THE OUTDOORS : THE ULTIMATE GIFT : Unique--and Costly--Rods and Rifles for That Special Outdoor Person

What do you get the outdoor people on your Christmas list?

Well, there are always wool socks or snake-bite kits, or flannel shirts that might even fit.

Maybe they’d like Swiss Army knives, with all those gadgets.

But what about someone really special? Someone for whom good is not good enough. Suppose we’re talking ultimate.

You might want to visit Weatherby’s gun place in South Gate. This year, they made a hunting rifle that sold for $18,500.

Or stop by Barry Kustin’s garage in Woodland Hills and order a bamboo split-cane fly rod for $1,000, rock bottom. Hey, some customers pay $3,000, right out of the garage.

These aren’t Santa’s workshops, but if going first class is what you’re all about, you won’t find anything better.

“But the truth is, you can’t make a living at this,” Kustin says. “My wife has a good job that supports this business.”

Weatherby’s does better. Like Kustin, Roy Weatherby started in a garage, too, back in 1945.

“As small as you can get,” says his son Ed, who hadn’t been born at the time. “He had virtually no equipment, but he built one gun and sold it, built two guns and sold them, then four guns and went from there.”

Roy Weatherby retired in 1986, and Ed, now 37, succeeded him as president of Weatherby Firearms in the same building on Firestone Boulevard where his father moved in 1951. When Roy died last April, he left a legacy of quality firearms.

Stand in the middle of the showroom or prowl the back offices and you’ll see mounts of some of the most exotic big-game animals on earth, alternating with autographed photos of the Weatherby customers who sought them: John Wayne, Chuck Yeager, Nolan Ryan, Gene Autry, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers, Robert Stack, the Shah of Iran and his brother, the prince.

President Reagan owns some Weatherby rifles--left-handed ones, with the cheek piece on the right side of the stock and the bolt on the left.

Marketing manager Betty Noonan, who has been with the firm for 36 years, said: “There are several companies that make left-handed rifles now, but we were the first.”

Growth and survival have meant some concessions, such as adding some quality shotguns--about 25% of the business--and a commercial line of rifles to compete with Remington, which sells five times as many guns a year. But Weatherby’s still is the only manufacturer guaranteeing that each of its rifles can drill a 1 1/2-inch, 3-shot circle at 100 yards. And the firm still deals in personal service, which appeals to a certain clientele.

The firm once made a rifle for Walter O’Malley, the late Dodger owner.

“He had us paint the stock Dodger blue and gold-plate the barrel and scope,” Ed Weatherby said.

Noonan said: “I remember Jane Powell coming in to be fitted for a rifle. I was Roy’s secretary at the time. I baby-sat for one of her children . . . while she was in with Roy being fitted for her rifle.”

President Eisenhower presented one to the King of Nepal, who liked it so much he came back to get another.

Ed Weatherby said, “We’ve put diamonds into guns, and the diamonds might have added up to $5,000 by themselves.”

Even without diamonds, attention to detail is apparent on every gun. Even the screw slots are lined up in the same direction.

About 40% of Weatherby’s rifles are top-of-the-line Mark V models, selling for just under $1,000. The firm also built limited commemorative editions of 1,000 for the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976 and for the ’84 Olympics.

But nobody bought a better gun than the custom Mark V 300 magnum that Weatherby’s built for the Dallas Safari Club this year. The case alone, crafted by Marvin Huey of Kansas City from oak and red suede, cost $2,000, and detailed engraving by Richard Boucher of Torrance, a French walnut stock, $900 Zeiss scope and 90 inches of gold wire inlay also tended to run the price up a bit.

Ed Weatherby called it “the nicest gun we ever made. I don’t own a gun this nice.”

The club auctioned the gun for $18,500, with proceeds going to game management projects. The winning bid was made by lumberman Thornton Snider of Turlock, Calif., who planned to give it to his daughter.

Barry Kustin knows split-cane fly rods inside and out. That’s because they are hollow, in the unique way he makes them.

“Cane rods are a religion,” Kustin said. “Everybody that’s a cane-rod maker will prove to you that the way he makes rods is the true way.”

Kustin’s eyes twinkled.

“This is a business where bull is revered,” he said.

Kustin’s beefy hands belie his skill at the delicate craft. He is one of about a dozen cane-rod makers in the country, working out of a cluttered garage adjacent to his condo. He grabbed a 6-foot culm, or stalk, of Tonkin bamboo, from which all rod makers cut the six strips that form the rod, usually by machine.

“There are people that say you must split this by hand,” Kustin said. “That follows the fibers down along their natural paths, and you don’t get any crossing fibers.”

But he points out that in tapering the six strips down to .052 of an inch at the tip, “you’re still cutting across fibers. If you check with the people who make bamboo rods for a living, as opposed to the hobbyists, you won’t find any that split their cane--but they won’t tell you that.”

Kustin, 56, concedes that he isn’t what you’d call your typical cane-rod maker, except for some eccentricities.

“Of course, we’re all eccentric,” he said.

He was born in Maine and grew up in New York but lives in Woodland Hills, just a long cast from the Ventura Freeway, so his wife, Frankie, can be close to her real estate job. He didn’t give up his job as a salesman and start making rods until 1980, a generation after cane rods were already being crowded off the market by synthetic materials.

“But I’m a fast learner,” Kustin said. “I don’t want to be snotty about it, but I’m different from all those other guys. We’re all friends, but they’re all locked into tradition. Each one is replicating the work of some predecessor. I try to take fresh approaches. I wasn’t burdened with heritage.”

All cane rods are hexagonal, constructed of six tapered, thinly shaved strips glued together. Kustin’s rods include several innovations, including the removal of the soft pith from the heart of the cane to reduce weight--then, for one of his composite rods, replacing the pith with graphite for strength.

Said Kustin: “That rod’s been out only 5 years, and if you read stories where it’s mentioned, they’ll say, ‘And the other makers are still watching Kustin closely.’ ”

Cane rod makers all have their secrets.

“The biggest secret is varnish,” Kustin said. “And glue. Glue isn’t the secret with them. Glue is the secret with me. I don’t varnish rods; I epoxy them. I’m the only one that epoxies them. It doesn’t have to be revarnished every 2 years. I’ve never had to refinish one.”

He also makes his own ferrules--the metal tubes that hold the sections of a collapsible rod together--so he won’t have to shave the rod to fit.

“It takes so long to make a ferrule that it’s ridiculous to do it when you can buy (a set) for 25 bucks,” Kustin said. “I’m spending half a day on it. It just doesn’t compute, except for one fact: Mine fit. No wood gets shaved off for mine.”

He smiled.

“You’ve gotta be a little arrogant to do this, you notice?”

Kustin makes about 25 rods a year. And how long does each take?

“I’m gonna guess 50 hours,” he said. “It used to take 35, but I’ve improved. In the beginning I didn’t make my ferrules. I didn’t make my reel seats. I didn’t make my cases, my bags. I bought that stuff, like everybody else. Gradually, I became dissatisfied with their stuff.”

Now, the only ready-made parts on Kustin’s rods are the line guides.

“Another thing I’m known for is the woods I use,” he said.

The butts and reel seats may be made from bird’s-eye maple from Michigan, cocobolo from Honduras and maple from the backwoods, where microscopic organisms have gnawed the downed wood into colorful patterns until Kustin’s agents found it and delivered it to him.

The bamboo, as for all cane rods, comes from China. Cork for the handle is from Portugal.

“We don’t spare anything,” he said.

But Kustin affixes his line guides with nylon thread instead of silk because, he said, silk rots.

After all that, Kustin doesn’t even mind when somebody asks about one of his fishing poles.

“If they’re willing to spend a thousand bucks, we don’t worry about grammar,” he said.

“The first rods I sold were to Fisherman’s Spot down on Burbank Boulevard in Van Nuys. The first guy that came in and looked at ‘em was Jack Lemmon. When he saw the price he said, ‘This is a hell of a bargain. Get me another one.’

“I think they were about $500 or $600. In the beginning I figured I’d have to be cheaper than everybody else to get some attention. Then I discovered it didn’t make any difference. People wanted to pay for these things.”

Some anglers think that graphite rods catch fish better than cane, and Kustin does not disagree.

But a good cane rod?

“It should do a flawless cast in the hands of a caster that’s able to perform a flawless cast,” he said. “It should have a delicate delivery, a lively feel, a sensitive touch. After that, it’s aesthetics. It’s a warmer feel than a hunk of glass or a burnt acrylic fiber, which is what graphite is.”

And who wants to give anybody a piece of burnt acrylic fiber for Christmas?