Building a Bamboo Fly Rod

[Pete Taran]

A bucket list item for me is learning how to build a split cane Bamboo Fly rod. That process started this morning at a week long class I’m taking at Sunny Brook Trout Club under the instruction of Master Rod Builder JD Wagner.

Posting from my phone, so we’ll see if this works.

A Culm of Tonkin Cane and some splitting tools

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One section split in half with a simple froe and mallet:

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Flaming the cane with a 500000 BTU torch to dry out the cane and give the exterior a nice golden color:

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A look at the culm after the nodes have been smoothed with a file:

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From here it’s splitting the half into thirds and then each third into half yielding 6 total strips from one half of the culm. There is a slick trick to get them to split exactly in half which is done by adding side pressure while pushing into a framing nail:

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Next, the most tedious part of the job, straightening the bamboo blanks with heat and sighting by eye. When heated, the blanks become very plastic:

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Next, the straight strips are planed in a wooden form to yield perfectly uniform untapered blanks. They are just rough planed at this point, not to final dimension. 6 strips form a perfect hexagon. The remnants of the pith is in the center of the blank and the hard and stiff power fibers are outside. These are for the butt section:

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[Pete Taran]

Next we sand what will be the outside of the rod to remove the enamel which was on the outside of the plant and remove scorch marks from the heat treating process. Shown here being held in the rough planing form:

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Last step is to taper the blanks in a special steel form using a block plane. The taper in the form is set by a special micrometer depth gauge on 5” centers. The planing continues until it stops cutting. Bamboo is not that hard, but it is very abrasive and dulls your blade pretty quickly. I found a high angle of 58 degrees worked best while minimizing tear out:

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Done for today, tomorrow we work on the tip sections. After dinner there was plenty of time to relax streamside. 14” rainbow coming in:

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[Phil Mueller]

Thanks for sharing this build, Pete. Cool project. I watched a brief demonstration of the planing process at the annual fly fishing show outside Detroit a few years back. Did not realize all the previous steps needed. Look forward to seeing the rest of the process.

Nice fish! Best I could do over the weekend was a 6” brown.

[Mike Brady]

Looks like a good time! For those interested, there is a school in Chicago that offers a similar course in fly rod building. I would have to dig through the old business cards to find the name, but a google search might reveal it. I recall it being in the city on the northwest side. Another of my unfullfilled fantasies.

[Tony Shea]

This is great!! I would absolutely love to build a bamboo fly rod to give to my father. He lives for fly fishing and to gift him a bamboo fly rod would be the ultimate fathers day gift. I love seeing the process, it really puts into perspective how tedious and difficult making a bamboo rod really is. I hope you continue to post more pictures of the process! Projects like this is why I continue to come back to this site. Thanks so much for sharing!

[Jacob Reverb]

Neat topic, thanks for sharing. Curious to hear how the rod performs...

[Pete Taran]

Today we planed the strips for the top part of the rod. The planing form has two sides so we flipped it over and adjusted it for the much smaller bamboo pieces required for the tip. Shown below is the gauge being used to adjust the form for the proper width at that point in the taper:

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Next was planing, a lot of it. The tip sections are much more delicate. As with the butt, six are required. Shown below is the very narrow tip section:


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Finally the tip sections are complete. To put it in perspective, the very tip section measures .032” from the flat face to the point of each section. The finished rod will be .064” thick when finished. That’s .0015” thicker than 1/16”:

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That completes all the wood for the rod. Bright and early tomorrow we will glue the sections together.

[Wayne Cannon]

Thanks for sharing. I'm not a fisherman, but this brought back memories of my father-in-law planning his sections to a taper the same way.

[Frederick Skelly]

This looks like a lot of fun Pete. Look forward to reading more!
Fred

[Larry Frank]

Not a fisherman but fascinating to see how this is done.

[Pete Taran]

Mid day update. This morning is all about gluing up the blanks into one piece. The glue is a two part phenolic resin glue that has a relatively long working time and is impervious to moisture. Here getting ready to mix:

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The blanks are in the proper order and ready to go. Applying the glue to the inner sections:

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The blanks are rolled together and taken to what is called the binding machine. The binder is a stout cotton thread that applies uniform pressure to all six pieces:

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Next the blanks are taken to a flat table where the squeeze out is removed and cleaned off with a wet rag. Minor straightening is also done at this time:

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Next, the blanks are run through the binder again running the wrap the other way to even out the clamping pressure:

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The entire process is repeated for the tip sections which is infinitely harder due to the small size:

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After lunch, on to the grips!

[Pete Taran]

We finished the day by forming the grip and learning various other finishing tasks such as varnishing the rod and learning to wrap the guides.

We glued up the grip by gluing 1/2” thick cork rings on a mandrel the day before. We then mounted it in a lathe and used a single point tool to true it up:

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Next we shaped the grip by sanding with various grits of paper. As cork is very soft it goes
quickly:

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The finished grip will be reamed and glued to the finished blank later:

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We spent a lot of time learning to wrap the guides on some practice sections of bamboo. The guides are held on with pure silk:

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Tomorrow we we will pull the binding off the cured blanks and sand off the excess glue. We will then do the final straightening, turn the blanks to accept the ferrules following by pinning and gluing the ferrules onto the blank.

After dinner I caught quite a few rainbows on various streamer patterns:

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[Jim Koepke]

Fascinating to see all that is done to make a fly rod.

jtk

[Frederick Skelly]

That looks like such good fun! Looking forward to the finished product!

[Pete Taran]

Lots of work on the rod today. We first stripped off all the binder and final sanded the blanks:

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We next final trimmed the blank sections to length. The glue lines are invisible due to eye extremely uniform stock preparation:

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Next we mounted the ferrules which are made of nickel silver and hold the two rod sections together. Since there is constant flexing, the ferrules must be fitted as precisely as possible or they will fail and come apart:

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The last thing we did today was to glue the ferrules with a special gap filling glue and bound them tightly while they dry:

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Tomorrow is our last day working on the rod. We will prepare the butt section to accept the grip and perform final straightening. Since we finished early, plenty of time to fish:

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[Phil Mueller]

Thanks for the follow along, Pete. It appears you’re building a two-piece rod, correct? Curious about one thing...how do you go about straightening?

Looks like a fabulous trout club.

[Todd Zucker]

Really enjoying this thread. I have always wanted to build a bamboo rod (as well as a bent, laminated net). Thanks for sharing.

I had the same question about straightening after gluing the blank, and a couple more.

In the Lie Nielsen catalog, I saw a 60 1/2 block plane that had an option for a rod maker's groove. Have no idea how that is used. Wondering if you used one with a groove, or just a plain vanilla block plane?

Lastly, do you think there is any chance that someone with passable woodworking skills could build a decent bamboo rod without attending a class.

[Pete Taran]

Phil,

I am building a 7' two piece rod. When you make them yourself, the sky is the limit, two piece, 3 piece even 4 pieces.

Straightening is a hard job. All ours were relatively straight and required only minor tweaks. In reality, no rod is ever perfectly straight. Further, the level of straightness we attain is perfect as it relates to the function of the rod. Straightening is done mostly for cosmetic reasons. By straight, we are talking variations of .010" or less. They are really pretty straight out of the gate.

All of ours had some minor tweaks required in the tip section. To fix an offending section, you heat it with an alcohol lamp and flex in the opposite direction. Through trial and error, you can get them pretty straight.


Thanks for the follow along, Pete. It appears you’re building a two-piece rod, correct? Curious about one thing...how do you go about straightening?

Looks like a fabulous trout club.

[Pete Taran]

Todd,

The form that you place the cane in is hardened steel. As you can imagine, to get to the final exact dimension, the plane blade is rubbing on steel. By placing a groove in the center of the plane, that area is about .005" shallow, so you can have full cut without the blade digging into the steel. I think it's mostly hype, as the Master we practiced under had never heard of such a modification and doesn't know anyone who uses that sort of plane. He has lectured world wide and gets around pretty far and wide. In practice, I found that even with the final rubbing I only had to sharpen the blade once for each section. I found that a high angle blade of 38 degrees coupled with a standard angle plane of 20 degrees was the hot ticket. Gives you an effective planing angle of 60 degrees. Bamboo is not that hard, but because of the changing grain direction at the node, the high angle is very useful to prevent tear out.

As to experience, I think it you can sharpen a block plane blade and have attention to detail, you can definitely build a rod. The process is exacting, but not difficult. He goes over every single thing you need to know, even how to tune and sharpen a block plane. I excused myself to fish during that part! To put it in context, only one other guy had ever handled a block plane but me, two guys had no Wood Working experience, and all came home with a completed blank.

Posts to this thread will be spaced further apart as I have time to work on the rod as sadly class is now over and I'm home. Remaining tasks include:

Gluing the Grip to the Blank
Glueing the reel seat to the Blank
Wrapping the guides on the Blank
Varnishing the Rod

Jeff Wagner takes about a week to build a rod from splitting cane to completion, so likely two weeks for a beginner. I've built rods before (graphite), so I don't have issues with wrapping guides. As I do those steps, I will document them here. If you would like to take his class, look for him online. He does it once a year and it just ended, so he will do it again next year. Each class has 4 students and runs from Saturday night to Thursday Afternoon. Tell him I sent you if you decide to give it a go.

Thanks for looking.


Really enjoying this thread. I have always wanted to build a bamboo rod (as well as a bent, laminated net). Thanks for sharing.

I had the same question about straightening after gluing the blank, and a couple more.

In the Lie Nielsen catalog, I saw a 60 1/2 block plane that had an option for a rod maker's groove. Have no idea how that is used. Wondering if you used one with a groove, or just a plain vanilla block plane?

Lastly, do you think there is any chance that someone with passable woodworking skills could build a decent bamboo rod without attending a class.

[Christopher Charles]

Pete, thanks for posting. Flyfishing and woodworking seem to go together, and a bamboo rod is definitely the neander fly rod :) Good on you for going full monty!

Best,
Chris

[Mike Brady]

Your photos and narration are very helpful. Thanks for taking the time while keeping so busy with the task at hand.