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.