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Building A Custom Cane/Bamboo Fly Rod Step By Step

The more I work with bamboo the more impressed I am by it because of it’s unique properties and characteristics. Bamboo cane truly is an amazing natural building material. It is resilient, tough, strong, flexible, malleable and very easy to work with. There are many varieties but only a handful are suitable in rod making. The One you will hear of most often is Tonkin cane named for it’s place of origin and prized for it’s size and long strait dense power fibers and long sections between nodes. Tonkin is the bamboo of choice for most rod makers. Other varieties of cane suitable for rod making are Mandake {meaning common bamboo } and Hadiku. Each possesses it’s own unique properties making it suitable for a specific type of rod or style of casting.

On the left side is Mandake cane, in the middle Hadiku and on the right is Tonkin.
The easiest way to describe them would be fine, medium and coarse. You will notice the Mandake has many more small but heavily concentrated power fibers near the outside edge than both the Hadiku or Tonkin cane. This makes Mandake a good choice for a very ultra light weight rod. Depending on what type of rod you want to build, Tonkin may not necessarily always be the best choice.
Japanese have used both Mandake and Hadiku cane in rod making for centuries built in the old Mandake style using whole one piece selected cane shoots in various diameters compared to the complex multi splined split cane tapered rods made around the world today.

Cross cut cane sections of different types of cane showing difference in power fibers

There are many people who have never worked with bamboo and are under the misconception that bamboo is a type of wood. When they think of a bamboo fly rod, they naturally think you are making a wooden rod. This is not the case. Bamboo is not wood. In fact it is a type of grass or reed. Where wood is made up of different patterned grains and always covered with a protective bark, bamboo is a hollow tube made up of long straight cells called Power Fibers that run between sections from node to node at which point they cross over each other and intertwine much like re-bar used to reinforce concrete. Which makes bamboo the ideal material for building a fly rod.

Cross cut section of a planed spline showing cell structure of power fibers.

Each section is separated by a nodal dam. The nodes or nodal dams are an ingenuous example of natural architecture that act as a foundation making a base for the next section of bamboo to grow on. The nodes are what allows the bamboo to grow forty to fifty feet straight up into the air without collapsing and toppling over. Bamboo also has no bark. It has only a paper thin layer of enamel to protect it from the elements.

Inside of a split cane pole showing nodal dams

One other misconception held by the masses is that bamboo makes an inferior or weaker rod than a fiberglass, composite or a graphite rod. I assure you nothing could be further from the truth. In fact it is much, much stronger.

Here is a strength test I conducted on a 60o planed scrap piece of a bamboo spline . Notice the extreme force being exerted on my finger tips. It takes six of these laminated together to make to make a rod section. I defy anyone to try this with a six inch section of graphite.

Here is the same piece with the pith side removed and only the strongest power fibers remaining.

One thing that has led to this misbeleif is that cane rods come with an extra tip section and that quite often when we see some of these older rods for sale or up for auction one of these sections is sometimes broken or has been repaired leading us to believe they are weak and prone to breakage. What we need to take into consideration is that in almost all these cases the rod is very old and has not been properly maintained or has been misused and abused. Most of these older rods came from a post war time when they where being mass produced in factories and you could buy a good South Bend or Heddon cane rod from a catalog or your local hardware store for under $20.00. There was no monetary vale put on them. They where simply a fishing tool nothing more. People did not take care of them. They threw them up on the rafters of the garage where they froze in the winter and cooked in the summer, or left them down in a wet moldy corner of some dark dingy basement where they where left to rot and corrode. With that said, cane rods are actually very tolerant and forgiving. There are also many very old cane rods that have been very well maintained over the years and are highly prized by collectors who pay top dollar and are just as sound today as the day they where made. Cane rods can be easily repaired or restored. Even a cane rod with a crack, slight delaminating or actual chunk missing out of it can be fished for years without any further problems occurring but a graphite rod with the slightest nick in it will have it’s structural integrity compromised. It is a ticking time bomb. A disaster waiting to happen. Bamboo is an organic material and is subject to erosion and decay and requires at least a little care. With a little proper maintenance as simple as wiping down your rod and storing your rod in a proper bag and tube and placing it upright in the corner of a nice clean dry closet will assure a long life for your cane rod.

Tonkin cane comes only from a very small region of about 30 square miles in China along the Sui River bordering the provinces of Kwangsi and Kwantung. It is harvested in it’s eight year, washed, graded then bundled and bagged for export.

The one remaining importer in the U.S. is Charles H. Demarest Inc. It is available in two grades determined by the diameter of the but section. The smaller 1 3/4 - 2 ". The larger being 2 - 2 1/2" . The smaller is used for lighter weight rods and the larger for heavier rods like a 7- 8 wt. It is sold in bales of 20 but can be bought in single culms. It comes in 12′ lengths but must be cut in half for shipping and is only shipped UPS.

When you get your bamboo, you may need to season it a while. The first thing you want to do is look for blemishes or marks. If there are any bad spots gouges, cracks, insect damage or unsightly watermarks, you will have to decide whether or not you can work around them. The bamboo I have gotten has been well inspected and graded and I haven’t come across any that where unusable. If you do get a bad one, just set it aside. It will make a great rod tube.
The next step is to make a drying split. This will allow your bamboo to season properly and stop it from splitting in other locations. You will need some kind of splitter. The traditional tool is called a froe, but any thick spined knife blade will do. I use an old clever and my moose dressing knife and they work fine.

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A Traditional Bamboo Froe

My Bamboo Froe
Here are the basic tools you will need for dressing your cane strips.

Start your drying split in the but end by placing the blade nice and straight against the end of the pole and give it a whack with a block of wood of a soft head hammer. Drive the split just past the first node. If your in a hurry to get started like I was, I quick seasoned my first two culms by making my drying split and then I slid the whole pole on my curing oven at 120o for 24 hrs.

After the pole has been seasoned you will need to flame it. First you will have to decide whether you are going to make a blond, dark cane or flamed colored rod. Using your froe, split your pole in two equal halves starting in your drying split . If you are making a blond colored rod you will need to flame it on the pith side but you need to be careful because it can catch fire on you. Have a bucket of water or extinguisher handy just incase. If you are making a flamed rod you will flip the two halves over so they are round side up and flame the enamel side. Using a simple propane bottle torch hold it so that the flame is just touching the pole. Starting in the middle and working out. This will do two things. It will strengthen and stiffen your rod and it will drive the moisture out the ends. You will find more on this subject In any of the available books on the market, but I have covered the basics

Next you will want to split your pole into equal sections. You will need six pieces for each section of your rod. If you are making a 3 PC 2 tip rod you will need to split your pole into 24 equal pieces. Below is a diagram taken from Wayne Cattanach’s book "Handcrafting Bamboo Fly Rods" showing how to properly divide a bamboo pole, and how they will come together after equalateral planing to form a rod section

Once it is split into sections you will need to straighten the pieces and prep the nodes. This is the part most rod makers detest. It is probably the most time consuming and unpleasant part of making a rod. Personally myself I don’t mind it at all. In fact I rather enjoy it. What I do is turn on the TV, crack a six pac and relax man!. The key is patience. Take your time and don’t rush it. At first you will think it is a never ending job but you will soon start to see results. The procedure is really quite simple.When you apply heat to bamboo it becomes very malleable. You can bend and twist it easily like soft warm plastic.

When it cools down it will retain it shape. First start by dressing your nodes. I start by removing the inside of the nodal dam using a heavy rasp. This works very fast and cuts very smooth and clean, but be extra careful you are not cutting too deep into the power fibers or you will ruin the strip.

Inside Dam

Removing The Dam With A Wood Rasp

Strip With Inside Dam Removed

Once you have removed the inside of the dam you will need to dress the outside. This is a little tricky and needs to be done very precisely. The outside of the dam is nothing more than a little lip. Right underneath are the most crucial power fibers and great care must be taken not to cut into them. What I have done is flipped the jaws of my vise over so the knurled side faced in and the smooth side faces out. Then I filed a small notch in the jaw to accommodate the lip of the node. I then heat the node section with my heat gun until it becomes pliable and clamp it tightly in the jaws pressing the node flat.

Notch In Vise Jaw

Pressing A Node Flat After Heating

First on it’s flats, then on it’s sides. Once it is cooled, I take a bastard file and gently using only forward strokes I file away the remaining lip. Once all the nodes on a strip have been prepped, I then go back and straighten all the bows and twists in the sections between each node. At the same time with a fine sanding block 120 grit, I gently sand away about half of the enamel . Using this procedure I keep working the piece as many times as I need to get it perfectly straight. Slow and steady wins the race.

Outside of Dam Lip

Pic showing a properly dressed strip on the left and an unfinished strip on the right.

PLANING FORMS
All you need is a few simple tools and two sets of planing forms. A rough planing set for planing a 60* equilateral triangles and a steel finishing set for planing your final taper.

ROUGHING AND FINISHING FORMS

Roughing forms are relatively easy to build. Thomas Pennrose has an excellent webpage http://www.thomaspenrose.com/bamboo.htm that shows how to build both roughing and finishing forms. There are a number of companies on the net offering steel tapering forms. The set I have now I bought from Lon Blauvelt. http://members.tripod.com/~BamBooFlyRods/. There is also a list of suppliers in the back of Wayne Cattanach’s book " Hand crafting Bamboo Fly Rods". You will also need a set of planes. You can get by with two. One for roughing and one for finishing, but I would suggest at least three. One for roughing, one for planing to within a few thou of the final size and a scraper plane to finish to the final dimension. I now have four and I use all of them all the time. The standard rod makers plane is the 9 1/2" Stanley fully Adjustable block plane with an adjustable mouth forward sole adjustment which is essential for the precision in rod making. You can buy a Stanley at most building suppliers for about $85.00 CAD , though it may have to be ordered in and it will take quite a bit of finishing work to fine tune so that it is suitable for rod making. Lie Nielson also offers a 9 1/2" fully adjustable very high quality block plane that has the option of a .003 rod makers grove machined into the sole that stops you from cutting into your forms.

LIE NEILSON 9 1/2" WITH GROOVE

They also offer their small rod makers 212 scraper plane with the same option. Lie Nielson uses a much thicker harder steel for their blades and they will hold an edge almost three times as long as the Stanley. With the Lie Nielson planes there is no fine tuning needed. These planes are perfect right out of the box. If cost is not a factor I very highly recommend Lie Nielson planes.

LIE NIELSON 212 SMALL SCRAPER {This plane will take a cut finer than angle hair}

SHOWING ROD MAKERS 0.003 GROOVE

FINE TUNING YOUR PLANE.

Planing a rod blank is very precise work. It’s not like planing the edge off a pocket door. You will be working in measurements of thousandths of an inch, so your planes sole or face needs to be perfectly flat.Some planes are worse out of the box than others. Stanley’s are made for carpentry work therefore the tolerances are not that accurate from the factory so we need to modify them for rod making. In order to accomplish this you will need to sand the bottom with aluminum oxide sand paper. First you will need a perfectly flat surface. Either a piece of Plexiglas, arboreta counter top or dropglass {aquarium glass} Starting with 400 grit, lay a sheet abrasive side up. Remove the blade from your plane and hold the plane fat on the sandpaper. Using a little pressure, move it back and forth a few strokes, then turn the plane over and look at the bottom. You will easily be able to see where the sandpaper has and has not come in contact with the planes surface. Keep sanding until the entire sole of the plane shows that it has come in contact with the sandpaper then switch each time to a finer grit. Starting with 400 to 600 to 800 to 1500. By the time you reach 1500 grit, your plane should have a perfectly flat mirror finish. You should be able to see your reflection in the surface.

MIRROR FINISHED PLANE SOLE

Next check to see there are no burrs on the inside of the plane where the blade sits against the machined beveled lip. If there are any remove them with a fine needle file but be careful not to change the angle of the lip. lightly oil the threaded moving parts, reassemble the plane on a soft surface like a towel. Never leave your planes resting face down. Always rest them on their side like the photos of the ones on my bench. I keep a rag and a can of 3 in 1 oil on my bench and oil the surfaces of my planes after every planing session.

SHARPENING

Planing bamboo is like planing concrete. It is full of minute particles of silica sand that it picks up from the soil while it is growing. Because of this your blades need to be surgically sharp and you will need to sharpen them often, so I suggest you get good at it. Wayne Cattanach covers this process in-depth in his book. Here are the Basic steps.

{SCARY SHARP METHOD}

Sharpening is done with very much the same method as surfacing your plane. You can either sharpen your planes using sandpaper or a sharpening stone. If you use a stone, you will need a combination water stone. Recommended 1000 and 6000 grit.
If you are using the sandpaper method you will be using progressively finer grits of sandpaper.400 to 600 to 800 to 1500 etc. Either method you chose you will be able to shave with the blade when you are done. A standard 9 1/2" block plane blade is sharpened at 30* You will need a plane blade jig. A devise to hold the blade at the proper angle while sharpening. The ones with a roller baring are the best kind. You can pick one up at Canadian Tire for about $20.00 I bought mine at Busy Bee for only $10.00.

PLANE SHARPENING JIG

Using the same flat surface glass or countertop, place the blade in the jig so that the angled surface of the blade sits perfectly flat on the surface of the sandpaper or stone. Starting out on the coarsest paper, make only a couple strokes and check to see if the entire blade angle surface is in contact. If you need to, adjust it accordingly. With gentle pressure , roll the jig back and forth on your sharpening surface progressing to finer and finer grits of paper. As you are sharpening you will be forming a slight rollover burr on the back of the blade. This is removed by flipping the blade on it’s back flat against the sanding surface and make two or three back and forth passes to remove the burr. Repeat the above steps until the cutting angle and back of the blade show a mirror finish.. You should be able to read the Sunday paper.

Your blade needs to be sharp enough that it will easily shave the hair off your arm with a single stroke. Unfortunately I no longer have any hair left on my arms to demonstrate this for you, and I’m not about to drop trap and shave my legs, so you will just have to take my word for it. Practice makes perfect.

There are two methods of making a cane fly rod. Hand planing and machine beveling. So which is the better method? Many rod builders will tell you that a hand planed rod is a better quality rod than a machine beveled rod. They will tell you things like their rods have much tighter tolerances, or their tapers are more accurate. Horse Hockey! Simple logic and common scenes will tell you, you can cut a much cleaner, straighter line using a table saw and a fence, than you could ever hope to accomplish freehand with a hand saw. It’s no different in rod building. Some of the best cane rods made are machined. Ron Kusse, whom I consider to be one of the finest cane rod makers alive today is fully automated. He uses every machine he can get his hands on and his finished rods are second to none. Another one of my all-time favorite makers is Walter Brunner of Austria. Walter is now in his 80s and has been building rods for most of his life and has built some of the finest rods you will ever lay your eyes on, and he too uses machines. Everything from his rotating ring of fire for tempering the cane, to his custom built beveling machines. Any rod maker who is in the business of building rods to make money will eventually go to using machines, but for the workshop hobbyist, hand planing is definitely the way to go. It is much less expensive and you don’t need to be a genius to figure it out. Anyone can easily learn to hand plane a set of blanks.

ROUGH PLANING A SET OF BLANKS

Rod blanks are made in sections. Each section, in the case of a hexagonal six sided rod which is what we are building is made up of six identical strips called splines. These splines must first be roughed out on a set of primary or roughing forms. A set of roughing forms is no more than a flat planed piece of hardwood about 48" long with a 60* groove routered down the centerline. A deeper groove on one side for butt sections and a shallower groove on the other side for tip sections. Some better made roughing forms like the ones I use will also have an initial 80* grove for edging your strips prior to planing them to 60*. This is helpful and makes things a little easier but it is not a necessity. You will need a measuring device. Either a micrometer or a set of veneer calipers that measure in thousandths of an inch.

They are not expensive. Dial calipers will run you about $24.00. A good digital set is around $75.00. You will also need a 60* machinist gauge to check your triangles. $2.00. You will be planing on the raw split edges of your cane strips. You never plane the enamel or outer surface of the strip. First find the truest {straightest} side of one of your butt section strips. Lay the strip in the grove so that the enamel sits against one side of the groves surface. This will leave one raw edge facing up. When setting your plane for the initial rough planing is not all that important that the depth of cut is all that precise. I usually set my roughing plane so that it will take off a nice even unbroken curl the entire length of the strip. I try to set it for the maximum depth cut it will take without binding or catching. This is mostly a matter of trial and error but with a little practice it becomes almost second nature. I can pretty much look at a plane set and know how much it will remove. I was lucky in the fact that I have a lot of experience building fine furniture and a long history with plane irons. Practice setting your plane and planing on a scrap piece of clear pine before you try planing bamboo strips. You will quickly learn what you can and cannot do with your plane.

Ok Ready? Now drop everything you are doing and go out and buy the biggest badass box of Band-Aids you can find! LOL Just kidding. All you really need are a set of leather work gloves but make sure you wear them or you will definitely get cut. I can’t stress this enough. I hate wearing gloves when I am working on anything, but I very quickly learned my lesson planing bamboo. As you are planing and your strip is slowly forming a triangle. The strip literally becomes a three sided blade and it will cut you slicker than a razor. A sudden slip with a little bit of force behind it is enough to cut you to the bone, and for some reason they hurt like hell, fester like crazy and take forever to heal. I am still babying cuts I got over a month ago. Because I hate gloves so much I recently started wearing finger stalls but I am still getting the odd cut. Slivers and splinters from bamboo are also very nasty. They usually go very deep and break off when you try to get them out. OUCH!!!!

The first few planing stroked will go very rough and difficult until you have formed a flat surface for the sole of the plane to run on. This is normal. Once you form a true flat surface, planing will become much easier. The traditional way of planing is to hold the strip with one hand from behind and plane forward with the other. Because I like both hands on my plane for better control, I use lock down pressure clamps to hold the strip in place. Plane a couple strokes on one side, then flip the strip over by flipping it end for end then plane the other raw split side of the strip using the same amount of strokes, all the while keeping the enamel side against the form surface. I usually plane three strokes then flip my piece and check it with my 60* machine gauge.

ROUGH PLANING A BUTT STRIP

CHECKING ANGLE WITH 60* GAUGE

When I get the strip down near it’s final dimensions, I switch to my finishing plane that is precisely set at 0.005. I flip the piece every single stroke. This helps to keep my 60* angles true and even on both sides. plane the strip down until it is level with the surface of the forms. If you are using a grooved plane you will plane it down until the plane stops taking a cut. Check your angles and measurements often. You can check the measurements using your veneer, but be careful not to crush the delicate edges of the spline. You will need to plane six of these triangle splines for a but section, then flip the form over and plane another six on the shallow side for a tip section. Twelve if you are making a two tip rod. Don’t get frustrated. Patience is the key. If things are not going smooth, your doing something wrong. Stop and figure out the problem. Take your time and relax. Kick back and crack a cold one. Your not in a race. The more time and care you take with your initial 60* triangles the easier the rest of the job will go and you will come out with a much better final result.

Part # 4 Planing A Taper And Finishing A Set Of Blanks
Binding
When you have all your strips, which are called splines rough planed down to equilateral 60* triangles they are bound together with a nylon binding cord either by hand or using a simple devise called a binder that holds the blank together while it wraps it. You can buy a binder for anywhere from $100.00- $200.00 or you can build one yourself. I built mine for about $20.00 and it works great.

A BUT SECTION AFTER GOING THROUGH THE BINDER

HEAT TREATING

Once the rough blanks have gone through the binder, they are placed on a flat surface and straightened by gently rolling them with the palms of your hands, starting in the center and working your way out. Once they are relatively straight, they are put into a preheated curing oven and baked at 375*, for 7 minutes. 3/12 minutes on one side and 3 1/2 minutes on the other.

BLANKS TEMPERED IN MY HOMEMADE OVEN

Heat treating the rough blanks does a number of things. It removes the moisture content from the strips, It also relaxes the bamboo, removes any long bends or sweeps in the blanks and it tempers the cane and makes it stiffer. Next the blanks are unwrapped from the binding cord and it’s time to set up the finishing forms for planing the final taper.

FORMS

Finishing forms are made up of two 6′ long perfectly flat surface machined pieces of 3/4" cold rolled key stock with a 60* groove milled or filed down the center. A shallow groove on one side for planing tips, and a deeper groove on the other for planing butt and mid sections. They are held together by a series of machine screws and aligned with steel dowel pins.
They work on a push pull principal. There are two machine bolts at 5" intervals along their entire length of the forms called stations. One bolt pushes the forms apart, the other pulls the forms together. It is at these stations that you set up your taper. The taper of a rod is a series of measurements of the rods diameter in thousandth’s on an inch taken at 5" intervals along the rods entire length starting at the tip and working toward the butt.

A SET OF TAPERING FORMS

You can either choose to make your own forms, or to buy them. There are a number of sites on the net that either sell them or show you how to build them . There is also plans and suppliers in Wayne Cattanach’s book but it’s not as simple and easy as it looks I assure you. They need to be perfectly aligned and you are working with zero tolerance, so I suggest if you have any doubt in your ability, just go out and buy them. I have both mechanical and marine engineering degree and a little machine shop experience and I still messed mine up. They looked perfect when they where finished, but they went askew and started to bind when I tried to adjust them. I tried fixing them. I re-drilled and re-tapped them bigger a second time and using a finer thread machine bolt but they where not any better. A friend of mine is now trying to repair them for me by re-drilling the holes and using heli coils but I doubt they will ever be any good for building rods. I think my drill press must have been pushed out of square from the pressure, but I’m not really sure what happened. Anyway, it was a very costly mistake. I now have a $300.00 paper weight. Finally I ended up buying a set from Lon Blauvelt in Main for an additional $375.00 U.S. He has the lowest cost forms on the net, but they are excellent quality. I have no problem turning out 2 & 3 wt rods using Lon’s new improved forms. http://members.tripod.com/~BamBooFlyRods/planing.html

DIAL INDICATOR

You will also need a tool called a dial indicator with a stationary base and a 60* point that measures in 0.001 of an inch. You can buy an indicator ready made from Lon for $125.00 U.S. or make your own from a 1" dial indicator for about $50.00 and by machining your own base. Regardless, you will still have to purchase a 60* point and you will probably only save a few bucks.

60* DIAL INDICATOR WITH BASE

SETTING FORMS

You can take the taper from any existing rod by simply measuring it. This is the full diameter of the rod measured at 5" intervals along it’s length. Wayne Cattanach has listed over fifty tapers in the back of his book.

TAPERS

Above is a page from the back of Wayne’s book showing typical rod taper measurements and a stress curve graph. You can see where I have penciled in the new figures after dividing the measurements by half. We are not planing an entire rod section at one time, we are only planing one spline {triangular strip} at a time which is equal to half the diameter of the finish taper so we need to divide those measurements by half then transfer those numbers to the stations on our forms using your dial indicator.

TRANSFERRING MEASUREMENTS TO THE FORMS

Starting with a closed form at the tip end loosen off the draw screws at the first three stations. Take the smallest measurement, use your dial indicator to measure the setting and then adjust the push screw to push the forms apart until you reach the desired setting. Then lightly snug up the draw screw to hold the setting. Then move up 5" to the next station and repeat the process with the next measurement. At each station, I write the measurements down on my forms and draw a line across with a square. Do this for the entire length of the section you are planing. Each time you move up and adjust the next station, it will slightly throw out the measurement on the previous station you just set, so you have to go back and fine tune each station over and over, as many times as necessary. This process can take over an hour. One note I should mention here, if you are using a grooved rodmakers plane, you need to allow 0.003 or however deep the groove is at each station to compensate. Once your form is set you are ready to plane the final taper.

PLANING A TAPER

Remove the binding cord and once again separate the blank into six strips. I should mention here that I color code each strip with a different color of felt pen on the end and I have a small color chart on my wall that corresponds. Strip #1 red, strip # 2 blue, # 3 green etc…… This way I can never get the pieces mixed up. I will always know which order they go back into to form the rod section once I am done planing.

TEMPERED BLANK UNBOUND FOR FINAL PLANING

COLOR CODED SECTION

To start your planing, Lay the first strip in the forms with the enamel side against one wall of the form. Same as when you rough planed your strips. You never plane the enamel side. I generally leave my strips or splines two plane lengths longer than the actual final length of the rod section. This allows me to clamp down the ends and still leaves room for me to fit in the length of my plane behind the first station and allows me to plane the entire length of the strip in one smooth pass using both hands without stopping.

PLANING A TAPER

If you don’t clamp the strip down on the end, you will have to plane with one hand and hold the strip with the other, so you will first have to hold the strip in front of the plane till you get it started, then move your hand behind the plane and hold down the strip and plane with one hand. My way is much easier faster and smoother and I have a lot more control over the plane. I clamp the strip down at the thick end then slide my fingers along the strip pressing it down into the form and then clamp it at the other end.

With a freshly sharpened blood curdling sharp plane, set at a depth of 0.004 try taking one pass off one side of the strip. If it goes smoothly you have your plane set properly. If it goes rough or jittery you either have your plane set too deep or it is not sharp enough. Once you get your plane set up properly it should be able to take off a single curl the entire length of the strip without breaking the chip or stopping and with very little forward pressure. If you have to force the plane, it is still too dull. Proper sharpening is the key and it takes some time to learn to do it right. With a good sharp blade, I can sometimes plane 4 or even 5 splines before I need to re-sharpen. You will start out by holding your strip one station back on your forms so you do not over-plane your strips. Plane three passes on one side then flip the strip over and plane three passes on the other. Check your measurements often using a pair of digital calipers and check your triangles using your 60* machinists gauge. Repeat this process until you are within 0.003 of the surface of the form or until the plane stops cutting if you are using a grooved plane. Never ever back draw your plane back over the strip. Always lift it right off at the end of each pass and bring it right back to the starting point or you will be sorry. When planing a tip section for say a 3wt rod, the tip of each spline is going to be as small as the Queen’s nose on a Canadian penny and very delicate. By back-drawing the plane over the strip you can easily catch it and snap it in two and have to start all over again right from the very start like way back in Part #1 when you split your first culm. Not only this, but if the new section is split from a different culm it will change the characteristics of the rod and that tip will not match the other one. It will have a very pronounced spine. You could maybe live with it yourself, but you would not be able to sell the rod to a customer. This next stage of planing is more precise. Back your plane off to 0.003 and move the strip up to it’s proper station and mark it lightly with a pencil to line it up with the station. Now take your plane and using two passes on each side plane your strip down to within 0.003 of the forms at the proper station and then finish off to the final dimension by flipping the strip with the enamel side up and removing part of the enamel with a hand scraper, a dog grooming blade or an actual scraper plane and then finishing it off with a fine sanding block. Repeat this entire process for each of the six strips that make up a rod section. Twice if you are making two tips. Then flip the forms over to the wider grove on the other side and reset your forms to the taper dimensions for the wider butt section and repeat the process all over again. Each section of rod takes 6 strips. Each of these strips must be the exact same measurement along the entire length as the others when you are finished. If they are not the exact same they are no good. They are garbage. You might as well throw them away and start again. For a 2 PC 2 tip rod you will need to plane 18 separate strips. For a 3 PC 2 tip rod you will need to plane 24 strips etc….

GLUING

Gluing is an extremely messy job and the one I dislike the most. There are a number of different glues available. I use a glue called URAC 185 because I get a longer working time. It is a two part glue made up of a liquid resin and a powder catalyst to set the resin. It must be mixed precisely 4 parts resin to 1 part catalyst and must be measured by weight not volume.

Once all the strips have been planed, they are taped together in color coded order side by side with scotch tape and rolled to form the actual rod section. After covering your working surface with old news paper the tape is slit open with a razor blade and the formed rod section is laid open for gluing.The glue is then generously spread using a tooth brush. Then the strip is re-rolled again to form a rod section and once again put through the binder to hold it together.

A TIP SECTION GLUED AND RUN THROUGH THE BINDER

Then the access glues is removed and the section goes through a process of straitening, by a series of rolling and twisting on a flat surface until they are perfectly straight. This is the most crucial point you must get the section perfectly straight and remove any twisting before the resin sets. It gives you a working time of about 20 minutes. Then the sections are hung to dry in my dust free cabinet for about 8 hours, at which point I remove the binding while the glue is still somewhat soft and check the blank for straightness and glue lines and gently sand off the access glue. I then re-bind the section, this time by hand and let it hang to dry for another 8 hours. By doing this it saves me having to sand off all the binding cord at the end. When the section is completely cured I simply slide the binding cord off the blank do a little light sanding making sure not to round off the edges and it is finished.

CURING IN MY DUST FREE WALL CABINET

FINISHED SET OF TIPS AFTER SANDING

Impregnating

Impregnating is a simple process. The blank is placed in a pressure rated section of ABS tubing with a screw on air tight top. and half filled with an impregnating solution called Nelsonite. A pressure hose is then connected to a quick coupler threaded and epoxied in the end of the tube and the tube is laid flat on the floor and pressurized driving the impregnating solution into the finished blank and chasing out the impurities and filling any voids.

IMPREGNATING SYSTEM

Then the blanks are removed, polished clean and once again hung in the cabinet to cure until it is time to finish the rod.

FINAL CURING BEFORE FINISHING

The blank is now finished and it is impervious to the elements. If you wanted you could fish it as it is for the next 25 years without finishing the rod in spar varnish and it would never decay.

CLOSE-UP OF FINISHED BLANK {VERY CLEAN NO GLUE LINES}

MATCHING TIPS JUST FINISHED FOR MY NEW GRAND 3WT

A 2 PC 2 TIP 7′ 6" 5WT FINISHED SET OF BLANKS WITH ROUGH HANDLE FITTED
THIS ROD IS BEING BUILT FOR A CUSTOMER IN VOORDEN HOLLAND

I have decided to split the last part of this series into two seperate parts. Part # 5 will cover ferrules and guides and Part # 6 the final part of this series will cover how to make a custom reel seat and grip, wrapping and finishing your rod.

This method of setting ferrules by hand, was developed by Dave Collyer of Denver Dave’s Bamboo Rods. I do not take credit for any of these methods. But I do use Dave’s ferrule method myself on all my rods.

FERRULES

Properly setting ferrules is probably the most intimidating step in making a cane rod. It is very important that it is done properly or all kinds or problems can arise. you can end up with ferrules that are too loose or tight or ferrules that click or where set crooked and it can dampen the action or ruin the looks and function of a good rod. Ferrules are measured in 64ths of an inch. 1/64 = .015" The way to determine what size ferrule is needed is to measure the diameter of the rod on opposing flats at the ferrule station and divide that measurement by .015" For example, a 2 PC rod that measures 0.206 at the ferrule station would require a 13/64 ferrule 0.206/ .015 = 13.7 or 13/64ths
Rod ferrules come in all kinds of different types and many different sizes. There are rolled tin soldered ferrules, brass tube ferrules, nickel silver tube ferrules, straight ferrules, stepdown ferrules Super Z . The ferrules most used by rod makers making new cane rods are tht nickel silver ferrules turned from barstock that have a moisture dam. They come in sets of 1 female and two male ferrules for 2 PC 2 tip rods but you can also buy them single 1 male 1 female. Barstock SuperZ type ferrules run between $50.00 - $75.00 a set. I buy my ferrules from Tony Larson of Rush River . He makes a beautiful copy of the SuperZ and they take very little fine tuning to get them to fit properly. Golden Which and REC Components also carry some very fine nickel silver bar stock ferrules.

DIFFERENT STYLE FERRULES

TONY’S RUSH RIVER FERRULES

MEASURING INSIDE OF FERRULE

MEASURING AND CUTTING SECTIONS TO LENGTH

The first thing you will need to do is mark out the ferrule stations. I plane all my blanks 2 stations longer than required. 1 station coarser on the wide end and one station finer on the narrow end. This does two things. It leaves me a extra cane to play with when it comes to laying out the ferrule stations, and it allows me to hit the exact taper dead on to within 0.001" To cut your sections to length, lay your blanks along side your form and using your calipers to find the measurement on each blank that corresponds with the taper you planed on your forms. Use a fine saw like a hacksaw or Japanese draw saw to cut your blanks to length. At this time, I install my tip top. I don’t glue it, I just slide it on because I will have to remove it later to locate the spine. I lay the tip section along side a tape measure on top of my forms, mark out my length and then cut my blank. That way I cut the blank the exact length including the tip top. If you don’t install the tip first, you could be out as much as 1/4" on your total length or one section could be longer than the other. I suggest using a miter box to get your cuts perfectly straight. Check the ends by butting them up to each other. They should be nice and square on the ends. If you are using ferrules with a moisture check, you should slightly round off the leading edge to fit the crown of the check. Try to get the smoothest transition between sections at your ferrule stations. Slight differences are ok, but you should try to stay within .005".

ALWAYS MEASURE WITH TIP TOP INSTALLED

CUTTING SECTIONS

SECTION OF EXACT SAME LENGTH WITH FERRULE AND TIP-TOP INSTALLED

MARKING OUT FERRULE STATIONS

Once the sections are cut to length, lay the male half of the ferrule along side the tip section, don’t forget to allow for the moisture cap. Mark the depth of the ferrule over onto the blank, then take a piece of masking tape and wrap it around the blank above the station. For the female part of the ferrule, take a toothpick and measure the depth inside the ferrule, mark it with a pencil on the toothpick and transfer that measurement to the ferrule station on the butt blank. Once again taking in account for the moisture check.

TURNING OR LAPPING BLANKS

The easiest way to do this of course is to use a ferrule station cutter on a rod lathe . A ferrule station cutter is a little tool like a collet. They come in all different sizes for different size ferrules. You simply chuck it in the lathe and feed the blank into it. It cuts a perfect station in a matter of seconds, but not everyone can afford a $1000.00 rod lathe and a set of cutters. Fortunately for the hobbyist and small time maker with a little time and elbow grease you can lap your ferrule stations by hand with just as good of results. Take a 2" x 4" 150 grit sand paper and fold in half, making a 2" x 2" pad with the grit out on both sides. Fold the pad over the butt section station, holding it in place with your thumb and forefinger. Lay the section across your lap and roll the blank back and forth with your other hand, moving the sanding pad up the down the station slowly removing the cane by sanding. Note: Check fit often and remember the leading edge of your tip sections is the largest measurement on that station and the masked side of the butt section is the largest measurement on that station. Make sure you do not sand too much off. The ferrule should slide on easily. It should not be loose, but it should not be snug either. You need to leave enough room for glue. You should be able to slide it on and off with ease but there should not be any wobble in it.

LAPPING A FERRULE STATION

CLEANING & DRESSING FERRULES

You may have noticed that when you got your brand new ferrules that they don’t fit together properly. This is because you have to fine tune your ferrules. Most ferrule makers leave about a 0.002 difference between ferrule sections. Do not try to fit the ferrules together by force. They are very delicate and you will never get them apart again without destroying them. You will have to hand lap your ferrules with sand paper and steel wool to fit them properly. To do this you will need some lacquer thinner or acitone, I prefer acitone because it cleans better and it totally evaporates without leaving a film. This helps the glue to hold better some Q-Tips some 300 & 400 grit sandpaper, a set of needle files, some #0000 steel wool and some green hard metal polishing compound. It is much easier to remove material from the outside of the male ferrule than it is to remove material from the inside of the female ferrule, so most of our work will be done on the male part. The only thing we really need to do with the female half is to clean it and polish the inside of the barrel. Start by rolling a little cylinder of 400 grit paper and carefully sanding the inside of the female ferrule just to smooth out the machining marks if there are any. Next take a chunk of your steel wool, shave off a little polishing compound and work it into the steel wool. polish out the inside of the female ferrule. Then you take a Q-Tip and soak it in acitone and clean out the inside of the ferrule. Repeat this process until the Q-Tip comes out clean and there is no more black coming out. Now using the same piece of steel wool with the polishing compound on it, polish the male side by rolling it on your lap the same way you did when you where sanding the ferrule stations. Then clean it off with a rag soaked in acitone. Now gently try to fit the ferrules together. If you are lucky, this is all you will need to do. If it does not fit smoothly, you will have to sand and re-polish the outside of the male ferrule.

CLEANING POLISHING

CHECKING FIT BEFORE PREPPING TABS

PREPPING FERRULE TABS

Now that we have a good fit on the ferrules, we can dress the ferrule tabs. This eases the transition from the metal to the cane and done correctly alleviates stress cracks in the ferrule wrap after fishing the rod. This can be done by hand and a nail file or by masking off the ferrule and chucking it up in a cordless drill… Normally the tab area is tapered from .015" wall size down to a .008" wall size at the open end, we want to keep this slope and take the tabs down by sanding to a .003" wall thickness at the open end.Start with a fine needle file to remove most of the material, then when close to finish size smooth out with the 400 grit sandpaper. A correctly dressed tab will flex at the tip when a little pressure is applied with the finger nail. Be careful not the feather out the edges to much as they can collapse and fold when installing them on the cane. Once you have them tapered down to the proper thickness, you want to crown the tabs. this looks really nice if you are using translucent wraps. It also makes a much nicer transition between blank and ferrule. When you have dressed the tabs, clean the ferrules out one more time with the Q-Tips and thinner.

USING A DIAMOND WET STONE AND DREMEL TOOL TO DRESS THE TABS

FILING CROWNS WITH NEEDLE FILE

CROWNED & DRESSED FERRULE

WHAT IS ROD SPINE?

Before we can install our ferrules, we need to find the rod spine. Although many people have heard the term rod spine, not too many know what it really is or understand how it works. What we are describing in rod making as the spine or backbone of the rod is that when a blank is bent or placed in an arc as seen when fighting a fish, the rod will bend naturally along a certain axis , at the top of this arc is the spine. This is the stiffer side of the blank that has the most resistance. All blanks have a spine to some degree. The perfect blank would have none. The better built the blank the less pronounced the spine. It is very easy to find the spine of a rod blank. There are all kinds of weighted gadgets and gizmoes on the market, but that’s all they really are is gadgets. All you need to do to find a rods spine is grab it between finger and thumb on both ends or place one end against the floor and bend a gentle arc or bow in the rod. Now roll it between your finger and thumb. The rod will try to curve the way it wants to. Each time you roll it away from the spine, the rod will try to roll or jump back like it has a mind of it’s own, to the way in naturally wants to bend.

FINDING THE SPINE

When you are making or building a rod, you have two choices on where to place your guides. You can either place your guides on the stiffer back of the spine, or you can place them on the other softer side opposite the spine, This is what is referred to as building with or against the spine. You must choose the same side for all the sections of the blank or the rod will constantly try to twist on you. It will also affect the tracking and accuracy as the rod tip will tend to drift off to one side or the other while casting. You can’t build the tip section with the spine and the butt section against it or the rod will have a natural tendency to twist when it is under strain when fighting a fish. If you build a rod with the guides located along the spine it will be slightly stiffer than if you place the guides on the softer underside going with the natural curve of the rod. There is a lot of controversy among rod makers on which is the better way to build a rod. The old classic makers believed you should always build a rod with the guides located along the stiffer spine, but today many modern makers believe you should build opposite the spine and go with the rod’s natural curve.

It is my belief and I will stand by this and prove this in practise to anyone on the water, that a soft slow action light weight 0 to 3 WT dry fly rod should always be built against the spine, along the softer natural curvature of the rod so that the rod remains as soft and supple in action as possible. You want the action of the rod to go along with the pull of the weight of the line on the forward cast so that when the rod has released all of it’s kinetic energy the leader will turn over gently without any backlash and the fly can be laid upon the water as gently as possible. The action of the rod should stay true to the rod’s nature. You want the rod to load strong on the back cast but release gently on the forward cast. This will also help to protect fine tippets as the rod will have less shock and resistance and will tend to flex more taking the impact off the tippet while setting the hook. The down side of building on the soft side of a rod is that the rod does not have as good of line pickup off the water. The rod will tend to have more flex than resistance when it comes to picking up line, but this is not a big issue with light weight floating lines, as very little rod resistance is needed to pick up these light little lines off the water anyway. When you want that little bit of extra dry fly finesse, build against the spine.

As the rod weights increase and the lines get heavier and heavier, more and more rod resistance is needed to lift the line off the water. With the exception of slow action light weight full flexing dry rods, all other slow medium to fast action rods 4 WT and over should be built along the spine for maximum line pickup off the water. When a fly line is laying on the water at the end of a drift, it is at it’s heaviest point. Not only does it have the weight of the water , but it also has the directional flow of the of the water pulling against it. We all know what it’s like trying to pull a large soaking wet streamer off the water at the end of a drift. This is when we need our spine resistance the most.

INSTALLING FERRULES WITH PLIOBOND

Pliobond is the best adhesive I have found for setting ferrules. You can buy Pliobond readily at any local hardware store. It is actually a form of contact cement. Make sure the Pliobond is well mixed. Apply about two drops of Pliobond inside of the female ferrule with a toothpick, taking care to coat the whole inside of the ferrule including the tabs. Seat ferrule in place on cane and twist, then remove the ferrule and apply one more drop of Pliobond inside of the ferrule. Then coat the cane with about two/three drops of Pliobond going just over the station onto the blank.

Heat the female ferrule with a Bic lighter at the moisture dam, rotating the ferrule as it heats (you will hear the Pliobond bubbling) then move the flame down the ferrule to the open end and it will flame out. As the ferrules is flaming apply the Bic flame on the cane while rotating the blank and let it flame out.While the ferrule is still hot press it on to the cane station and align the tabs with the flats, you can use the side of your bench to press on the ferrule but be very careful. Roll the very tips of the tabs with the round shaft of a screw driver to set them in place. Roll the lose excess glue off with your finger, then use lacquer thinner to clean up the rest. There might be some dark spots on the tabs where the glue burnt and will not come off, Sand this off and redress the tabs with the 220 grit nail file by hand. To finish out the tabs, use #0000 steel wool and buff to a bright finish by holding the steel wool with your thumb and forefinger on the tab station and rotating the blank on your lap as we did in sanding the cane station before.

On the male ferrules use a pair of leather gloves as we will do it the same as outlined above but you will heat the closed end first, then rotate the ferrule in your gloved hand and flame out the open end of the ferrule.Caution must be used not to get the ferrule too hot or you will weaken the metal and/or melt the solider on ferrules made from tubing. Mastering the skill to set ferrules in this manor will result in a bond that will last 50+ years, no matter the temperature changes or climate changes but can be removed with a little heat if needed. Pliobond is a contact cement and if done correctly will allow you to lap the ferrules as soon as it has cooled. No amount of "drying time" will help set the bond after it has been flamed, so if it’s going to fail it’s best to know now and you can clean up the ferrule and station with lacquer thinner and try again.

FLAMING A FERRULE

SETTING A FERRULE

Once the ferrule is set, before it cools down, I bind the tabs tight to the blank with binding cord.

FERRULES INSTALLED

SPACING GUIDES

If you are restoring an old rod, placing the guides back in their original position is usually not a problem because there is usually a tell tale mark left on the blank where the guides where located. If there are no age marks on the blank, you can simply lay the rod along the baseboard and mark the guide locations on the baseboard with a pencil. Guide measurements are always measured from the center ring of the guide. not from the end of the guide foot. A standard rule to calculate the number of guides you need for a rod is 1 guide per foot, + 1

6′ rod would be 6+1= 7 you need 7. 6 regular guides + 1 stripper
7′

—- 7+1=8 you need 8 7 regular guides + 1 stripper etc:

If you are making a rod from scratch there are a number of ways you can go about setting out the guide locations. You can steal the guide locations off another rod, or you can use a guide chart like the one at REC Components. Wayne Cattanach’s method which is to increase 9/16" per guide will work for any rod. Wayne starts with a guide placed directly below the female ferrule on the but section then calculates the locations of the remaining guides. I like to start with my stripper guide at between 26 - 27" measuring from the butt cap of the reel seat. If you hold your rod in front of you and reach your other arm out as if to start stripping line, this places the stripping guide directly in front of where you grab your line. Next on most light weight trout rods between 3 -5 wt I place a size 0 guide 4" below the tiptop, then measure the remaining distance between it and the stripper and divide that equally by the remaining number of guides. Once I have these locations marked on the blank starting from the size 0 guide just below the tip top I increase 9/16 per guide. If I have to reposition the stripper 1" either way to even out the spacing it is not a problem.
Once the guides are in their proper locations the traditional method of fastening them to the blank is with scotch tape. I don’t like using tape. It is a real pain I use that rubberized stretchy Spider Thread spawn bag tie to fasten the guides. It holds the guides very securely. I have test cast rods vigorously for up to an hour with only a few wraps of spider Thread holding the guides in place and they have not moved a single mm, but at the same time I can still easily adjust them if I needed to. I leave the Spider Thread in place until I have wrapped over the edge of the guide foot because it holds the guide very tight to the flat, then I just nick it with a surgical scalpel and it springs loose and falls away from the blank. It works so slick.
SPIDER THREAD

SPIDER THREAD HOLDING A GUIDE FOOT IN PLACE WHILE WRAPPING

Once you have test cast your rod, determined what type / wt of line it is best suited for and you are satisfied with the guide locations and the rods overall performance, it’s time to start wrapping the guides. This is my favorite step in building a rod, but it can also be the biggest nightmare if it is not done properly. Silk is the traditional thread for wrapping cane rods. For new rods, I use only the finest Presales 0.006 Gossamer silk thread.