Building A Custom Cane/Bamboo Fly Rod Step By Step
Part # 4 Planing A Taper And Finishing A Set Of Blanks
Binding
When you have all your strips, which are called splines rough planed down to equilateral 60* triangles they are bound together with a nylon binding cord either by hand or using a simple devise called a binder that holds the blank together while it wraps it. You can buy a binder for anywhere from $100.00- $200.00 or you can build one yourself. I built mine for about $20.00 and it works great.
A BUT SECTION AFTER GOING THROUGH THE BINDER
HEAT TREATING
Once the rough blanks have gone through the binder, they are placed on a flat surface and straightened by gently rolling them with the palms of your hands, starting in the center and working your way out. Once they are relatively straight, they are put into a preheated curing oven and baked at 375*, for 7 minutes. 3/12 minutes on one side and 3 1/2 minutes on the other.
BLANKS TEMPERED IN MY HOMEMADE OVEN
Heat treating the rough blanks does a number of things. It removes the moisture content from the strips, It also relaxes the bamboo, removes any long bends or sweeps in the blanks and it tempers the cane and makes it stiffer. Next the blanks are unwrapped from the binding cord and it’s time to set up the finishing forms for planing the final taper.
FORMS
Finishing forms are made up of two 6′ long perfectly flat surface machined pieces of 3/4" cold rolled key stock with a 60* groove milled or filed down the center. A shallow groove on one side for planing tips, and a deeper groove on the other for planing butt and mid sections. They are held together by a series of machine screws and aligned with steel dowel pins.
They work on a push pull principal. There are two machine bolts at 5" intervals along their entire length of the forms called stations. One bolt pushes the forms apart, the other pulls the forms together. It is at these stations that you set up your taper. The taper of a rod is a series of measurements of the rods diameter in thousandth’s on an inch taken at 5" intervals along the rods entire length starting at the tip and working toward the butt.
A SET OF TAPERING FORMS
You can either choose to make your own forms, or to buy them. There are a number of sites on the net that either sell them or show you how to build them . There is also plans and suppliers in Wayne Cattanach’s book but it’s not as simple and easy as it looks I assure you. They need to be perfectly aligned and you are working with zero tolerance, so I suggest if you have any doubt in your ability, just go out and buy them. I have both mechanical and marine engineering degree and a little machine shop experience and I still messed mine up. They looked perfect when they where finished, but they went askew and started to bind when I tried to adjust them. I tried fixing them. I re-drilled and re-tapped them bigger a second time and using a finer thread machine bolt but they where not any better. A friend of mine is now trying to repair them for me by re-drilling the holes and using heli coils but I doubt they will ever be any good for building rods. I think my drill press must have been pushed out of square from the pressure, but I’m not really sure what happened. Anyway, it was a very costly mistake. I now have a $300.00 paper weight. Finally I ended up buying a set from Lon Blauvelt in Main for an additional $375.00 U.S. He has the lowest cost forms on the net, but they are excellent quality. I have no problem turning out 2 & 3 wt rods using Lon’s new improved forms. http://members.tripod.com/~BamBooFlyRods/planing.html
DIAL INDICATOR
You will also need a tool called a dial indicator with a stationary base and a 60* point that measures in 0.001 of an inch. You can buy an indicator ready made from Lon for $125.00 U.S. or make your own from a 1" dial indicator for about $50.00 and by machining your own base. Regardless, you will still have to purchase a 60* point and you will probably only save a few bucks.
60* DIAL INDICATOR WITH BASE
SETTING FORMS
You can take the taper from any existing rod by simply measuring it. This is the full diameter of the rod measured at 5" intervals along it’s length. Wayne Cattanach has listed over fifty tapers in the back of his book.
TAPERS
Above is a page from the back of Wayne’s book showing typical rod taper measurements and a stress curve graph. You can see where I have penciled in the new figures after dividing the measurements by half. We are not planing an entire rod section at one time, we are only planing one spline {triangular strip} at a time which is equal to half the diameter of the finish taper so we need to divide those measurements by half then transfer those numbers to the stations on our forms using your dial indicator.
TRANSFERRING MEASUREMENTS TO THE FORMS
Starting with a closed form at the tip end loosen off the draw screws at the first three stations. Take the smallest measurement, use your dial indicator to measure the setting and then adjust the push screw to push the forms apart until you reach the desired setting. Then lightly snug up the draw screw to hold the setting. Then move up 5" to the next station and repeat the process with the next measurement. At each station, I write the measurements down on my forms and draw a line across with a square. Do this for the entire length of the section you are planing. Each time you move up and adjust the next station, it will slightly throw out the measurement on the previous station you just set, so you have to go back and fine tune each station over and over, as many times as necessary. This process can take over an hour. One note I should mention here, if you are using a grooved rodmakers plane, you need to allow 0.003 or however deep the groove is at each station to compensate. Once your form is set you are ready to plane the final taper.
PLANING A TAPER
Remove the binding cord and once again separate the blank into six strips. I should mention here that I color code each strip with a different color of felt pen on the end and I have a small color chart on my wall that corresponds. Strip #1 red, strip # 2 blue, # 3 green etc…… This way I can never get the pieces mixed up. I will always know which order they go back into to form the rod section once I am done planing.
TEMPERED BLANK UNBOUND FOR FINAL PLANING
COLOR CODED SECTION
To start your planing, Lay the first strip in the forms with the enamel side against one wall of the form. Same as when you rough planed your strips. You never plane the enamel side. I generally leave my strips or splines two plane lengths longer than the actual final length of the rod section. This allows me to clamp down the ends and still leaves room for me to fit in the length of my plane behind the first station and allows me to plane the entire length of the strip in one smooth pass using both hands without stopping.
PLANING A TAPER
If you don’t clamp the strip down on the end, you will have to plane with one hand and hold the strip with the other, so you will first have to hold the strip in front of the plane till you get it started, then move your hand behind the plane and hold down the strip and plane with one hand. My way is much easier faster and smoother and I have a lot more control over the plane. I clamp the strip down at the thick end then slide my fingers along the strip pressing it down into the form and then clamp it at the other end.
With a freshly sharpened blood curdling sharp plane, set at a depth of 0.004 try taking one pass off one side of the strip. If it goes smoothly you have your plane set properly. If it goes rough or jittery you either have your plane set too deep or it is not sharp enough. Once you get your plane set up properly it should be able to take off a single curl the entire length of the strip without breaking the chip or stopping and with very little forward pressure. If you have to force the plane, it is still too dull. Proper sharpening is the key and it takes some time to learn to do it right. With a good sharp blade, I can sometimes plane 4 or even 5 splines before I need to re-sharpen. You will start out by holding your strip one station back on your forms so you do not over-plane your strips. Plane three passes on one side then flip the strip over and plane three passes on the other. Check your measurements often using a pair of digital calipers and check your triangles using your 60* machinists gauge. Repeat this process until you are within 0.003 of the surface of the form or until the plane stops cutting if you are using a grooved plane. Never ever back draw your plane back over the strip. Always lift it right off at the end of each pass and bring it right back to the starting point or you will be sorry. When planing a tip section for say a 3wt rod, the tip of each spline is going to be as small as the Queen’s nose on a Canadian penny and very delicate. By back-drawing the plane over the strip you can easily catch it and snap it in two and have to start all over again right from the very start like way back in Part #1 when you split your first culm. Not only this, but if the new section is split from a different culm it will change the characteristics of the rod and that tip will not match the other one. It will have a very pronounced spine. You could maybe live with it yourself, but you would not be able to sell the rod to a customer. This next stage of planing is more precise. Back your plane off to 0.003 and move the strip up to it’s proper station and mark it lightly with a pencil to line it up with the station. Now take your plane and using two passes on each side plane your strip down to within 0.003 of the forms at the proper station and then finish off to the final dimension by flipping the strip with the enamel side up and removing part of the enamel with a hand scraper, a dog grooming blade or an actual scraper plane and then finishing it off with a fine sanding block. Repeat this entire process for each of the six strips that make up a rod section. Twice if you are making two tips. Then flip the forms over to the wider grove on the other side and reset your forms to the taper dimensions for the wider butt section and repeat the process all over again. Each section of rod takes 6 strips. Each of these strips must be the exact same measurement along the entire length as the others when you are finished. If they are not the exact same they are no good. They are garbage. You might as well throw them away and start again. For a 2 PC 2 tip rod you will need to plane 18 separate strips. For a 3 PC 2 tip rod you will need to plane 24 strips etc….
GLUING
Gluing is an extremely messy job and the one I dislike the most. There are a number of different glues available. I use a glue called URAC 185 because I get a longer working time. It is a two part glue made up of a liquid resin and a powder catalyst to set the resin. It must be mixed precisely 4 parts resin to 1 part catalyst and must be measured by weight not volume.
Once all the strips have been planed, they are taped together in color coded order side by side with scotch tape and rolled to form the actual rod section. After covering your working surface with old news paper the tape is slit open with a razor blade and the formed rod section is laid open for gluing.The glue is then generously spread using a tooth brush. Then the strip is re-rolled again to form a rod section and once again put through the binder to hold it together.
A TIP SECTION GLUED AND RUN THROUGH THE BINDER
Then the access glues is removed and the section goes through a process of straitening, by a series of rolling and twisting on a flat surface until they are perfectly straight. This is the most crucial point you must get the section perfectly straight and remove any twisting before the resin sets. It gives you a working time of about 20 minutes. Then the sections are hung to dry in my dust free cabinet for about 8 hours, at which point I remove the binding while the glue is still somewhat soft and check the blank for straightness and glue lines and gently sand off the access glue. I then re-bind the section, this time by hand and let it hang to dry for another 8 hours. By doing this it saves me having to sand off all the binding cord at the end. When the section is completely cured I simply slide the binding cord off the blank do a little light sanding making sure not to round off the edges and it is finished.
CURING IN MY DUST FREE WALL CABINET
FINISHED SET OF TIPS AFTER SANDING
Impregnating
Impregnating is a simple process. The blank is placed in a pressure rated section of ABS tubing with a screw on air tight top. and half filled with an impregnating solution called Nelsonite. A pressure hose is then connected to a quick coupler threaded and epoxied in the end of the tube and the tube is laid flat on the floor and pressurized driving the impregnating solution into the finished blank and chasing out the impurities and filling any voids.
IMPREGNATING SYSTEM
Then the blanks are removed, polished clean and once again hung in the cabinet to cure until it is time to finish the rod.
FINAL CURING BEFORE FINISHING
The blank is now finished and it is impervious to the elements. If you wanted you could fish it as it is for the next 25 years without finishing the rod in spar varnish and it would never decay.
CLOSE-UP OF FINISHED BLANK {VERY CLEAN NO GLUE LINES}
MATCHING TIPS JUST FINISHED FOR MY NEW GRAND 3WT
A 2 PC 2 TIP 7′ 6" 5WT FINISHED SET OF BLANKS WITH ROUGH HANDLE FITTED
THIS ROD IS BEING BUILT FOR A CUSTOMER IN VOORDEN HOLLAND
Next, Part # 5 TURNING A CUSTOM REELSEAT AND GRIP, SPACING GUIDES AND SETTING FERRULES
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