Bamboo Rods
I've gone down the rabbit hole over fly fishing and all things connected with it. To the point, I am now even making bamboo rods. Came to this passion late in life and, I suppose am trying to catch up. So here I am looking up from down in the rabbit hole, holding a handmade bamboo rod.
The bamboo fly rods I make are from bamboo native only to the Tonkin region of China. Bamboo is by definition a grass and can be referred to as sweetgrass.
The Parts
I make a two-piece eight-foot rod composed of two 48” sections: a butt and a tip. Each bamboo rod section is a set of six triangular strips glued together. The rod narrows from a .289” diameter butt to a .0625” tip. Think size of a pencil at the butt end and the thickness of the pencil lead at the tip.
Standing bamboo is cut into twelve and six foot “culms” that get split into “strips”. Sanding off the nodes on the outside and inside makes it a lot easier to split the culm into strips. Split first in half then in half again, etc.
The four strips in the photo below are:
1.) The 1/4" square strip freshly split from the culm in the photo above.
2.) A 1/4" square strip run through a beveler changing the square profile to a triangular shape. This step reduces hand planing drastically.
3.) A hand planed butt strip.
3.) A hand planed tip strip.
The reduction in strip size is testiment to the considerable time it takes to plane strips.
Culms are graded into butts and tips. The thicker culm has more power fibers for use in the heavier butt section and vice-versa.
