While some purchasers of cane rods could care less as to how their rod was made, I believe it’s a nice thing to know.  Maybe it’s just because I make them or maybe it just adds a little bit of allure to the whole thing.

Here’s a very brief description of what I do.  I usually like to work on several rods at one time.  There’s a lot of gluing and varnishing involved so in between drying times I keep busy by working on another rod.   Much of my work is by hand.  I do use a beveling cutter to establish my triangular 60-degree strips. The first thing I do is flame my culms( If I browntone my cane, this is done after the strip is beveled.)    I split my strips by hand.   The next step is to heat and flatten the nodes on each strip. The next step I rough cut (beveling cutter) each strip into a triangular shape. I then bind the strips together and place them in an oven to temper the wood and remove moisture.  The binding helps straighten the strips and keeps them from twisting.   The second cut (planing) I establish a rough taper.  The third cut establishes the final taper.  I plane them with a Stanley bench plane (second cut), then a Stanley block plane and finishing up with a Lie-Nielsen hand scraper (second and third cuts).

I use a homemade oven consisting of a heat strip and galvanized air duct material.  For gluing and binding the strips I use a Garrison type binder cranked by hand.  The strips are bound twice; the first time for heat tempering, the second time for gluing.   I use a 1 rpm gearmoter, pulley system and a dip tube to varnish my rods.  I put 3 or 4 coats on each rod section.   Silk wraps I wind by hand and each receives 3 or 4 coats of thinned varnish before finishing.  The last coat goes on with a toothpick. This helps cut down any bubbles forming when I apply varnish.   I turn both my cork and my reel seats on a  metal lathe.  I make some of my metal fittings on occasion but I always get my ferrules from outside my shop.  The tolerances are too small for my lathe and I feel my work would suffer in quality.

This is just an abbreviated note on building a bamboo rod.  There are perhaps over 60 steps involved.  A good reference book if you are interested would be ‘A Master’s Guide To Building A Bamboo Fly Rod’ by Garrison/Carmichael.

Richard Teeter
rteeter@carolina.rr.com
1119 Brafford Drive
Concord  NC  28025
Phone:  704.786.0715