Two ready to wrap

    Finished up the glueing and clean up of two blanks now.  They are ready to wrap. A 6'3" 4 weight Midge and the 7'10" 3/4 weight. Two more are ready to final plane.

Removing the final remnants of glue.

I have picked out some timber for the next few rods. Koa, Cuban Mahogany, Spanish Cedar, and Koa again. I'll make final decisions after turning them.

Cork glued up for the grips. Ready to turn.

Grips after turning.

Ferrules mounted and ready for clean up and blueing.

Ferrules blued and now ready to wrap. I am thinking these are going to be wrapped in Dk. Brown vintage Gudebrod nylon tipped with orange gossamer and maybe some black thrown in also.

Thanks for looking.

Building Blanks

     So I have been building blanks and prepping strips for a couple weeks now without getting much else done. Built one prototype that I like for My own use. Scrapped a blank because I didn't like the taper. Going back to the tried and true version. I have a midge ready to glue now. That is the taper that I changed and didn't like. Have two other sets of strips that are roughed and heat treated for 6' rods.

Doesn't look like much now but, there are a few rods and reel seats in this pile.

Prepping strips for tapering is the toughest and most time consuming part of the whole process of building cane rods. It will determine your end result (great, good or bad) depending on how well you do it.

What goes into prepping strips? Here are a few steps.

Find a culm that suits the rods you are building. Make sure there are no blemishes in the part of the culm you are going to use. It is a heartbreaker when you sand a glued blank and find a water mark or nick that you didn't see. If you try and use a culm that has dips and varying thicknesses it will be nothing but wasted time. You just can not use every culm.

Culms selected nodes staggered. I use blonde culms even for flamed rods when I can.

File the outer node ring.

Flame low and slow. Trying to make an even color along the whole culm. This takes a while.

Split into as many even strips as possible.

I try to get 16 to 20 strips when splitting a culm

Press nodes after sanding a relief area behind them. Get out all the doglegs and twists while straightening the sticks. This can take hours.

True up all the strips to get even edges.

Anything that is not straight and flat at this point will ruin your whole day later on. It will cause uneven angles, glue lines and chewed up strips in the beveler.

Now its time to run the strips through the beveler. The ends must be sharpened to a pencil point so you don't wreck the strips while feeding them. Here is where you find out how well you straightened and flattened your strips. If they are off you will have headaches. I bevel the strip to .050 over final dimension.

Ready to rough out the straightened strips.

Next is heat treating. Oven temps must be even. Cooking times vary depending on the cane. Nothing written in stone here. You have to sit and watch the whole time making sure temps are on point and nothing is getting too hot.

If you have ever wandered why a bamboo rod is expensive look at the time put into it.

I will continue with the process in another post.

As always thanks.

New Reel Seat Timber

     Nothing better than getting packages in the mail. Just got a box full of Koa wood for reel seats today. Straight from Hawaii. Also, I have a nice piece of Mahogany, some Sugi Pine, Kamani, Pheasant Wood and a nice big board of Spanish Cedar.

These are all available for reel seat timber. I can also do other types of wood upon request. Although Spanish Cedar and Koa are My favorites.

Lots of nice Koa here.

The 1/4" rings for My Spring Creek 3/4 weight rod have been glued and are ready to turn now. Have not gotten to it yet. Been busy building two other blanks. One is ready to glue. Will get to that tomorrow. The other is roughed and heat treated. Ready for final taper.

As always thanks for looking.

Ready to become a grip.

Off to Italy (at least the rod is anyway)

Recently I have had the opportunity and privilege to send a rod over to Italy. This is the first rod that I have sent to another country. The rod is on its way and should be arriving soon. Thanks Andrea. I hope the new rod serves you well and catches many trout.

I have been working on a 7' 10" hollow scalloped 4 weight. This rod is a taper that I have been messing with over the last couple of years. Ferrules were fitted and glued today. Also made some 1/4" cork rings to glue up for the grip. This is rod number 12 for the year and it will be My own personal spring creek rod.

More rods on the way.

Some Rod Building Photos

      Glued up a 2/1 Prototype Rod last night. This is he third version of this rod. It will be a 7'10" Four weight with extra short size 13 ferrule. The butt section was hollow scalloped down to .075. Not quite as far as you can go, but should help with the weight. Next version will be hollowed just a little more to see the difference. This rod should still come in at around 3.4oz.

Ready for roughing is My version of a Midge. This blank will be done within the week. If interested in a great small stream rod, let me know.

Also made some ferrules out of nickel silver tube this week. They are for a copy of a very rare Heddon I used to own.