Bamboo Fly Rod Building
- Building
- How to
- Home
- Choice of the bamboo culm
- Planing to build a bamboo flyrod
- Bamboo heat treating
- The final cutting for building a bamboo fly rod
- Hollow building bamboo fly rod
- Gluing your bamboo fly rod
- Linking the pieces of bamboo fly rod
- Hand grasp for fly rod
- Guides for bamboo fly rods
- Guide mounting and wraps for fly rods
- Varnishing the bamboo fly rod
- Fly rod action
- Partners
- French
Canne refendu
MY FLY ROD
How to build a bamboo fly rod, a practical guide
Bamboo fly rod making
At first there was the split bamboo, then the glass fibre and then arrived the carbon, which superseded everything. It brought together lightweight, ease of operation and low cost. One can say that without the carbon rod, fly-fishing would not have become so democratised. This is a supremacy that cannot be questioned, as there is nothing to oppose it.
HOW TO BUILD A BAMBOO
FLYROD YOURSELF
Nothing; really?
Well, not exactly, otherwise this book would not make sense. Anyway before speaking about this, let me tell you an anecdote that clearly demonstrates that, when comes to rods, we live amongst prejudices. It is authentic and occurred evidently on the riverbank.
- " So you are fishing with a split bamboo rod? I had one a long time ago, a Pezon & Michel. It was a beautiful rod but is now completely superseded!"
- "Tell me my dear sir what is the make of your car?"
- "Uh, a Citroën; why?"
- "Because I had one, a long time ago, an "11". It was beautiful but is now completely superseded!"
"But… my car is not 50 years old!"
"Neither is my rod…"
This is the kind of stupid dialog that the owner of a bamboo rod could be faced with, as if the types designed fifty or sixty years ago were still up to date in the split rod community.
As a matter of fact the great mass of bamboo rods you can see and test are of antique design and what sticks in the mind, is that all the bamboo rods are obsolete.
Actually this is not the case, but the improvements remained unobserved as the few who turned to becoming professional manufacturers were unfortunately unsuccessful, or were forced by the market to build rods having the action the uninitiated were accustomed to, or to go on reproducing the "carbon" action, that is to say making very soft action rods.
(…)
The first to make a scientific approach of the fly rod action was E.E. Garrison who, during the thirties, developed a mathematical calculation method for the tapers taking into account the bamboo density and the "bending moments" that the laws of physics allow one to compute.
During the sixties, Daniel Brémond, who then lived in Champagnole designed a simple calculation method based on two criteria; an even stress on the outer fibres so that the rod will not age and a progressive acceleration of the impulse from the hand grasp towards the tip.
Wishing to overcome the criticism about the weight of the bamboo rods, he lightened everything possible and brought in two major innovations: the alveolate structure (the rod is not hollow on the whole length but is alveolated so that it does not ovalize), and the spliced assembly with the reinforcement in the rod axis.
Once assembled these rods seem to form one piece with a very fast action and a considerable power reserve. As I was fishing for seventeen years with the same rod, until a car drove over it, I can say that a well calculated taper makes the rod that does not age.
(…)
Going back to the bamboo rod building process, it is sufficient to say that it is far less difficult than one would imagine. This would be confirmed by many of those who have made rods with the help of builders, in the CFR or after the sixteen training courses I held.
You need good bamboo (perhaps the most difficult to obtain), some simple tools such as file or plane and a finishing planing form. The rest is not essential. The best way is to know a builder who will guide you during the initial stages.
(…)
An advice to the beginners: Do not wait until you have built all the tools and every machine to begin your bamboo fly rod construction.
It is not more important to imagine machine tools that will waste your time.
In short: go ahead!
Acquire the essential; the bamboo and began to split it and then straighten the strips.
You will note that it takes up a lot of time.
After that you will need a rough planing form to make the strips triangularly shaped.
Once this is carried out almost two third of the time required to achieve a rod will be spent.
