I read as much as I can on this and other forums and I am ready to start building my first rod. My intent is to work my way up to finishing a bamboo blank (or even restoring an old bamboo rod) since I like fishing bamboo in most situations.
Anyway, I am a book learner, meaning I need or prefer instructions/plans when i start a project.
Does anyone have any recommendations for books on the topic? My apologies if this has been asked before.
I have two books. The first is The New Advanced Custom Rod Building by Dale Clemens, which has more than you will ever need to know about rod building, and The Rod Building Guide by Tom Kirkman, a smaller book that gives you everything you need to know to get started. There is also a 12 part guide by the late Al Campbell located on this website: http://flyanglersonline.com/begin/graphite/
are the graphite building instructions applicable to building up bamboo blanks? I am not going to plane my own blanks but I would buy a blank and finish it?
Michael Sinclair’s Bamboo Rod Restoration Handbook.
rawfish:
ye, the process is the same: 1)locating the “spine” and orienting the guides accordingly, 2) setting the reel seat and hook keeper, 3) wrapping the guides and gluing the tip top. many good books. PM me and I will give you names of bamboo blank builders that also are guild members. Your biggest decison will be what quality of materials to purchase and mount onto the blank
Al Campbell was my mentor when I started to dress fly patterns, I submitted all the fly patterns in Al’s 60-part series for evaluation by Al. Same applies to Al Campbell’s 12 part series of building a graphite fly rod.
One thing that Al did not cover, is making sure that the handle grip of your fly rod matches your hand grip diameter and shape. If the handle grip is to small of a diameter, your casting motion will be restricted during the cast, because the muscles and tendons in your casting arm tighten up, restricting your casting motion.
Custom Grip, found in the Feather Section under Rod Building…
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/features/rodbuilding/customgrip.php
Steven H. McGarthwaite (aka: Parnelli)
Go to the classic fly rod forum and ask them your question. I have "Handcrafting Bamboo Fly Rods"by Wayne Cattanach which is an awesome book and tells you all you need to know from start to finish and also covers tools, planes and planing forms. My book is as new and I will sell it to you for what I paid, $50.
I second the nomination for Wayne Cattanach fine book, simple easy to read with complete instructions.
The Garrison/Carmicheal book http://www.amazon.com/masters-guide-building-bamboo-fly/dp/0811703525 is an interesting read but so technical it frightened me off the bamboo for a few years, take it with a grain of salt.
A wealth of info for the home/hobby builder can be found here…
http://www.bamboorodmaking.com/
http://www.thomaspenrose.com/bamboo.htm
For my first cane rod I built a 2 strip quad (poor man’s quad, PMQ) This is a rod made of 2 strips of cane that are hand planed to final shape, I choose this style since it only required a few hand tools that I already owned. The down side is that the rectagular cross section is a little harder to wrap and finish and the rod harder to straighten compared to a more traditional hex rod. However, I was able to plane the strips and glue up the blank in a single weekend using just a hand plane and a digital caliper. This little rod has since become my favorite small stream rod.
http://www.bamboorodmaking.com/html/2_strip_quads.html