In order to get the best out of the split bamboo rods advanced heat treating and hollowing techniques are used. The bamboo culms are split with a Wandishin star splitter and planed with the plane Tom Morgan (former owner of the R.L. Winston Rod Company ) developed. The cane strips are then treated in such a way that the nodes are not damaged and the grain follows a perfect straight line over the fly rod blank. Much work had to be done when I started to make my own tapers. Making and finishing bamboo fly rods is one thing, but I also wanted to get the best out of the bamboo and I was not really satisfied with the taper calculating procedures that were known. For instance Garrison did a great job, but his calculations did not really take the actual bending into account. Since line control is everything in fly fishing, my opinion is that if I do not know how the fly rod behaves/ bends during a casting cycle, then how can I really design a new taper. testing and analyses
| | Design Philosophy | | Hollowing |
When comparing quadrate, hexagon, pentagon and circular cross-sections, with bamboo as a working material, the quadrates are superior to the other cross-sections from view points of lightest weight, lowest aerodynamic profile, stiffness and lowest stress level. Quadrate bamboo fly fishing rods never really found the market. The only reason for the quadrate's absence was that they are considerably more difficult to make. They are more labor intensive and thus less cost effective for the commercial manufacturers. For example Hiram Leonard started his career as a split cane rod builder making quadrate bamboo fly rods. His opinion was that they performed much better, but from a commercial point of view, he also settled for the six strip design. design philosophy | |
In order to perfect the design the rods are hollow built with a whole new hollowing technique. As you might know or have read in my article about - design philosophy,- the material around the virtual neutral axis in a flyrod has no use other than extra weight. So, If I want to design split bamboo fly rods with perfection in the back of my mind, most of this inside material has to be removed. Ever since I started building split bamboo fly rods I wanted to try and make them as light as possible. While Stoner, Powell and many others, developed great methods I still felt that there was room for improvement, that I could remove (much) more material. hollowing |
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