A Master's Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod: The Essential and Classic Principles and Methods

Chapter One

Cane Selection Check Splitting

Cane Selection

OVER THE YEARS, many different woods and bamboos have been used as material for making flyrods. Over one thousand species of bamboo have been identified but only one, a cultivated variety known as Tonkin Cane, has the inherent characteristics which make it generally recognized as the best natural fibre from which to build flyrods. In spite of its name, Tonkin Cane does not come from Tonkin but from a small area about a hundred miles northwest of Canton. In 1931 F. A. McClure, an Associate Professor of Botany at Ligan University in Hong Kong, became interested in its unusual characteristics and travelled up the Sui River from Canton to the area where it is grown, a twenty-five square mile oval overlapping the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi. McClure was so taken with the Tonkin Cane that he named it Arundinaria amabilis, the lovely bamboo.

Tonkin Cane grows in large plantation areas and from a distance resembles a thick growth of conifers. The bamboo stalks grow to a height of as much as 40 feet and are harvested near the bottom of the stalk. After a short curing process, they are loaded onto rafts and sent to warehouses in Fatchung. Here they are sorted, and all too often, straightened with the use of heat, then bundled into batches of fifty and readied for export to other countries.

The lovely bamboo is, for the most part, made up of long cellulose fibres which run parallel to each other for the length of the stalk. These longitudinal open cells are encased in a substance called lignin which bonds them together forming a tight band of tubes that act as water-carrying pipes for the growing plant. These striated fibres become more concentrated as they near the outer protective surface of the stalk, until they are tightly compacted in relation to the innermost or pithy portion of the plant. The protective outer covering is very hard and siliceous and although it has a greenish hue when harvested, it turns a chalky yellow after several weeks of curing in the sun. Inside the round hollow center of the stalk are many supporting discs which grow at some distance from each other and are known as diaphrams or nodes. Nodal ridges can be seen from the outside of the stalk and although the material from which the node is made is, in itself, very hard, the node is structurally the weakest part of the outer plant since it breaks up the continuous fiberous strands which are much like capillaries.

The fibres of a bamboo culm. (Note outer dense layer of fibres.)

Check split and node diaphragm.

It is the concentration of cellulose fibres near the outside enamel covering of the culm, as the stalk is known after it has been cut into lengths, which most interests the rod maker. This layer of primary fibres, or power fibres as they are sometimes called, is the characteristic that makes Arundinaria amabilis the most suitable bamboo for the construction of fly rods. The density of the fibers along the outer rim of the stalk results in great strength per unit of area, which gives the rod maker a material combining almost unbelievable tensile strength with elasticity in a way which cannot be duplicated in any other natural fibre. An additional desirable characteristic is that the open-celled structure of the primary fibres makes for a material that is light in weight relative to its ability to bend countless times, often under loads that would try the bending capacity of other possible materials.

Bamboo also has a characteristic that other rod materials do not have which is an internal resistance against resonance. It tends to check the vibration set up by the energy applied to the rod during casting. When the cast is completed, and assuming the rod is tapered correctly, the bamboo in the rod should become inert. This problem of vibration was particularly noticeable in the old steel tubular rods. They tired your wrist to beat the band because they vibrated after the cast was finished.

Since the early forties, Tonkin Cane has been very difficult to obtain. Trade with China was restricted for over twenty-five years and it is only recently that good cane once again began to be imported by the United States. Although the larger rod manufacturers use much of the bamboo that importers receive, it is now possible to obtain good quality cane in small quantities. Inquiries should be addressed to:

Harold Demarest P.O.

Box 238

Bloomingdale, NJ 07403

When Garry first started working with bamboo his good friend and mentor, Doctor George Parker Holden of Yonkers, N.Y., gave him several culms for his own use. In 1937, Garry bought four bundles of good quality cane (fifty culms in a bundle) at a cost of twenty-eight cents per culm, and it was from this purchase that Garry made many of his rods. Although there are still fifty culms in one bundle, you will find that the price of each cane pole has increased considerably.

Desirable thickness of primary fibres is shown at right. (These culms have been split with a saw.)

If at all possible, try to go to the warehouse of the bamboo importer yourself, because there you will be able to make a selection from poles of greatly varying quality. The first thing to look for is the thickness of the dense band of primary fibres just under the rind. If you are looking at a section that has been cut off close to a node be aware that, due to the interlocking of the fibres at the node, the wall will appear to be considerably thicker than it actually is. Bamboo of good quality should be at least 1¹⁄2 inches in diameter at the larger end (preferably 1³⁄4 inches) and up to 2¹⁄2 or even 2³⁄4 inches, though poles of this size are not easy to find. While it depends on the rod you want to make, the layer of primary fibres should be not less than ¹⁄8 inch to ³⁄16 inch at the small end and ¹⁄4 inch to ⁵⁄16 inch at the larger end. In looking over a larger selection, you should be able to find culms that meet these requirements. Poles as they are known in the trade usually come in one of two lengths—8 feet or 12 feet. Culms of 8 feet in length are normally a good size for almost any rod length built today by the amateur rod builder, and will allow for the proper node staggering without too much sacrifice of material. Poles cut to lengths of 6 feet can be transported through the U.S. mail but are, as you will see later, difficult to work with.

When selecting your poles be careful to inspect the outside rind carefully. Bamboo, while growing on the hillsides, is attacked by many parasites and varieties of fungus and lichens. These organisms often leave burrowing holes or dark splotches on the outside surface of the pole. If these pitch pockets have found their way down into the primary fibres, you should reject the culm as you could mistakenly end up with a strip in the finished rod that will be weak, relative to the other five pieces of the rod section. Decay caused by water settling under the rind will show up as dark brown patches on the surface, and poles with such patches should not be purchased. You will probably find other small areas of slight discoloration, but although these may not be aesthetically pleasing, they should not in any way injure the performance of the finished fly rod. Before World War II, all cane poles came into America with large unsightly identifying marks from the warehouser. These marks were insisted upon by the Chinese who based their reputation on the quality of the cane shipped. Cane shipped today does not usually have these dark slash marks but occasionally you will find a pole where they show up clearly on the enamel. Again, they may not be pleasing to the eye but they will not harm the performance of the rod.

Exaggerated thickness of primary fibres at the node.

If you have the opportunity to select your culms personally, you will find some stalks that have noticeable indentations just above their nodes. These indentations are known as leaf nodes and are marks left by small branch buds that once grew from that position on the stalk. You should not select these culms. The indentations render that section of the culm unusable as you would not want to have such a cavity in any of your finished strips. If you do get a pole with a leaf node in it but the quality of the cane is good otherwise, you can mark this imperfection with a colored pen and later split around it.

A leaf node.

A culm that has been injured during straightening before importation.

You should also look carefully for sections of the pole that have been crushed by the straightening process employed by the warehouser. In most cases the bruised area will be scorched by the excessive heat used and these poles should be avoided. Poles with numerous large splits, or curing cracks, should also be avoided as too many such splits will render that pole unusable. A pole suitable for rodmaking should be fairly straight with as few kinks through the nodes as possible. Relatively straight poles may be difficult to find as most commercial rodmakers want straight poles for their milling and bevelling machines to avoid the waste of too much material. This is less of a problem for the home rod builder because he is able to split the strips by hand. However, care should be taken to get straight poles, if possible, to simplify the job of splitting and later straightening. If an ideal pole is not available, however, the straightness of the culm should be sacrificed in favor of the density of the layer of primary fibres.

A culm that has split of its own accord.

A well-seasoned culm will be almost straw-colored. Bamboo is decidedly green when it is growing on the plantation and, in most cases, turns yellowish-orange after curing in the sun for several weeks on the shores of the Sui River. Seasoned cane should be a pale straw color by the time it reached the retailer in this country and one should not buy a culm that is green or grayish-green or even deep yellow unless the purchaser is willing to take a chance on it seasoning to the proper color and hardness over a long period of time. Most old-timers can tell such things as seasoning, density of primary fibres, and general desirability, by the heft of the pole.

Check Splitting:

Bamboo that is purchased from a retailer should, in most cases, be further seasoned by the rod maker before he considers splitting the culm into pieces for a rod. A well-seasoned culm when tapped with a stick will give off a sharp, almost metallic ring, while an unseasoned pole responds with a dull flat sound. If you are able to keep your storage place or shop at a relative humidity of about 50% for a period of several months, your bamboo will air dry to a moisture content of 10%, which is desirable.

Hammer the splitting knife thru the wall of the culm.

To prepare your new poles for seasoning, you will need to put a check split in the culm, starting from the end with the largest diameter. Hammer a large knife into one wall of the culm until you see a split starting up the length of the pole. Continue that split, with the knife as a wedge, until it has travelled through the diaphram of the first node, almost to the second node. In seasoning, the culm shrinks as it is drying out, and in most cases the split will, in time, follow the grain of the bamboo all the way up the stalk. If you notice the stalk has already split well away from the larger end of the culm, you can try to line up that split with the check split you are about to put in the wall of the cane. Even if the check split doesn’t find the existing split in the wall, and often it will walk over until they do meet, you will not lose as much cane to the crack or split by this method as would have happened had you proceeded otherwise. Check splitting allows the cane to dry from the inside out and, since the culm will naturally shrink during seasoning, the check in the wall allows the pole to dry out with less pressure on its wall, thus avoiding checks and splits all over the culm. On a dry day, you can often hear the freshly checked pole squeaking and cracking as the check works its way up the wall and through the nodes. With good cane, the checking usually follows the separation in the fibres down the entire length of the culm so that you are left with the same amount of material on both sides of the split.

Continue splitting almost to the second node.

Chapter Two

Node Staggering Splitting

BEFORE WE BEGIN SPLITTING THE bamboo, it is important to emphasize that there is no need to spend a great deal of money on expensive tools and machinery. Planes and planing irons made of high quality steel are essential, but most of the important pieces of machinery can be made, as Everett made his, and then some improvisation will be necessary to satisfy other needs, which can be a major source of enjoyment. The important thing to remember is that the ability of a bamboo fly rod to perform well under all conditions is usually the direct result of the care the maker has put into it, and one should therefore pay close attention to the tolerances of your homemade tools. If you can afford to buy the best tools on the market do so, but if you decide to make many of your tools spend the extra time to make them accurately.

Garry’s workbench was one of the wooden benches that were often used by cabinet makers in this country around the turn of the century. The bench was bought by his father for Garry’s older brother, Harry, in 1898, and Harry spent a lot of time at it making furniture for his family and friends. It is 75 inches long, 24 inches wide, and stands 33 inches off the floor. Wooden benches are ideal for working with bamboo and woodworking tools because the relatively soft surface will not harm the cutting edges of your tools nor the outer fibres of the bamboo. If you are able to find a good used one, be sure to plane and then sand the top as flat as possible. It is very difficult to plane bamboo to tolerances of .001 inch, if the bamboo or planing form is rocking on lumps of old cabinet makers’ glue.

Basements being what they are, you will probably be hard pressed to find an area you think is large enough to build bamboo rods. Garry was also confronted with this problem, but managed to build a lot of fine rods in a space 21’10 x 15’8. If you decide to make a dip tank for the varnishing, you may have to improvise as he did. The attic is a perfect place to store bamboo culms. They will be out of the way and should dry out fairly quickly in the heat rising from the house.

Node Staggering:

Assuming you have selected poles that are relatively free of obvious blemishes and that your stalks are well seasoned, you are now ready to select one of them for the exacting job of splitting. Before you actually begin splitting, you must first consider the length of rod you wish to build, its taper, whether you want to build an extra tip, or if you want two rods, both coming from the same stalk of bamboo. While the best laid plans do not always work to one’s satisfaction, due to problems with inaccurate splitting or unforeseen weak spots in the cane, you should carefully measure the amount of bamboo material needed to meet your demands before you begin to split a good culm indiscriminately.

A fly rod which measures 7’6 (90) when assembled and has two sections or joints (tip and butt) is not made from two sections of bamboo of exactly the same length. Assuming you want the ferrule to join the tip and the butt at the midsection of the rod, the length of the bamboo strips in the tip section will be longer than half the length of the rod by one-half of the measured length of the slide on the male ferrule, minus that portion of the top guide tube that is fitted with the nickle silver wire that forms the pear-shaped ring at the top, ¹⁄4, minus the thickness of the moisture cap in the end of the male ferrule, ¹⁄16, or ⁵⁄16". The strips in the butt section are one-half the length of the rod minus one-half the length of the male slide, ³⁄8, minus ¹⁄16 for the thickness of the ferrule moisture cap, minus the thickness of the metal used for the butt cap, ¹⁄32, or ¹⁵⁄32. Garry’s 7’6" rod was fitted with a ¹³⁄64 inch Super Z ferrule which has a male slide slightly more than ³⁄4 inch long. Therefore, the length of the bamboo strips in the finished tip section measured 45¹⁄16 inches and in the butt section 44¹⁷⁄32 inches.

If you have been able to obtain twelve foot culms you can stagger the nodes of the split strips for both the butt and tip sections and still have several feet of excess material. But if you are working with culms measuring eight feet or less and are building a rod longer than seven feet three inches you will find that, after you have staggered the nodes of each strip far enough away from each other to ensure that their inherent weakness does not weaken the finished rod, you will have to splice short strips of bamboo onto the two or three pieces of the butt section that will inevitably be too short. Since you do not want to do any splicing in the thinner tip pieces, you should first find out how much of the culm you are going to need for the tip joint which will then dictate how much bamboo will be left for the six butt strips.

To arrive at the final placement of the nodes in a rod, Garry went through a series of five different steps, reordering the strips each time until the six pieces were finally glued into the rod in the same relative position they were in the original culm. He first numbered the six strips split from the stalk with hash marks /, //, ///, / ///, // ///, /// ///, starting with the #1 strip on top. After the strips were resplit he reordered them in sequence beginning with the #1 piece on the top: 1, 5, 3, 6, 2, 4. These procedures will be explained in more detail later, but it is important to know these first two steps to understand what follows. The nodes are then staggered to the left beginning with the #2 piece and working upward. The #4 piece is not moved. Assuming an average 8’ culm is used, the center of each node is placed 1⁵⁄8 to the left of the adjacent node for a 7’6 rod.

Since the bottom strip (the #4 piece) is not staggered or slipped, it should be considered the piece whose length will be, when cut off, closest to the actual amount of bamboo needed for the tip section strips. The #2 piece will be 1⁵⁄8 longer than the #4, the #6 piece will be 1⁵⁄8 longer than the #2 piece, and so on. Therefore, if the amount of bamboo needed is 45¹⁄16 for a finished tip length, the #4 piece should be 45¹⁄16 long. In addition, you should allow an inch leeway on either end of all the strips of cane you plan to use in the rod, for purposes of planing, binding, and gluing (the need for this will be apparent later). Your findings should look like this:

These figures indicate that the tip pieces must be split from material measuring 55³⁄16" working from the smaller end of the 8’ culm towards the larger butt end. Because the length of the culm is only 96, it is apparent that the excess needed for proper node staggering in the tip has left only 40¹³⁄16 for the #1 butt strip, a piece that must be at least 44¹⁷⁄32 long (not counting the 2 excess). Therefore the balance of the butt material needed is:

#1 piece = 40¹³⁄16" splice needed 5³⁄4 inches

#5 piece = 42⁷⁄16" splice needed 4¹⁄8 inches

#3 piece = 44¹⁄16" splice needed 2¹⁄2 inches

#6 piece = 45¹¹⁄16" splice needed ⁷⁄8 inches

#2 piece = 47⁵⁄16" no splice needed

#4 piece = 48¹⁵⁄16" no splice needed

Do not worry that pieces will later need to be spliced onto the butt end of the number 1, 5, 3, and 6 strips. This was a common procedure for Garry, and is part of the price that one has to pay for wanting to make a rod of the quality which can only be achieved when using a single stalk of bamboo.

Splitting gauges.

In order to measure how much cane he wanted to split from the culm, Garry made a set of splitting gauges out of scrap pieces of file steel. They are easy to make with a hacksaw and a triangular file, and will save you a lot of time if you decide to make more than one rod. Garry’s have a sharp edge on one side so that he could mark the rim of the node with a slight indentation by putting some pressure on the tool. In all cases the measurements of the gaps in the splitting tools allowed him approximately ³⁄16" more bamboo in the split strip than would eventually end up in the finished rod: (If you decide to develop your own tapers, the gaps in his gauges may not be appropriate for your purposes.)

#1 . . . ⁵⁄32nds inch gap: Single strips for tip pieces on three-piece rods.

#2 . . . ⁷⁄32nds inch gap: Single strips for the second (or middle) joint of three-piece rods. Also for butt sections for 7’0 and 7’6 rods.

#3 . . . ⁹⁄32nds inch gap: Butt sections for all 8’0 and 8’6 rods.

#4 . . . ¹⁹⁄64ths inch gap: Double strips for tips on 7’0 and 7’6 rods. Also butt sections for 9’0 and 9’6 rods.

#5 . . . ²³⁄64ths inch gap: Double strips for tips of 8’0 and 8’6 rods. Also butts for 10’0 and 10’6 rods.

#6 . . . ³⁄8ths inch gap: Double strips for 9’0 and 9’6 rods, and single strip for 10’ tips and up.

Garry always made two tips for his rods and that is why the tip gauges are designed for double strips.

You should now turn your attention to determining how many rods you can get from the stalk you have chosen. The splitting gauges that Garry made help to solve that problem quickly. The gap in the two splitting gauges that will be used for the splitting of 7’6 rods, measures ¹⁹⁄64ths inches, enough for two tip pieces, and ⁷⁄32nds inch for the single strips for a butt joint. Assuming you want to make two tips for the rod, you will have to measure around the circumference of the smaller or tip end of the culm a distance of ¹⁹⁄64ths x 6 (double strips) or 1 ²⁵⁄32nds. For one butt section you will need ⁷⁄32nds x 6 (single butt strips) or 1 ⁵⁄16ths of bamboo, measured from the butt or larger end of the stalk. Since the circumference of an average 8’ culm is approximately 5¹⁄2 inches in diameter at the smaller end of the stalk, one should be able to get two 7’6 rods comfortably out of an 8’ stalk. This of course depends on how carefully the culm is split, a tricky job, which we will now discuss in detail.

Before you actually begin splitting the culm, it is helpful to saturate the butt end of the stalk with an indelible color. In this way, you cannot lose track of which is the butt end of the culm and which end is for tips. This mark will later be cut off, so don’t worry if you discolor the outside enamel of the stalk.

It is seldom today that one can buy a split bamboo rod that was actually split from the culm by its maker. The need to meet the demands of high production and lower costs has forced most commercial rod makers to saw their strips from the raw stalk. Garry, not faced with this dilemma, felt it was extremely important to split all of the strips from the culm. In doing so, there is very little waste because the splitting tool follows the fibres of the bamboo regardless of whether the stalk is perfectly straight or very crooked. But, more importantly, he felt that, in splitting there is no criss-crossing of the fibres. When bending the section, the fibres will all be intact and give you a rod section that has the maximum amount of tensile strength with the minimum amount of weight. Then, as you plane the strips, you will have 100% value of the fibres in a strip.

Splitting:

When you begin splitting, you must first split the culm in half in order to get the round stalk into two pieces that can be easily managed. For this job, and for all splitting, you will need a hardy pair of rubber gloves. Until you have experienced the ease with which the sharp splinters of cane find their mark, you cannot appreciate how important good gloves are for this work. The heavy rubber gloves often used when washing dishes in the household will do the job nicely.

With a ruler make a mark halfway around the butt end of the culm.

Using a pliable ruler, or a measured piece of string, measure the circumference of the butt end of the culm you are working with. Halve that amount and, with a pencil, put a mark on the end of the culm opposite the check split. If you can, find a buttress for the small end of the stalk, as you will need something solid to work against as you begin splitting. Using a broad knife or a wedge of some sort, rotate the end of the culm so that the mark for the mid-point is facing up. Place the cleaver on the mark and tap it lightly at first. You should see a split starting straight down the grain of the stalk. With a wooden mallet, continue forcing the cleaver through the fibres, being especially careful not to fracture the cane at the nodes. It helps to slow up the operation once you get to the node and use the cleaver as a cam. Give it a good sharp twist as close to the node as possible, and the result should be a clean separation of the fibres. Continue forcing the blade through the grain until you have split the culm into two halves.

Begin tapping the splitting knife thru the grain of the culm.

The next job is to split each of the two halves into three pieces, but before doing so you must remove the exposed diaphrams from the inside walls of the culm. Again, buttress the end of the cane