Before we continue, I thought I'd offer just a little info on the bamboo itself. The cost of a raw bamboo has little to do with the price of the end product. Even good Tonkin cane, which only grows in a very small area in Southern China because of climate requirements, is only about $30/culm (including the shipping). If everything goes perfectly during splitting, a maker can build two 2-tip rods out of a single culm. That's $15 for for a two-tipped blank! Try buying a top notch graphite blank for $15. A set of ferrules will run you about $40-$60. After that, the expense is no different from building a graphite rod. The expense then is in the intense labor (usually 40 hours or more) required to turn raw bamboo into a fly rod. So let's continue with that labor.

Okay bamboo fans (Anybody still out there?), when I last left you, we had six beautiful 1" strips of bamboo from both the butt and tip section. Now the trick is to spilt each tip strip into four 1/4" strips (24 total) and each of the six butt strips into three 1/3" strips (18 total) . As with skinning a cat, there's a thousand different ways to split bamboo. This system works well for me. It's from the late George Maurer's book: "Fundamentals of Building a Bamboo Fly Rod".

The next thing I'll do is remark each strip on the underside of the strip to maintain relative position. This should be done at about the midpoint between nodes:
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6049&g2_serialNumber=1">

Next I'll take my heavy knife and cut off the remains of the inner-nodual dams on the pith side of the strip. Always cut away from yourself (ask me how I know):
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6052&g2_serialNumber=1">

Now I move to my 1" belt sander and sand flat the remains of the underside (pith side)of the node. All this work will greatly facilitate further splitting:
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6055&g2_serialNumber=1">

Bamboo likes to split in half and resists splitting in thirds because of pressure differentials. Tips strips are now split in half by locating and marking the center of each strip at about the midway point, a couple of inches above a midpoint node:
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6058&g2_serialNumber=1">

Then, using my heavy bamboo knife, I center the knife over my mark and sharply strike the knife with a rubber mallet to start the split:
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6061&g2_serialNumber=1">

A flathead screwdrver is then placed in the split and the knife is removed:
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6064&g2_serialNumber=1">

Leaving the screwdriver in place, I move to the end of my bench and lay the strip pith side down, anchoring the screwdriver in a 2x4, and start pushing the strip into the blade to continue the split. Any time the split wonders off center, I simply force the strip against the thicker side and that usually brings the split back on center. It's important to keep the pith side of the bamboo strip flat against the table to ensure the strip edges will be as close to 90 degrees as possible:
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6067&g2_serialNumber=1">

Once I get to one end of the strip, I reverse the strip end to end and finish the split going the other direction:
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6070&g2_serialNumber=1">

Now I do the same split to the other five tip strips and I end up with twelve 1/2" strips from the tip section of the culm. The same process is employed for the butt strips, only they are cut into thirds at this point, which is a bit more challenging. Your resulting twelve tip strips should now look something like this:
<img src="http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=6073&g2_serialNumber=1">
Notice the blue marker is indicating a leaf node which will render that portion of the strip unusable.

I love this post! thks!
Keep it coming!

Thanks for the encouragement, guys.

Andre, thanks for checking in...I know you, like myself, are a big Garrison fan. What do you think, maybe a Garrsion 201, or perhaps a 209E? A hollowed 209E makes a very nice rod and 7'9" seems to be a magical length for bamboo.

joel

Joel -- this is very, very cool -- thanks so much for your posts...I may even put them up on the front page -- if that is OK with you...I think this series will be very interesting to lots of folks...your efforts are appreciated!

-Dan

This is really interesting Joel.

Tark, is there a way to take each of Joel's tutorials and copy them into a sticky so that in the end there is a running account of the project? It would be nice to be able to go back and reread the entire effort without having to search for old threads. Just a thought.

Neal

Dan,

I'm glad this thread is generating some interest. I was a little worried this might fall under the heading of "TMI". But with this being the slow time of the Maine fishing season, I thought a few detailed orientated people might find it intertesting.

I decided to post each segment as individual posts so those few who were interested in following the process wouldn't have to scroll through a long thread every time. But if you want to gather the segments and post them in a sticky, as Neal suggested, that would be great. Feel free to do whatever you think might be appropriate.

joel

Joel, thanks again for posting these.
A question on the bamboo culm:

Is there anything else you look at to determine if a particular piece of bamboo is going to be good or bad in the long run? I know the nodes are the weak points in any bamboo rod, so is there anything you can look at with a particular node to determine if it's going to be a strong or weak node? How much variability is there in the various culms? Do they only ship the very best stuff over here?

Given the low cost and typical variation in natural materials, it seems like it would be possible to grade out bamboo culms, in the same way that one can grade out hardwood logs into 10 or more different grades based on their fitness for being turned into veneer of different grades.

Not a bamboo caster myself (yet?), but this is fascinating stuff. Where you get the time to work on the rod AND post is beyond me, but THANKS so much.

Back in the day, my dad built a bamboo rod, although I think he bought the blank from Orvis. They inspected his work and then added their name to his rod. He is quite proud of it. I wonder where it is now?

Pushaw,

Great question! I get my bamboo from Andy Royer, and importer on the west coast. Andy actually goes to China every year and hand selects bamboo poles in the 2â€

Hi,

Just to add a little more to that last post, and maybe Joel was going to talk about this later, too, but... 3 thoughts -

Andy Royer (Glenn Bracket, a couple others) visit China often these days, and, before them, the Charles Demarest Company. "The Dems", affectionately, supplied Leonard, Thomas, most everyone, and included more variety in their culms deliberately, Harold (Demarest) told me.
One of the big differences in the cane other than the grading just described is the distance between the nodes. David and I have noticed that the bundles from Andy are wonderfully straight with uniform node placement, but that placement distance isn't always optimal for ever length rod. It's nice to be able to stagger the nodes about 4" away from the ferrules or tip, for instance, which would be different for a, say, 2-piece 8-ft rod than for a 2-piece 6'3" rod.

If you come across some older cane in the culm, too, it will probably feel a bit lighter (dryer) than newly shipped cane, not a bad thing. Lighter feeling culms could have less dense powerfibers, too (looks like Joel will mention those later though). It would probably also have more natural drying splits. It could, if not stored correctly, have some rot or insect/rodent damage.

Weakness of the nodes is like a fingerjoint in woodworking. The properties would be different, but not necessarily worse. Lots of test strips break other than at the nodes. They're a point to be noticed, but not evil

My 2 cents,
Kat

Insightful stuff from the First Lady of Maine (and Michigan) Bamboo! Thanks for your input, Kat! I hope you and David will continue to weigh in with your wisdom on this thread!

I typically prefer 2x2x2 node spacing and I like at least 5 inches of clear bamboo at the tip and ferrule stations. If I can get more than 5 inches at the tip especially, I’m a very happy camper. 2x2x2 node spacing of this particular culm will work great with a 7 ft or 8 ft rod with that spacing, but if we decide on a seven and a half foot rod, the spacing will have to be 3x3 for the reasons that Kat mentioned. More on that node stuff later…

BTW, to answer the question about the time commitment of this project, my two kids are in college, so I have more time than money these days!
joel