It all starts with a 12 foot culm of bamboo

Bamboo Rod Build Part 1-Splitting Cane

With the understanding that this kind of detail may be far too tedious and uninteresting to some individuals, I'll title each of these segments as "Bamboo Rod Build Part #" If this is not your thing, by all means avoid these posts.

I've never liked the name "split cane rod". Before I knew anything about bamboo, it made me think the rod itself was easily split or broken. So why is it called split cane? Because a bamboo rod section is made up of six sections of bamboo that are initially split from a bamboo culm, then beveled into 60 degree equilateral triangles, and eventually glue together. Vince Marinaro labeled his rods "Split and glued by..." It would have been more accurate, however, to have labeled them "Split, beveled, and glued by...", because the bevel is the most important part. It's what determines the taper or action of the fly rod. Bamboo rods, IMHO, are significantly less fragile than folklore would have us believe, and far more resilient than manmade materials used to make today's modern graphite fly rods.

The first thing we have to do is to decide if this is to be a 2 pc or 3 pc rod. Since I find nickel silver ferrules a necessary evil that are prone to failure, I dislike three piece rods. For that reason only, this is an easy decision for me. The rod will be a 2 piece.

With the number of rod sections determined as two, I find the node (growth ring) closest mid point on the culm and make a mark one inch on the butt side of that node:


Then, using a hack saw, I cut the culm into two 6 foot sections:


The butt end of each section is now marked to differentiate, tip section blue, butt section black. Notice the wall thickness difference of the two sections:


At this point, if the rod were to be flamed, there would be considerable node filing to be done. Since this rod will be "blond", not flamed, we will proceed to the splitting. I align a six-way bamboo pie splitter at the tip end of each section and, with a quick strike with a rubber mallet, start the first split:


Then each section is numbered to maintain a record of relative positioning:


The spilt is continued down the culm section using the two handled splitter:


The end result is six perfect strips, approximately 1" in width: