Building A Custom Cane/Bamboo Fly Rod Step By Step
Part # 3 Prepping your planes and rough planing a set of blanks
PLANING FORMS
All you need is a few simple tools and two sets of planing forms. A rough planing set for planing a 60* equilateral triangles and a steel finishing set for planing your final taper.
ROUGHING AND FINISHING FORMS
Roughing forms are relatively easy to build. Thomas Pennrose has an excellent webpage http://www.thomaspenrose.com/bamboo.htm that shows how to build both roughing and finishing forms. There are a number of companies on the net offering steel tapering forms. The set I have now I bought from Lon Blauvelt. http://members.tripod.com/~BamBooFlyRods/. There is also a list of suppliers in the back of Wayne Cattanach’s book " Hand crafting Bamboo Fly Rods". You will also need a set of planes. You can get by with two. One for roughing and one for finishing, but I would suggest at least three. One for roughing, one for planing to within a few thou of the final size and a scraper plane to finish to the final dimension. I now have four and I use all of them all the time. The standard rod makers plane is the 9 1/2" Stanley fully Adjustable block plane with an adjustable mouth forward sole adjustment which is essential for the precision in rod making. You can buy a Stanley at most building suppliers for about $85.00 CAD , though it may have to be ordered in and it will take quite a bit of finishing work to fine tune so that it is suitable for rod making. Lie Nielson also offers a 9 1/2" fully adjustable very high quality block plane that has the option of a .003 rod makers grove machined into the sole that stops you from cutting into your forms.
LIE NEILSON 9 1/2" WITH GROOVE
They also offer their small rod makers 212 scraper plane with the same option. Lie Nielson uses a much thicker harder steel for their blades and they will hold an edge almost three times as long as the Stanley. With the Lie Nielson planes there is no fine tuning needed. These planes are perfect right out of the box. If cost is not a factor I very highly recommend Lie Nielson planes.
LIE NIELSON 212 SMALL SCRAPER {This plane will take a cut finer than angle hair}
SHOWING ROD MAKERS 0.003 GROOVE
FINE TUNING YOUR PLANE.
Planing a rod blank is very precise work. It’s not like planing the edge off a pocket door. You will be working in measurements of thousandths of an inch, so your planes sole or face needs to be perfectly flat.Some planes are worse out of the box than others. Stanley’s are made for carpentry work therefore the tolerances are not that accurate from the factory so we need to modify them for rod making. In order to accomplish this you will need to sand the bottom with aluminum oxide sand paper. First you will need a perfectly flat surface. Either a piece of Plexiglas, arboreta counter top or dropglass {aquarium glass} Starting with 400 grit, lay a sheet abrasive side up. Remove the blade from your plane and hold the plane fat on the sandpaper. Using a little pressure, move it back and forth a few strokes, then turn the plane over and look at the bottom. You will easily be able to see where the sandpaper has and has not come in contact with the planes surface. Keep sanding until the entire sole of the plane shows that it has come in contact with the sandpaper then switch each time to a finer grit. Starting with 400 to 600 to 800 to 1500. By the time you reach 1500 grit, your plane should have a perfectly flat mirror finish. You should be able to see your reflection in the surface.
MIRROR FINISHED PLANE SOLE
Next check to see there are no burrs on the inside of the plane where the blade sits against the machined beveled lip. If there are any remove them with a fine needle file but be careful not to change the angle of the lip. lightly oil the threaded moving parts, reassemble the plane on a soft surface like a towel. Never leave your planes resting face down. Always rest them on their side like the photos of the ones on my bench. I keep a rag and a can of 3 in 1 oil on my bench and oil the surfaces of my planes after every planing session.
SHARPENING
Planing bamboo is like planing concrete. It is full of minute particles of silica sand that it picks up from the soil while it is growing. Because of this your blades need to be surgically sharp and you will need to sharpen them often, so I suggest you get good at it. Wayne Cattanach covers this process in-depth in his book. Here are the Basic steps.
{SCARY SHARP METHOD}
Sharpening is done with very much the same method as surfacing your plane. You can either sharpen your planes using sandpaper or a sharpening stone. If you use a stone, you will need a combination water stone. Recommended 1000 and 6000 grit.
If you are using the sandpaper method you will be using progressively finer grits of sandpaper.400 to 600 to 800 to 1500 etc. Either method you chose you will be able to shave with the blade when you are done. A standard 9 1/2" block plane blade is sharpened at 30* You will need a plane blade jig. A devise to hold the blade at the proper angle while sharpening. The ones with a roller baring are the best kind. You can pick one up at Canadian Tire for about $20.00 I bought mine at Busy Bee for only $10.00.
PLANE SHARPENING JIG
Using the same flat surface glass or countertop, place the blade in the jig so that the angled surface of the blade sits perfectly flat on the surface of the sandpaper or stone. Starting out on the coarsest paper, make only a couple strokes and check to see if the entire blade angle surface is in contact. If you need to, adjust it accordingly. With gentle pressure , roll the jig back and forth on your sharpening surface progressing to finer and finer grits of paper. As you are sharpening you will be forming a slight rollover burr on the back of the blade. This is removed by flipping the blade on it’s back flat against the sanding surface and make two or three back and forth passes to remove the burr. Repeat the above steps until the cutting angle and back of the blade show a mirror finish.. You should be able to read the Sunday paper.
Your blade needs to be sharp enough that it will easily shave the hair off your arm with a single stroke. Unfortunately I no longer have any hair left on my arms to demonstrate this for you, and I’m not about to drop trap and shave my legs, so you will just have to take my word for it. Practice makes perfect.
There are two methods of making a cane fly rod. Hand planing and machine beveling. So which is the better method? Many rod builders will tell you that a hand planed rod is a better quality rod than a machine beveled rod. They will tell you things like their rods have much tighter tolerances, or their tapers are more accurate. Horse Hockey! Simple logic and common scenes will tell you, you can cut a much cleaner, straighter line using a table saw and a fence, than you could ever hope to accomplish freehand with a hand saw. It’s no different in rod building. Some of the best cane rods made are machined. Ron Kusse, whom I consider to be one of the finest cane rod makers alive today is fully automated. He uses every machine he can get his hands on and his finished rods are second to none. Another one of my all-time favorite makers is Walter Brunner of Austria. Walter is now in his 80s and has been building rods for most of his life and has built some of the finest rods you will ever lay your eyes on, and he too uses machines. Everything from his rotating ring of fire for tempering the cane, to his custom built beveling machines. Any rod maker who is in the business of building rods to make money will eventually go to using machines, but for the workshop hobbyist, hand planing is definitely the way to go. It is much less expensive and you don’t need to be a genius to figure it out. Anyone can easily learn to hand plane a set of blanks.
ROUGH PLANING A SET OF BLANKS
Rod blanks are made in sections. Each section, in the case of a hexagonal six sided rod which is what we are building is made up of six identical strips called splines. These splines must first be roughed out on a set of primary or roughing forms. A set of roughing forms is no more than a flat planed piece of hardwood about 48" long with a 60* groove routered down the centerline. A deeper groove on one side for butt sections and a shallower groove on the other side for tip sections. Some better made roughing forms like the ones I use will also have an initial 80* grove for edging your strips prior to planing them to 60*. This is helpful and makes things a little easier but it is not a necessity. You will need a measuring device. Either a micrometer or a set of veneer calipers that measure in thousandths of an inch.
They are not expensive. Dial calipers will run you about $24.00. A good digital set is around $75.00. You will also need a 60* machinist gauge to check your triangles. $2.00. You will be planing on the raw split edges of your cane strips. You never plane the enamel or outer surface of the strip. First find the truest {straightest} side of one of your butt section strips. Lay the strip in the grove so that the enamel sits against one side of the groves surface. This will leave one raw edge facing up. When setting your plane for the initial rough planing is not all that important that the depth of cut is all that precise. I usually set my roughing plane so that it will take off a nice even unbroken curl the entire length of the strip. I try to set it for the maximum depth cut it will take without binding or catching. This is mostly a matter of trial and error but with a little practice it becomes almost second nature. I can pretty much look at a plane set and know how much it will remove. I was lucky in the fact that I have a lot of experience building fine furniture and a long history with plane irons. Practice setting your plane and planing on a scrap piece of clear pine before you try planing bamboo strips. You will quickly learn what you can and cannot do with your plane.
Ok Ready? Now drop everything you are doing and go out and buy the biggest badass box of Band-Aids you can find! LOL Just kidding. All you really need are a set of leather work gloves but make sure you wear them or you will definitely get cut. I can’t stress this enough. I hate wearing gloves when I am working on anything, but I very quickly learned my lesson planing bamboo. As you are planing and your strip is slowly forming a triangle. The strip literally becomes a three sided blade and it will cut you slicker than a razor. A sudden slip with a little bit of force behind it is enough to cut you to the bone, and for some reason they hurt like hell, fester like crazy and take forever to heal. I am still babying cuts I got over a month ago. Because I hate gloves so much I recently started wearing finger stalls but I am still getting the odd cut. Slivers and splinters from bamboo are also very nasty. They usually go very deep and break off when you try to get them out. OUCH!!!!
The first few planing stroked will go very rough and difficult until you have formed a flat surface for the sole of the plane to run on. This is normal. Once you form a true flat surface, planing will become much easier. The traditional way of planing is to hold the strip with one hand from behind and plane forward with the other. Because I like both hands on my plane for better control, I use lock down pressure clamps to hold the strip in place. Plane a couple strokes on one side, then flip the strip over by flipping it end for end then plane the other raw split side of the strip using the same amount of strokes, all the while keeping the enamel side against the form surface. I usually plane three strokes then flip my piece and check it with my 60* machine gauge.
ROUGH PLANING A BUTT STRIP
CHECKING ANGLE WITH 60* GAUGE
When I get the strip down near it’s final dimensions, I switch to my finishing plane that is precisely set at 0.005. I flip the piece every single stroke. This helps to keep my 60* angles true and even on both sides. plane the strip down until it is level with the surface of the forms. If you are using a grooved plane you will plane it down until the plane stops taking a cut. Check your angles and measurements often. You can check the measurements using your veneer, but be careful not to crush the delicate edges of the spline. You will need to plane six of these triangle splines for a but section, then flip the form over and plane another six on the shallow side for a tip section. Twelve if you are making a two tip rod. Don’t get frustrated. Patience is the key. If things are not going smooth, your doing something wrong. Stop and figure out the problem. Take your time and relax. Kick back and crack a cold one. Your not in a race. The more time and care you take with your initial 60* triangles the easier the rest of the job will go and you will come out with a much better final result.
Part # 4 Planing A Taper And Finishing A Set Of Blanks
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