about nets, and I think I covered it from a novice perspective. As I mentioned, no experience with woodworking, just kind of learn a few things along the way. If you have some tips to share, please come to our page, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. Share it on that page, share it on Facebook if you have any tips as a woodworker. There's some beautiful, some people that have made some really beautiful nets out there. that posted on Tenkara Anglers. Scott Angling, for example, has made some really nice gnats. If you make a gnat, please share. I'd love to see gnats. I mean, this is literally my favorite part of Tenkara, I think, in terms of the equipment. And it's so much my favorite part that I'm going to drop a little teaser.

1:19:43We are actually working on a new gnat, and I'm really, really excited about it. and it's going to come out this year. It's going to come out in 2020. We might actually be getting very close to it. The design, I'm really excited because the design is something that is completely unlike anything that I described here today, but also completely unlike any net in the market here in Japan. It's got incredibly well thought out features that our team has been working on for a while now. Um, we are getting close to, we're, we're kind of getting close to our last prototype stages. My guess is that we could have a prototype in a, you know, maybe we'll do a Kickstarter campaign for that one. Cause there's going to be some high tooling costs, but potentially, you know, may even, uh, we'll see fingers crossed. We can kind of pull this off. We're getting very close. Very, very excited to show you what's going to come out. Um, yeah, it's, uh, I kind of started driving that project partly because I wanted to start making nets again. I was like, you know, we got to offer a net. We used to have a wooden net. And the last batch that we had or the one before just had all these, you know, cracks on that. It's tough to sell at volume, you know, something like that because you can have flaws. It's hard to warranty it and break. So we're trying to address all of those things in this net as well. So stay tuned. I waited to kind of mention this in the very end. So if you listen to this whole episode, I think you're a hardcore Tenkara angler. You're very interested in the topic. So stay tuned for that and we'll put it out as soon as we can. Trust me, we can't wait to see it in your hands and you making use of it.

1:21:39So that's it for today's episode of the Tenkara Cast. Share any comments you have with us. Hopefully you enjoyed the topic. If you have questions on things that I didn't cover, but I think in an hour and 20 minutes, I probably cover what you wanted to know and more. But if you have questions, don't hesitate to let me know. And until next time on the next Tenkara Cast.