Dressing the Ferrules.

Before mounting the ferrules to the rodshaft the serrations that will slide onto the rod shaft has to be tapered. There are two reasons for this. First when the ferrule is wrapped, the thread will make a smooth transition from metal to the cane. Second, the thinner ferrule walls at the serration allow for a smoother transition of energy from the butt to tip when you are casting your bamboo flyrod

Ferrules ready to be glued to the rodshaft.

Since the male ferrule is slightly oversized, you want to uniformly remove just enough metal from the male ferrule slide so that it fits firmly into the female ferrule. ..... a cup of coffee and out into the sunshine, do not need to be working in the basement for this job

Turning cork grips.

After a long winter and a late cold spring its nice too finaly reach the final stages of the three rods i'm bulding this winter. So last night it was time too try out some new styles on the corkgrips for the rods.

A simple rig consisting of a hand drill and a bit support that the rod can lie in.
A rig that works really well if you do not have a lathe.

The nearest rod is a Garrison 209 7'5" 5wt with a slightly different shape of the corkgrip that Garrison used to make on his single-handed rods. The rod in the middle is a Eusties Edward's 7' 4wt, and the last one is a Leonard 40 "Letort" 8' 4wt.