It all starts with a 12 foot culm of bamboo

Joel Anderson

Here is a copy of a series of posts my good friend and fisherman Joel Anderson did on the Fly Fishing in Maine web site showing how to make a Bamboo Fly Rod.  He is a very good writter and he does make very fine Bamboo Rods.  I hope all will read this and enjoy what he has done to help show some of the technigues used to make a cane fishing rod.

This story is multi pages long (20) so it is not a short read.

Enjoy

Lee

It all starts with a 12 foot culm of bamboo

By Joel Anderson

The sport of fly fishing and the associated arts of fly tying and rod building have provided me with so much pleasure and so many friendships through the years, I figured it was about time to give back. But how? Then I recently read something that said the most successful volunteers are those who donate their time doing something they love and at which they have some level of skill.

Unfortunately, beyond my professional career, most of my personal skills reside in hobbies of very little value to others. The truth is, if it's trivial and you can't make any money at it, I'm an expert. I can cast a fly into the next county, but as it turns out, there is no money in it. I can tie the heck out of a fly, but the average professional fly tyer makes less money than a migrant farm worker. I can strum a little guitar, but no one is ever going to confuse me with Eric Clapton, or even pay me to play. The one skill I do have that might be worth a little money to others is the ability to build a bamboo fly rod.

With that in mind, I contacted the one person I know who spends an inordinate amount of her time volunteering to help others, Kathy Scott, for advice. Kat was very receptive to the idea of a bamboo rod raffle and we talked about fly fishing related non-profit conservation groups that might benefit the most from the proceeds of a bamboo rod raffle. I really liked the idea of encouraging teenagers who have displayed an interest in fly fishing, so I decided on the Maine Council of Trout Unlimited Trout Camp as the benefactor.

Kat said if I would build the rod, she would contact TU and get them to handle the administrative end of the process. That sounded great to me. Then I hit Kat with a hair-brained idea of chronicling the process of building the bamboo rod, soup to nuts, on FFIM to generate some interest. Perhaps we could solicit input from the members on taper choice, wrap colors, hardware, spacer wood, and the like. "If you want to go to all that work, I think it would be great to educate people at the same time." Kat expressed with enthusiasm.

So now the task at hand is to turn a 12 foot piece of bamboo into something both beautiful and useful; something that another fisherman might cherish as something truly special. Something that may serve as a family heirloom to be passed along to a son or daughter one day. My goal is to have the rod ready to be viewed and cast at Superboo. That's less than two months away, so I better start splitting cane. Ever wonder why bamboo rods are so expensive? You are about to get a glimpse.

It all starts with a 12 ft bamboo culm: