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.

My Fishing Boys

When I came home tonight Lincoln was wearing a little fishing vest. He looked so good, I had to dress the boys up to take some pictures. I hope they like fishing as much as they like wearing all of the gear!
It's too bad it is winter and there is 5 inches of snow on the ground... these guys are ready to go!

Payne 100 and ?

The other night I got down to splitting the bamboo for my next two rods. I started out with one whole culm and ended up with enough split strips for the Payne 100 for Dave and the yet un-decided taper for Nate. Here is the culm before:And here is the culm after:The big box is my Christmas present and I only wish I could use it right now. I have wanted a shop vac for a long time! Thanks for standing out in the cold with me for a great deal Dad!

The more I work on rods the more my mind thinks about them. I love to work with bamboo and can't wait to get these closer to being planed. (Nate, contact me about your rod. We need to decide on a taper. I can't go any farther until we decide.)

Super Lo

This guy and his brother are the greatest things in the world. They make me laugh all of the time and Lo is my Super Hero. They both make me want to be a better dad. I love you both!

For Nate

While I am waiting for new cane to arrive as well as various parts for 3 different rods I received a number of prompts from different people to put up a new post to read. So this one is for Nate.

Right now I am working on 2 rods technically. My brother is building a rod for himself. I wanted to build it for him for Christmas but I couldn't afford the time or the parts that he would want so as my gift to him I am teaching him how to build a rod and he is building his own. The other rod I am working on is one for myself. It is coming along nicely and as soon as I get back out to the garage I will shoot some pictures of the work in progress.

I have more cane on the way for a rod for my cousin and Nate as well. They will not be the same rod taper but I will be building them more or less at the same time. the more I think about both of them the more excited I get. I am always wanting to try something new so each will have a little something special on it.

Here are some more picture of my grandpas rod to see some of the detail that I like to put into each rod.

Progress!

Last week Daniel and I had a great time but we forgot to take some pictures. These are from the week before. In this picture Daniel is using a heat gun to straighten his strips and get them ready to put them through the beveler to give them an initial 60degree shape.
Here Daniel is flattening the nodes with a file so that they lay flat. This can be a time consuming process because you need to be careful not to take too much because you can ruin the strip and have to start over.Daniel is now taking off the inner pith of the the bamboo so it lays flat on the "belly" side of the bamboo.
All of this process took about 3 hours for both of us to get through all of the strips for two rods. Last week we beveled all of the strips in the beveler and then bound them together and put them in a special oven to bake @ 375 degrees for about 12-14 minutes. That night we worked from 8 to midnight. We got Daniel all beveled and baked but I only got about half of my strips beveled. I spent about two and a half hours finishing the beveling and binding and cleaning. There are many ways to make a mess and bamboo rod building hits most of those. Next we will be starting in on final planing and getting pretty close to completing a section of rod.

Catch Magazine

Here is another plug for the best online magazine out there. Not only is it about fishing but it revolves around photography. If you like either one then this is defiantly a page worthy of a bookmark if not the top bar quick link!

catchmagazine.net

Go, you wont be disappointed!