Press Release

Announcement of Project progress
Math, Science and Technology Application

Contact: Christoffel Stok, Senior FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Period 5/6 Monday, March 17, 2008


Systems Engineering II: Advanced Fishing Rod Building Video

Christoffel Stok is a student attending the Marine Academy of Science and Technology, Sandy Hook New Jersey. He participates in Systems Engineering II, an elective course available at the Marine Academy. For this course each student designs his or her own project. This means that they are responsible for designing their project, creating a portfolio, and then actually creating their device, which has to be unique to itself.
For Christoffel’s project he is designing an advanced custom fishing rod building video. This entails the production of a fishing rod from start to finish, all being captured on film. Christoffel is creating several rods for the duration of his video, each one uniquely designed. The main focus of the video is the rod with oscillating guides. This means the first three guides are turned 60° so that the power the fish pulls with is transferred to lift up the reel. This is the unique part of the video Christoffel is creating, there are currently no videos showing the construction of a rod with oscillating guides.
The production of the rods is the simple part of the project for Christoffel, for with the help of his mentor, a professional rod builder Christoffel makes rods at a higher quality then factory produced. The part of the project that entails the most work is the production of the video. Christoffel has never produced a video before; currently his teacher is helping him with the filming process. He will soon be onto the editing stage. During this stage he will be compiling all his film with the help of Imovie to make it into a stunning video that will show the production of a fishing rod from start to finish. This will include sections on blank selection, guide placement, handle making, wrapping, and finishing. Appendix a shows Chris busy in the systems lab, a regular site to attendees of mast.
Once the video is complete it will be duplicated and distributed. The video will be assessed on its functionality by a test. The test will be distributed to various students that have watched the video. When the tests are graded it will show the effectiveness of the video in showing the art of rod building.
All in all Christoffel’s project will depict every aspect of custom rod building, in addition to showing the unique art of butt wraps and oscillating guides. He will be producing a video so that even a novice rod builder will be able to produce a gorgeous custom fishing rod. His video will keep you wishing you were fishing.