One of the many Bamboo rods I own is a classic King Fisher 7’9" that I got from Rainbow. When I received the rod it was in extremely poor shape finish wise, grip wise, and guide wise. The finish was so old, and damaged that it looked like the rod was owned by a leper, bubbled, and pitted. The reel seat was an aluminum or tin down-locking ring assembly with “kingfisher” engraved into it. The grip was a cigar shaped hunk of wood that a very thin layer of cork was glued over and flaking off in chunks. The wooden holder was rotten, poorly made and the cover rotted. Restoring this beauty will take some, care and ingenuity.
The first Step was to remove all the guides that where left and there wrappings.
The next step was one heck of a challenge. The grip and reel seat needed to be removed. placing it in a baggy in boiling water removed the reel seat and the little bit of cork that was left. The wooden grip needed to be heated directly and still needed to be cut off in-order to remove it.
Over the course of three days with a heavy duty straight edge razor I scraped the rod down to bare bamboo and Flattened the Flats properly.
Next post Will be about the construction of the new reel seat and grip.
*The process of restoring classic Bamboo rods has taught me how honestly poorly constructed these rods where made in-order to produce enough to fill the demand and keep the price down. A lot of the materials where low grade.
The reel seat and grip for this beauty turned out to be a slight challenge. The original grip was a peace of turned soft-wood that was covered in thin cork. This grip served as an attachment point for 2" of the rod as well as the base for the reel seat sleeve. The new grip needed to be strong to handle the stress from fighting a strong fish as well as casting the rod, all while looking good. This was solved by deciding to turn a fully wooden polychromatic grip consisting of 1/2" maple and walnut peaces, with a 3/4" peace for the up-locking hood. (Just a note all of the wood used for the grip, came from Shop scrap.) To attach the reel seat I will need to turn a hardwood dowel to fit into the grip and the seat and meeting at the but of the rod. The seat wood is a beautiful hand turned maple with chrome up-locking hardware.[
With the guides removed and the rod cleaned back to bear bamboo. It was time to find and check the taper. Stating at the tip-top and a 5" rule I marked the rod every 5". for a total of 17 stations from the tip to the butt. next with a caliper we check across the flat to find the size of all three then add the total an divide by three to find the taper.
Today I glued up the Polychromatic grip with two part epoxy after trimming the points off the squares in preparation for turning on the lathe. The grip style I have chosen for the KingFisher is a classic Full Wells to compliment the polychromatic colours.
Well The last few days have been an interesting time of wrapping the guides onto the Kingfisher.
the guide placement had to be modified because of two reasons. one was to give more room for striping and the other was because of where the guides fall on the rod. Guide placement was done for a 7’9" rod. The thread I used is a dark tan or med brown silk.
That rod is looking much better than I remember it. And I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who occasionally has to plan menus around projects tying up the kitchen.
Yes, And I apologize for having such a messy looking Kitchen counter. The lathe is sittin on the kitchen work bench. It has been too cold to spend much time out in the shop, so we have been using the kitchen.
Char is becoming quite skillful on almost all of the shop equipment. I guide but do not help “hands on”. I am quite proud of her craftsmanship. This rod was a chore from the start and she did the restore + properly. Has a couple pages in her work book
set aside for just this rod. All planned ahead before the start. Has been fun for me to sort of sit on the sidelines n watch.
Way to go Char. I do get the + side of things because Noah and Pistol sit in my lap n watch.
Sorry for the delay in updates. I have been working on a few other projects and had sidelined this rod for a bit. Over the last few days as we get ready to dip the rod I started on my finish work, I have now re-epoxied the furals onto the rod and started to wrap them. I will say that I’m not happy with the size of the step the furals cause so I?m thinking about how to fix this for a nice clean wrap. Also upon a closer inspection I found that the original reel seat did not allow for a proper fit of the reel feet. To fix this I needed to remove the whole seat and re-cut the thumbnail. In having to do this, I learned that my glue job was a in fact a very good one as the only thing to let go after soaking the seat in boiling water for a while, was the connecting rod and hood. With this rod being broken I now needed to drill out the 3/8 hole to remove the old rod. I also needed to change the reel seat wood as, no matter what I did the one that I used was not willing to work with me. The old wood finally gave up the seat hard ware after leaving it directly on the wood stove for an hour and I still had to struggle to remove the hardware. The new Seat wood has been sanded and polished and a coat of minwax added. After one more coat of minwax I will be had whipping on a few coats of helmsman to give the seat a glasslike shine.
Ok so finally the kingfisher is all done. dipped and ready to fish!!
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[li]In finishing the Kingfisher I found that the furals had too much of a step to neatly wrap as is. What was done was a two part plumbers epoxy was used and shaped while keeping wet then wrapping after it dried and sanded.[/li][/ul]
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[li]Another shot of the finished grip.[/li][/ul]
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[li]this is a shot of the tiptop and mid section female[/li][/ul]
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[li]A shot of the lettering and of the winding check from the original grip.[/li][/ul]
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[li]this is the tip in the original rod holder.[/li][/ul]
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[li]this is a shot of the but section in the rod holder[/li][/ul]
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[li]This is the re covered rod holder that was original to the rod[/li][/ul]
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[li]This is the new sock[/li][/ul]
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[li]This is a closer view of the grain of the seat[/li][/ul]
