Updates and High Tolerances

I have been working every night to get some of the processes done on a couple of rods. The high tolerances you work with can be difficult and frustrating but in the end it is satisfying to see things come out right. This picture shoes the tickness of one shaving of bamboo from the hand plane. That is 1/1000 of an inch!

The dark bundled sections are for the rod I am building for myself.

After you cut all of the sections to length, stagger the nodes, flatten the nodes and straighten the strips you need to rough them into equilateral triangles. This helps in the heat treating process as well as final planing to come later. Here are the butt sections of Dave's rod bundled together for heat treatment. Heat treating will actually help to temper the bamboo as well as straighten the strips a little so that final planing goes a little more smoothly. So far there are about 15 hours into this rod, not even close to looking like a great fishing rod yet.