Who sells an affordable(read cheap) cane blank of decent quality?
I’ve built a few graphite rods and would like to take on a cane for this winters project . I’ve never owned cane before but I just love the classic look and the history behind them . I can’t afford to lay out the bucks to buy a quality prebuilt right now and I would like to be able to say that I built my own. I think building your own rods really increases the pride of ownership.
gon,
I think good cane blanks are probably fairly expensive(for me anyway). You might be better off just buying a decent ‘assemby line’ rod that needs some work, stripping it completely down and building it with all new hardware. Just a thought that may not be very good.
Allan
Be carefull, before you know it, you’ll be slaving over your planing form, covered in shavings, fretting over those g@# d%*&d nodes! If you want a blank to start from, Bellinger (http://www.genuinebellinger.com) makes some nice ones that are pretty reasonably priced. Golden Witch (http://www.goldenwitch.com) makes some decent ones too. I ALSO happen to know from someone close to the source (namely, ME), that there are going to be a number of “production” rods showing up on here in the near future (see my “Holy Cow” post) 
Regards,
Joe Martin
Salem, OR
Our fine sponsor elkhornflyrods.com sells very nice blanks. There are a number of recent threads about their blanks and it seems that everyone who got one is favorably impressed, myself included. I believe they will also sell you the matching ferrules. For the price I don’t think you will find a better blank. If you don’t see your answer on their site email brian@elkhornflyrods.com . Brian is the owner and really knows his product.
Putting a ferrule on a rod is not difficult. All you have to do is make sure it fits over the rod with minimal shaving of the bamboo. The strength of the bamboo is in the outside fibers so if you shave them down you have no strength and a guaranteed breakage. Ideally the ferrule should slip snugly over an unshaven blank, or close to it.
jed