Setting the planing form.

The Morgan but section ready for the planing form.

Slovely the bamboo start's look like rod sections.

The form is set for the first stage of the final planing.

The old Stanley plane has quickly become a favorite.

Preliminary form.

Finally it was time to start planing the strips in the preliminary form. Although all stages of building a splitcane rod is interesting and satisfying, it is when I begin to use the block plane the best part of the building starts.

Removing the outer layer of the enamel gives me more control over the taper measurement's when planing the strips, not everybody does it, but it works best for me that way.

  
It's nice to hear the sound of a razor sharp blade when you are planing the strip.....zzzziip.
Just like music, lovely.

The strip on it's way to the 60 degree angle.

Progress.....

Working all day, small kids ..... wife. Building bamboo rods, then you have to find the available moments when they appear. There will be many late nights in the workshop. Friday night is such a night. After a delicious meal with the family and some wine with my wife. The kids are finally asleep and the wife has fallen asleep in front of the television......hard week at work. A cold one, some good music on the headphones, then it's time to do some work with the glued bamboo strips.

It's time to remove the thread after the gluing.

The Morgan strips ready and the Pezon Michel on it's way.

Next step is getting the strips ready for the preliminary form.

Perfect match.

Finally, I could go to the post office to pick up my new reel made ​​by Ingvar Nilsson from Sweden.
The reel that is built on a classic raised pillar design of yesteryear has a click drag, and will match my canerods perfect. Yet another reason to look forward to next season.     

Reel by Ingvar Nilsson. Tom Morgan taper 7'6" 5wt. Book by Mike Valla.

Hmm...is not much to say really. Litterature by George Black.

Perfect match on top of Mike Vallas book "Tying Catskill-Style Dry Flies".

Gluing and a new tool.

After almost a week of planing the splices, it's time to start gluing
the sticks.

If someone had told me five years ago that I would have been on
 Ebay a Friday night "sippin" singel malt and bid on a Stanley 
block plane from the 1940s.......well I did and I won.  

  

The new and old stanley 9 1/2 block plane, this time the
oldtimer is the best plane. Now I just have to wait for the  
Hock replacement blades ordered from the uk.

Tools to have when you build rods.

 

Some hard work.

There are quite a few sticks to be planed. So it's good to get started.

The cane stick ready for action.

Some sticks ready for the glue.

Well....the season has just ended but I still dreaming of the next one.

Setting up the tip.

Sharpening the plane blades.

 

 

The tools ready for action.

 Morgan 7' 4 wt tip, laid out on the workbench.

Dressing the rough pith side so the sticks are ready for planing the splice.

Here is a little video from the river I planning to visit next spring with some new cane rods.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV2Hw1OjJzk&feature=player_embedded

Chopsticks and Singel malt

When you are going to heat treat the bamboo there are different ways to do it.
You can just take the cane sections as they are, I like to split them in to chopsticks
and heat treat them in the kitchen oven for 10 minutes at 360 degrees.
A slight colour change and a lovely smell of cane cooking and they are done.

 

Chopsticks ready for baking in the oven.

Bamboo sticks and canerod.

After the job is done it's nice with a reward.

 

I store the bamboo in an airtight box, just to avoid moisture re entry.

 

 

 

 

 

  

Building bambooflyrods.

With so many different and exciting tapers that are made by different builders, it's not easy to choose which rod to build. If you check the web you will find several interesting sites with lots of information about the different tapers. Some good sites are http://www.hexrod.net/ - http://www.canerod.com/rodmakers/. This winter I have decided to build three rods. The first rod is a Pezon & Michel, Ritz Super Parabolic PPP Colorado, 7' 7" 5wt 2 pc and two rod's from Tom Morgan, the first rod is a 7' 3wt 2 pc. The third rod is the same rod that I built last winter a 7' 6" 5wt 2 pc, i liked the rod so much that I decided to build one more with a different reelseat and guides.  My plan is to post about the building throughout the winter. Hope maybe someone will find it interesting.

 It is a long process to build a rod, so it's nice to get started.
Here I have cut the twelve-foot long pole in two.

 

Since I'm going to build all the rods nodeless I need to cut away the nodes.

 

The nodes are removed from the pole.

The powerfibers that makes it possible to build a rod.

Tomorrow it's time for baking some cane.

 

Some pictures from the summer of 2011.

Just have to realise that the season for hunting after browntrout with the dryfly is pretty much over.

The weather forecast predict that the winter with snow and dark nights will soon be her.

 It's time to welcome the new season, the making bambooflyrod season.

Some short video clips.

In case you missed it here are some short clips from the film Colorado Cane by Samuel Ebersole.
Some nice filming catching the filing fishing with and making bamboo rods.
First a short film showing Bernard Ramanauskas " mr nodeless " fishing in some nice surroundings and telling about making his bamboorods.
http://vimeo.com/8709385
And second Ed Engle fishing the South Platte river, some nice bamboo atmosphere in this film clips.
http://vimeo.com/9097253

Last call for the mountain river.

As the seasons last day is coming closer to this river, it was time for this years last trip. This time of year you can be lucky with some good hatches or it would not happen at all. Loaded with a couple of cane rods and some warm clothes I head of for the mountains.    

This trip I felt lucky, some insects  where hatching out on the river.
Mostly midges and this lovely mayfly.

It was time for one of my favourite flies the CDC comparadun.

The first fish a nice brown on a size 20 midge pattern.

After a start like that it was time for a short lunch break in the sun. 

This is a nice stretch on the river holding some really nice trout.

And the trout were really playing to day, this one gave the cane rod a hard and god fight.

After a day like this the trip home would be with a smile on my face.
I'm already dreaming of next year.