My first bamboo rod built out

[DonCooksey]

Not sure this would be of much interest here, but I had to show it off. This was my first attempt to build out a new bamboo rod from an unferruled hexagonal bamboo blank - a Dickerson 761510 taper by Dennis Stone (a great bamboo rod builder in Oregon). This rod is to be my go-to stealthy 5-wt meadow stream rod, so I went with all dark components - dark nickel-silver reel seat hardware (with a rosewood insert), dark nickel-silver winding check, dark amber agate stripping guide with dark nickel-silver frame, dark snake guides and tip tops, and I blued a set of ferrules for the rod. I went with semi-translucent brown thread wraps with black tipping - sort of like Lyle Dickerson would have used. I've refinished some old bamboo rods, but this was my first attempt to turn down stations, trim sections to length, make up a cork grip, and install all components. I can hardly wait to try it out after the varnish cures for a few weeks.

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[joshfish]

thats a beautiful looking rod.

[Hairstacker]

Wow, great job! Very nice looking rod you got there. :cool:

[Woodman]

Nice craftsmanship. A labor of love.

Give us a report when you fish it.

[STEELIES/26c3]

Absolutely awesome work.

Nothing like having a rod made to your own specs~

You'll be eternally rewarded in the mountains~;)

M

[Scott V]

Can't wait to hear how it fishes.

[PMD]

GORGEOUS! I'd be afraid to use it. What reel are you gonna mate to it?

[Dave E.]

Don that's a gorgeous piece of functional artwork.
Just out of curiosity, setting aside the time it took you to acquire the skill to do this and all the research that went into this project, how many hours do you suppose went into this little beauty?


Best, Dave

[BillB]

Wow! What a beauty Don. I would just lay it on a table so I could look at it every time I walked past it. Did you use color preserver on the wraps, and what is the finish?

[Bryan Morgan]

Almost too pretty to use.

[DonCooksey]

PMD: For now, I'll just use my old Hardy LRH Lightweight reel with this rod, although the color of my old Orvis Battenkill reel might look better. Got any suggestions? There are some really expensive ones that would look great, but they are above my pay grade.

Dave: Estimating the time spent would be really difficult. I worked on it off and on during evenings and weekends since I received the blank in early September, but at the same time, I was stripping and refinishing an old bass-weight rod that I just finished also. It had to be several days worth of work overall. Now if I had also split the bamboo, planed the strips, and glued it up, that would be another long story, but I don't know how to do any of that yet. Some day maybe. Dennis Stone made the blank for me in less than two weeks after we settled on the taper he would use, and he was making others at the same time during his summer/fall blank sale.

BillB: No color preserver on this rod. I did for the orange/black jasper wraps on the old bass-wt rod I referred to above (I use Aerogloss clear lacquer for a color preserver), but for this 5-wt rod, I wanted semi-translucent brown wraps like old Dickerson rods. I have a couple of old Orvis Battenkill rods that also have translucent brown wraps that I really like, so I searched on the Classic Fly Rod Forum web site for how to achieve that. The guys on that forum live and breath bamboo rods 24/7, so anything you need to know is there. I found a recommendation to use Gudebrod medium brown #541 nylon thread and apply varnish directly to the thread without a color preserver. The tipping is black silk thread. I use Man-O-War spar varnish thinned about 50/50 with mineral spirits (and strained through pantyhose - don't ask where they came from). I like to apply one coat to the bamboo blank before wrapping the guides, then apply several coats to the guide wraps until the thread texture is almost obscured, and then follow with three or more coats of the same varnish to the whole rod (with some very light sanding with 1200-grit paper between coats). I'm still brushing on my varnish very carefully, but most guys use a dip tube.

Glad you all like the rod. I may get a chance to try it out in a couple of weeks and can post on how it casts (and catches fish, hopefully!).

[PMD]

Don, nope. No suggestions on a reel, I'd just thought I'd ask. A rod that gorgeous may not even need one.:D

[EricO]

Wow. I'm stunned how beautiful that is. I own a custom Powell
Hexagraph my father gave to me. It's a 3/4 wt. Just a beautiful
piece of craftsmanship....but yours is prettier. :)

I think I'd hang that on my wall in the living room, just so I could
look at it every time I entered the room (grins).

Thanks for sharing....great stuff!

Eric

[Phil Synhorst]

Don, that's a beautiful rod you've put together.:thumbsup:

If it fishes half as good it looks the trout are in big trouble.:cool:

Congrats on an awesome piece of work/art.

[EricO]

Oh, and I'm 99.9% sure that my hexagraph is graphite impregnated.
So it's not even really a pure bamboo rod.

So this begs the question....wanna trade? lol

[Blueracer]

Sweet! Nice work.

[DonCooksey]

Eric:

Impregnated bamboo rods are great. I have two old Orvis impregnated rods. They are basically waterproof without a varnish coating. I used one in 40-degree rainy weather in northern Idaho a couple of weeks ago. The ones I am familiar with are impregnated with various resins - not graphite. Some modern rod makers, such as Mike Brooks in Oregon, still impregnate bamboo rods. I would love to figure out how to do that myself, as it tends to make a rod that has a dark rich color to the cane that I really like.

[stanbery]

You new grass rod looks great.

Jon

[EricO]

Eric:

Impregnated bamboo rods are great. I have two old Orvis impregnated rods. They are basically waterproof without a varnish coating. I used one in 40-degree rainy weather in northern Idaho a couple of weeks ago. The ones I am familiar with are impregnated with various resins - not graphite. Some modern rod makers, such as Mike Brooks in Oregon, still impregnate bamboo rods. I would love to figure out how to do that myself, as it tends to make a rod that has a dark rich color to the cane that I really like.

You are correct....it is resin, not graphite. I hear the impregnating of bamboo helps
it keep it's shape...otherwise, a hollow bamboo shaft will tend to "oval" some during the cast. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

They sure are pretty.

Eric

[Darian]

Don,.... Beautiful rod. You have a good eye for choices of components, etc. =D> Your post has me thinking it's time to get going to complete several bamboo rods refinishing projects that I haven't started yet. :confused:

The absolute best dry fly rod I ever used was a Powell, 8' 6" bamboo from the shop in Marysville during the '60s. Beautifully appointed, light weight and of medium action. I really like the natural dampening that comes with bamboo, also. 8)

I'm not an engineer but I'm wondering if a split bamboo rod profile can be changed under stress since it's essentially a solid core. :-k As I recall, hollow bamboo blanks are only hollow in the butt section. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that because bamboo rods are solid core (in the main) they aren't subject to the kind of stress that would cause their profile to change from round to oval. Also, it seems to me that glued bamboo strips would tend to split apart under stress before changing from a hexagonal profile to oval. :-|

Tubular glass and graphite rod blanks are frequently stressed by large fish in situations where heavy drags are in use. Believe me, I've broken enough rods under these circumstances to agree with this. As I understand it, these hollow rods change profile when a rod is bent too much during the fight in order to pressure a fish. Ultimately, the profile changes to oval and then the sides give way. At that point, rod failure occurs. 8)

[DonCooksey]

Eric and Darian:

I've seen a lot of theoretical discussions about pluses and minuses of hollow built bamboo rods, mostly how it lightens their weight (a good thing) and changes the action (some feel positively and some not), but I have not seen anything about change under stress compared with solid ones. I'm sure it has been looked at, but I'm not an expert on it. I know that one way to avoid problems with the hollow building was pioneered by E.C. Powell in the 1930s, when he made semi-hollow bamboo rods by removing the inner part of the strips and then gluing in "bridges" made of cedar at certain intervals. Now, some rod builders just scallop out certain lengths of the inner part of their strips, leaving short sections intact to form "dams", which are just intermittent solid portions of the rod - sort of like the nodes in the orginal culms they were split from.

Eric, I did a little reading about "Hexagraph" rods. It appears that Walton Powell (one of E.C.'s sons) was responsible for the advent of Hexagraph rods in the U.S., which were not made of bamboo at all, but of graphite sheets glued to a dense foam that was planed into strips, glued up into hexagonal tapered sections, and painted the color of bamboo. That is apparently what was used in the filming of A River Runs Through It. I don't know if the term Hexagraph was also used for rods made of bamboo.