July, 2011 (Volume 44)

D e d i c a t e d t o t h e M a k i n g o f F i n e

B a m b o o F l y R o d s

Inside this issue:

The First Cast 6

Book Review: Larry Tusoni’s RodDNA Designer

10

The 18 Strip Rod 18

Inexpensive Binding 32

And Now for Something Completely Different

38

Ferrules — Last but not Least

55

EW Edwards DeLuxe, and Falling off the Cliff

63

Joe’s Rod Shop Tutorial Drawn Caps and Rings

68

Photos Courtesy of Matt Schliske

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Earl “Red” Coakley — 2511 25th Street — Nitro WV 25901 Redcoakley@suddenlink.net

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The First Cast Todd Talsma, Editor

Well, I spent a good weekend with a lot of great rodmakers a couple of

Power Fibers

Online Magazine

Editor

Todd Talsma

Contributors

Joe Arguello

Chris Bogart

Billy Carter

James (JED) Dempsey

Jack Holdridge

Robert Kope

Christian Strixner

Copy Editors

Bret Reiter Carol Talsma Mark Wendt

Advisory Board

Russ Gooding Bob Maulucci

Bob Nunley J.D. Wagner

For more info contact:

Todd Talsma power.fibers@bamboorodmaking.com

8412 North Maple Court Zeeland MI 49464

616.772.5043 Copyright © 2011 by Power Fibers

weeks ago. The annual Rodmakers at Grayrock gathering was once again held at the Rayburn Lodge in Grayling, Michigan. The gathering was the 23rd through the 25th of June. The weather for the gathering wasn’t too bad, but it was tough for fishing. We were able to cast a lot of great fly rods and the program was also very interesting. I’ve said to many people that the most important part of these gatherings is that it gives the attendees the opportunity to meet and talk to some of the best rodmakers around. I look forward to renewing the friendships that I’ve had the pleasure to cultivate over the years of going to various gather-ings. The rodmakers and spouses that I’ve been able to meet have been some of the greatest people that I could have ever asked for. If you have-n’t made it to one of the gatherings, please make it a priority. You won’t regret attending one!! I know I’ve mentioned working on a nodeless rod in past issues. Well, take a look at the article by Christian Strixner on making an 18 strip rod! I can’t imagine the number of splices in one of those rods! More power to anyone who’s thinking of making one of those rods. Gotta love the thought process that goes into the design though.

I can always use more ideas, feel free to contact me. If you have a sugges-tion about improving Power Fibers, drop me an email at the following e m a i l a d d r e s s : p o w e r .fibers@bamboorodmaking.com

Warning!

Because many aspects of bam-boo rodmaking bring the maker in contact with machinery, bladed tools, volatile chemicals and gases, the editor and advi-sory board of Power Fibers ask you to exercise the utmost cau-tion when attempting to build or mimic any devices or activi-ties mentioned in this magazine.

Please have any devices you build and use in your shop checked by a safety professional before attempting to use such devices. This is to guarantee your personal safety and that of others around you.

If you choose to build any de-vice or use any technique found in this magazine, you are doing so at your own risk.

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Alaska Custom Cane

Custom Engraved Reel Seats

Oil Artwork by Rhonda VanZandt

Jeff VanZandt also conducts bamboo rodmaking classes using the Morgan Hand Mill

Contact the VanZandts at kayaonekaya@yahoo.com

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Book Review: Larry Tusoni’s RodDNA Designer Review and Introduction by Chris Bogart

This new software program and book marks another leap forward for anyone who wants to design bamboo fly rods. After Larry Tusoni created RodDNA, we had a series of long talks on what a real rod design program should be. Up to then, everything has been to enable someone to engage in rod tweaking. The conceptual new program would give a rodmaker a total design environment along the lines of Adobe Photoshop where you can build complex items using basic building blocks and manipulating them. This is the approach Larry took in giving you a taper design framework that will allow you to generate completely new tapers and manipulate any taper in a very creative man-ner. I should note at this time, that RodDNA Designer is not for the novice. The user must have experi-ence modifying tapers, building those tapers and then evaluating rods to use the tools he has pro-vided. This program is intended for the experienced rodmaker who wants to break out from build-ing the same old tapers, designing their own comprehensive set of complementary tapers or who want, to experiment and is interested in advancing the art of taper design. The book (265 pages) is a very comprehensive tutorial into how to use the software program. This alone makes it the best documented taper program around. The book will help you take advantage of RodDNA Designer capabilities with the least amount of hassle. Larry also provides his insights into rod design along the way.

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The foreword is by Tom Morgan, who quickly grasped the power, capabilities and potential for RodDNA Designer. He is an experienced rod designer who really appreciated the power of RodDNA Designer gave him to further his rod designs. It is a tool that we all wish we had many years ago. This program is more than an evolutionary step forward. It leaps forward and provides capabilities that most people had not considered before. At one level there are things that people have come to cherish. The stress and dimension graphs are there. But two new graphs are added – the delta (changes between stations) and deflection (bend of the rod) graphs.

Fig. 1 — RodDNA Designer Main Screen The rod designs are separate files from your standard taper files in the RodDNA models database. You can generate from a design file a taper to easily add to the RodDNA models database. Con-versely you can import existing tapers into a design file. The goal of this program is to give you the capability to generate a design and then manipulate it in many ways. One nice thing is that the pro-gram allows you to undo operations if you are not pleased with the results. The initial taper design generation can be done from a number of built-in generators – linear / para-bolic / progressive, etc. You can manipulate the basic generator parameters for each based upon your desires. I found that I especially liked the parabolic (parabola) generator and I modified the percent rise (vertex) value that produced an initial taper that I felt comfortable with based upon my experience. Once you have a basic taper, then you can apply any of the built-in modifiers or create your own custom modifiers. To me, this is the real power of the program. You can create a modifier and link

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modifiers to manipulate the taper. You can make a strong tip, delicate tip, swelled butt, step-downs across ferrule or even guide stations. You can mix built in modifiers and your new modifiers. This gives you the capability to have your own unique set of modifiers to apply to your tapers.

Fig. 2 — Custom Modifier Editor Window I built modifiers for providing step-downs in both two and three piece rods. I made the step-downs based upon my preferences. One of the modifiers that Larry has was the one I did for doing a swell butt up to a preset dimension - .365” – the same as Lyle Dickerson. Larry allows you to modify that number when you apply the modifier. Again, you are not locked in to someone else’s preferences.

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So when you have a taper design that you feel comfortable with, you can compare this design against your other designs.

Fig. 3 — Comparing Designs

There is also the unique capability to search existing tapers in the RodDNA data base. Now is the time to see if you reinvented the wheel or find out who are your taper’s nearest cousins. Larry has provided a totally awesome capability to search and compare your design against all tapers in the

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models database – all 858 of them! Under tools you can select the menu item “Determine Closest model/taper” using any one of the following (they give different results) – Taper, Delta, Stress, De-flection or Slope values. This produces a result of the top 12 matches in match order – you can now view those tapers and compare them. Pretty cool stuff. I did find that certain tapers in the models database kept showing up. It is well worthwhile to look at these tapers.

Fig. 4 — Matches to Taper Search

Fig. 5 — Retrieved Matches Displayed in RodDNA to Evaluate. (Continued on page 15)

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I have shown my Beta release to accomplished rodmakers who all said, “Where can I get this?!” The capabilities are that impressive. The program and book speak for themselves. They are far ahead of anything else you may consider or currently have. So when you want to take that next step forward and delve into serious taper design and explora-tion, this is the only tool I would recommend for you. You can get a taste for tapers with Hexrod and even more so with RodDNA, but with RodDNA Designer takes you to another whole level all together. It is well worth the money. If nothing else, the book will help you understand taper design in ways you were not aware of. With the software program, a whole new vista in taper design, analysis and manipulation has been opened to the serious rodmaker.

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The 18 Strip Rod Text and photos by Christian Strixner

The heritage of innovation - or - the story of the 18 strip rod! All over the world the number of rod makers is growing faster than bamboo in China can grow – which is fantastic! New, skilled artisans join the community in every part of the world each year. Garrison and Charmichael’s Master´s Guide to Making a Bamboo Fly Rod gained the status of a bi-ble. Not only the new disciples follow Garrison´s dogma religiously. Based on Garrison´s profound knowledge, many rods have seen the light of day once they emerged from handymen´s basements. To even outperform a cane rod, based on Garrison´s knowledge, makers experiment with many dif-ferent parameters up to today. Oven temperature, time of exposure to heat, glue, varnish, impregna-tion, different configurations such as quads, hexes, pentas, twisted rods, and of course different ta-pers and more tapers have been considered. Still, the key features of such rods stay the same. Nodes are pressed and straightened and then the splines are brought into a geometric form, which allows for gluing a certain number of splines to-gether. Usually a single culm is used to make a rod. So why would you want to reinvent the wheel?

All has been tried, time tested, bullet proof – pe-riod! Is this really true? Is there no room for develop-ment, for new groovy ideas? Have we seen the end of rod development in cane rods? I think, we ha-ven´t! In the late eighties somewhere in Franconia in an-other basement of a skilful handyman there was plenty of room for new and groovy ideas, new de-velopments! Ludwig Reim (left) set out to find a completely new way of making a bamboo flyrod! Being a precision engineer by trade, Reim was looking for a new approach in the whole process. He soon lost patience in straightening nodes and dealing with pith! The rodmaker’s enemy for a good rod, he said, are the insufficient properties of nodal areas and along with the nodes the unavoid-able component of useless pith. Convinced of bam-

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boo in general as an outstanding rodmaking material, he was looking for a way to avoid nodes – pith annoyed him at least as much. I met Ludwig Reim in the early 90s for the very first time, when he presented his rods to a wider audience at flyfairs in Germany. I was intruiged by his manufacturing method. Unfortunately I lost track of him, but as luck would have it we ran into each other at the very first European Canerod gathering held in 2006 in Sarnen, Switzerland. When we started talking about his manufacturing method, you could instantly see his shining eyes and you could feel his ardent love for cane and the confidence in his work. Ludwig kindly invited me to visit him in his workshop and of course I accepted his invitation with great anticipation. Be-ing a woodworker myself, I’m familiar with tools that can be used to achieve tight tolerances. But what I saw in Ludwig´s workshop was on a different scale – entirely. So let´s have a closer look at Ludwig´s method. He was never completely happy with the calculations of Garrison. What bothered him was the fact that bamboo changes its quality along the culm. His aim was to utilize only the very best powerfi-bers in the outer layers of a culm. He wanted to find a way to make a rod of more consistent bam-boo quality from tip to butt. To do the first step he decided that he wanted to build rods without the pesky nodes as he didn´t regard them as God´s gift to the rodmaker at all – in this regard he was in complete agreement with Garrison. Cosequently he cut them out and went the way of spliced joints. This taken by itself was by no means a new method yet. But the next consideration he had was how

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could he achieve a consistent density of power fibers along the entire length of the rod, regardless of the diameter of the cross section? In fact this became one of the key aspects of his in method, patented in 1988. Patent no. DE 3705826 C1 (see below).

The solution was as simple as ingenious. He turned the splices 90 degrees. By doing this, he was able to arrange the power fibers radially from the center outwards. But he still had a lot of pith to deal with. To get rid of the pith he decided to only use the very outer layers of a culm and therefore glued two splices together, the outer surfaces facing towards each other, to form one splice later on. In fact, he started off with making rods of a 12 strip-construction, but he later settled for the 18-strip-rod. Just as a side note, he made a few salmon rods that where made out of 24 strips. So what´s the outcome of such a construction on balance? To give an example: in a way, this method follows the principle of plywood. The more layers you glue together the more resistant the material becomes. Makers of longbows know this method very well. Have you ever asked yourself why a single splice is so weak and once several splices are lami-nated together they become so powerful? Can you imagine that 18 strips are more powerful than six at the same diameter?

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Now I hear you talking, so many strips and on top of that, all nodeless. So many glued up joints must be very weak. In fact quite the opposite is true! This is one of the soundest compound struc-tures one can imagine. The finished rod blank does resemble a hexagonal shape but as we are deal-ing with 18 strips here, we not only stagger six strips but 18 strips accordingly. As a result, every joint is supported by an adjoining solid part of a strip. So the stress that usually occurs at one spliced joint is spread over three joints. Ludwig Reims considerations are:

1. Elimination of pith 2. Elimination of nodes 3. Extremly sound compound structure 4. Higher recovery speed 5. No more sets 6. Durability 7. Smaller diameter possible 8. Less prone to humidity 9. More consistency in the make 10. Application of power tools

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Six Strip Construction 18 Strip Construction

Six Strip Construction 18 Strip Construction Wrong Construction

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Because Ludwig Reim´s achievement falls into a time when there was no communication on the Internet nor was his work introduced to the English speaking world, his work remains relatively un-known measured on a wider scale. He made approximately 130 rods in his career as an active rod-maker. His rods gained quite some popularity in Germany under the brandname “Octavia.” Reim gifted us with a rodmaking technique that is so unique that I would place him on the same level with the great makers of all times. Nowadays, Ludwig spends his time on the river rather than making rods! And when he sees a rising trout, you can instantly see his shining eyes and can feel his ardent love for cane and flyfishing! If you consider making an 18-strip rod, take your time, be patient, and think twice before you do the next step! Happy planing! Christian Strixner A rough and short description of the process:

Cut out nodes (Continued on page 23)

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Make splices

Heat treat splices

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Straighten splices if necessary

Square splices up

Cut angles for spliced joints

Glue internodal segments together until you get the desired length for your rod

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Consider that you will have to stagger these strips

Glue strips together and plane according to the drawings To plane the necessary angles you will need a beveller that will accommodate modules with the ac-cording grooves and one that is precisely adjustable within only a few hundreds of a millimeter.

Footnote: To make the working steps more obvious I decided to not go the way of photography, as I’m not a professional photographer and could not provide the necessary images. Instead I thought it is a good idea to partly make composite photographs to make the steps more ob-vious! Editor’s note: Christian sent a lot of diagrams of the process. See the next pages for more informa-tion.

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Best fibers Decreasing fiber density from enamel to pith.

Single strip turned 90° Two splices glued together, enamel sides facing toward each other.

Plane into 20° angle

Glue on third strip enamel side fac-ing inwards.

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Plane away top <<< 80° angle

First 60° angle

Second and third 60° angles

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The Difference is obvious!

Only plane from the top! Uniform fiber density from top to bottom.

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Multilaminated Strips (left) Vs. Standard Strips

Three Strips form One Strip

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18 Strips extend all the way to the tips.

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Inexpensive Binding Text and Photos by Billy Carter

I got this idea to bind without a binder from Ray Gould's book first off, so thank you to Ray. It's an inexpensive method of binding using braided sleeve and a rack made from 2 x 4 scraps. My rack is 2' wide and 6' high with hardwood plates on the top and bottom. You will need four open eye bolts w/lag bolt thread for the bottom and four open eye bolts with S.A.E. thread with nuts and washers for the top. The bottom eyes are turned in permanently. On top you drill four holes lined up with the bottom hooks, you insert the eyes from the bottom and turn the nuts on a full width. I use 1/4" sleeve for butts/ big mids and 1/8" for small mids/tips. The cost of sleeve to bind three rod sections is under $5.00, as you only need to buy the amount you need. I get the sleeve from cableorganizer.com. Order more then you think you need as the stretching causes the length to shorten. It's called PET Braided sleeving. The 1/8 is 25 cents a foot and the 1/4 is 28 cents a foot. The first 2 pictures show the top/ bottom of the rack.

This next picture shows the sleeve, relaxed.

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This one shows how the sleeve expands like the old Chinese Finger Puzzles when compressed to-gether. Next you see the sleeve started on the butt end of a rod section. You just push the end of the sleeve against the butt end of a shaft and continue snaking it on. Before doing this, you must roll the sec-tion up and wipe off as much excess glue as you can. I remove the tape as I'm sliding the sleeve on, only leaving the last one or two pieces on the tips.

We see a section encased in sleeve with about a foot and a half of slack over each end. Now you can roll the section to seat the splines together better.

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Now the sections are secured in the rack and under a lot of tension. I use wire rope connectors to make loops in the bottom and top, then turn the top nuts pulling the sleeve really tight.

I use Shell Epon to glue up so I let the sections sit overnight. The next day I take them off and trim the overhang of sleeve at each end to around an inch. Then I slit the overhang in half. Having done that, I just peel the sleeve back over itself and I'm done. I strip the sleeve off before heat treating just so it comes off more easily. I did have a blank that I had to scrape the sleeve off of and though I'd rather not have to do it, it wasn't that hard. I have been toying with the idea of

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resleeving the blank after I scrape the glue off to heat treat the Epon. I would make a rack to fit my oven and after the glue is cured, just save the sleeve to bind the next blank since it would be clean. The sleeve can take a bit over 200 degrees, I'm not exactly sure how much, but enough to cure the glue.

For me this works great. I've only used Epon with this method because it sets up so slowly. This is a big advantage for removal. You can put a lot of pressure on sections with no damage. I think that closes seams also that string binders might leave open. What I like is very little or no twist in the sections. You'll get an occasional small bow, but the results are normally great. The braided sleeve that I use can withstand temperatures of about 230 degrees, so it's not suitable for heat treating in my opinion. I just bundle the pieces together and bind by hand to heat treat. I've never used flaming the inside of the culm to heat treat, but enough people do it that way so I'm sure it works fine. I heat treat my cane at 200 degrees for about 6 hours then I turn my oven up to 375 for about 20 minutes.

60° / 90° Nodeless Splice Clamp I don’t know if you have ever tried to splice rough 60° strips, but I could never get right. These clamps will self-align the splice and put even clamping pressure where it is needed. It’s as easy as splicing 90° sticks, which it will also do.

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homes-sold@comcast.net Shown splicing a 60° Strip.

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And Now for Something Completely Different Text and photos by Robert Kope

I've been riding bicycles a lot longer than I've been making bamboo rods. Like most people, I started riding bicycles as a child. In 1984, I bought a good touring bicycle that I still use to com-mute to work. I've also got a couple of mountain bikes. Since getting into bamboo rodmaking, I have developed a fondness for all things bamboo. I've made bamboo knitting needles for my daughter, mechanical pencils, and a billiard cue, just to name a few. A couple of years ago I came across pictures of the beautiful bamboo bicycle frames of Craig Calfee (www.calfeedesign.com). I really like the whole idea and the look of the bikes, and was intrigued by the challenge of making my own. So, for much the same reasons I got into making bamboo rods, I decided to give it a try. In making bamboo fly rods, there are all kinds of resources out there to help a novice maker get started, and answer all of one's questions. There are many published books, the Rodmakers listserve, a couple of online forums, and this excellent online magazine. When it comes to building a bamboo bicycle frame, you are pretty much on your own. However, there are actually quite a few people who have built them, and the information available online seems to be growing exponen-tially. Bicycles, like fly rods, have their own terminology. Above is a sketch showing some of the main

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features of a traditional diamond bicycle frame, in case you're unfamiliar with the terminology. The diamond shape consists of a main triangle and two rear triangles, one on either side of the rear wheel. These triangles all come together at the seat cluster on the top, and the bottom bracket on the bottom. These two joints are the most complex on the bicycle. Four tubes are joined at each; five at the bottom bracket if you count the bottom bracket shell. All the other joints on the frame only in-volve two tubes. Materials First and foremost, I needed to select the bamboo. I wanted to use black bamboo (Phyllostachys ni-gra) for the frame tubes. A local bamboo store carried black bamboo, so I went down there and looked through their inventory. Most of their inventory in all sizes was split, but after spending about a half hour sorting through poles, I found four in the ¾” -1” size that looked suitable for the stays, and a couple in the 1” – 1 ½” size that looked like they would do for the main tubes (see be-low).

It seemed clear that not all of the frame components could be made from bamboo. In particular, the head tube and bottom bracket shell need to hold bearing races and that kind of strength and precision does not lend itself to whole bamboo tubes. There is also the seat tube which needs to be able to clamp tightly enough on the seat post to support the weight of a rider, a brake bridge to hold the rear

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brake between the seat stays, and the rear drop-outs that secure the rear wheel. In retrospect, it may be possible to make some or all of these high precision and high stress components out of the same composite used to build up the lugs, but I opted for steel.

Most steel parts I got from Nova Cycles (www.cycle-frames.com/bicycle-frame-tubing). They are a bicycle frame builder’s supply that will sell to amateur frame builders, and they carry everything you might need to build a steel, alu-minum, or even titanium frame. However, I didn't see any dropouts in their inventory that looked suitable. Those I wound up ordering from Henry James (www.henryjames.com). He makes lugs and dropouts for custom frame builders, and had some nice looking investment cast stainless dropouts, that looked like they could be modified to work with bamboo stays. It also felt familiar and comforting when I called up to place an order, and Hank answered the phone. He does beautiful work, and offers first-rate service. One of the dropouts had an off-sized plug on it, and when I called him up, I had a new one the next day. The dropouts were also supplied with silver brazing wire to braze them into steel stays. Next, there were all the components that turn a frame into a bicycle: wheels, seatpost, saddle,

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Dropouts with Extensions

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handlebars, headset, fork, handlebar stem, shifters, brake levers, derailleurs, brakes, chain, crank, bottom bracket, and cables. I made up a list of all the parts and started pricing components. The op-tions were staggering, as were the prices. The problems of getting everything compatible and of the correct size seemed overwhelming. I decided that it would be simpler and cheaper to just go out and buy a new bicycle that fit me, and then replace the frame with a bamboo one. This would also solve the problem of figuring out the correct geometry and size of the frame. I opted for a Fuji Newest 3.0 bicycle. Certainly not the highest quality components, but reasonably priced at $700. There was no guarantee that my attempt at building a bamboo frame would work out. In that event I could always reassemble the original bicycle and either ride it or sell it. Finally came the choice of materials to build up the lugs. Craig Calfee's main business is carbon fi-ber bicycles. He made his first bamboo frame in 1998 and naturally used graphite fiber to build up and reinforce the joints. Since then he has started using other fibers as reinforcement, and currently offers graphite, hemp and bamboo fiber reinforced joints. I liked the idea of using bamboo fiber, but when I looked into it, I discovered that in the process of making bamboo fiber, they break down the vascular bundles and separate the individual fibers. This results in a very soft fine fiber, but even the bamboo fiber industry recommends against using bamboo fiber by itself because it is not strong enough to hold up in fabric. I figured that if it wasn't strong enough for fabric, I didn't want to trust it as reinforcement for a bicycle frame. I did a little more research and found out that hemp is sup-posed to be the strongest natural fiber there is, and that the more it is refined, the weaker it becomes. Therefore I found a supplier of hemp fiber (www.hemptraders.com) and placed a minimum order – one kilo of raw, uncombed hemp fiber. It felt a little odd buying a kilo of hemp. I also ordered a kilo of a more processed, combed fiber called hemp sliver because it looked like it would be easier to work with. Finally, I went to a local marine supply and a got a quart of West Systems epoxy (105 resin and 206 hardener), and microfibers to thicken the resin for using it as a glue, and I was ready to get started. Heat treating and stabilizing Having worked with bamboo for several years, I was very concerned about the frame tubes splitting. I no longer routinely put drying splits in culms for rodmaking. A couple of times I have set culms with a greenish tinge to them out in the sun to bleach out the residual chlorophyll and had them split the entire length of the culm within a couple of hours. On dry days the splits would open up more than an inch wide, and on rainy days they would close up tight. The last thing I wanted was to ride my bike to work, and come out of the office at the end of the day to find my frame tubes split. I had some email exchanges with Craig Calfee on the subject and found out that he has had problems with tubes splitting as well. I decided to heat treat the bamboo tubes and try to impregnate them with Pentacryl to stabilize them. My first try, I cut out my frame tubes from the black bamboo poles, leaving all tubes with three or four inches to spare on each end. Then I knocked out the dams at the nodes, so the interior of the tubes could dry at the same rate as the outside, and hung them in my heat gun oven. I raised the temperate very slowly, taking about 3 hours to bring the temp up to about 275 degrees, shut off the heat gun and left them to cool for a couple of hours. When I finally took the tubes out to inspect them, I found that every one of the main tubes had split the entire length, and the seat stays and

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chain stays had splits at all the nodes. I went down to the bamboo store to buy some more and found that they decided to stop carry-ing larger diameter black bamboo because their entire inventory split. I tried unsuccessfully to locate another source locally, and finally Andy Royer suggested Frank's Cane and Rush Sup-ply (www.franksupply.com). I checked out their website and they carried what I needed. I also really appreciated their guarantee on bam-boo poles: all their bamboo poles are guaran-teed to be crooked, to taper, to split, and to be a different color than your last order. I liked their candor, so I gave them a call. I was a lit-tle nervous about buying sight unseen for frame tubes, but I ordered a bundle of 25 of their 3/4” 6' poles for the stays, and three of their 1 1/2” 12' poles cut in half. All of the bamboo poles were exactly as described, and contrary to their guarantee, none were split. The larger diameter was a little large for the top tube and seat tube, but I liked the idea of an oversized down tube, and I was able to scrounge some suitable pieces for the other tubes from what was left from my first attempt at heat treating. For my second attempt, I first did a test piece. I wrapped a scrap pole tightly with nylon seine twine to keep it from splitting as it dried, and hung that in my oven. I again brought the heat up slowly, and allowed the bamboo to cool in the oven. This time the tube came out without any splits, so I repeated the process with my frame tubes. I waited several days for the moisture to return to the test piece, and un-wrapped it to discover that when the bamboo got hot, it softened to the point where the nylon had left visible depressions in it. The frame tubes all had similar depressions in them, but at least they were not split. I left them for several weeks to equilibrate with ambient humidity be-fore proceeding. The next step was to try impregnating them. I

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Green Highlander Flyfishing Company

Home of Bret’s Bamboo Ovens

These are the best bamboo ovens you can buy for heat-setting and

heat-treating.

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highlander07@live.com

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got a gallon of Pentacryl at a local Woodcraft store, and made a dip tube out of 2” PVC. I soaked each frame tube for a couple of hours and hung them up to dry. The next day they were still wet and heavy, and had a greasy feel to them. I tried wiping them down with acetone, that seemed to help a little, but not much. At this point, I was really busy at work, and had little spare time to spend on this project, so my bicycle went on hold for a while. A couple of months later the tubes felt light and dry, and I decided to proceed.

Dropouts The stainless steel dropouts from Henry James were nice, but they were intended to be silver brazed into steel tubes, and the plugs on them were too small in diameter and in length for my purposes. I would need to make some extensions for the plugs. I wanted to use stainless, but had no experience machining it. After a little online research, I decided to use a free machining stainless alloy because I was concerned about the ability of my mini lathe to handle tougher alloys. I wound up getting 3/4” round stock in 416 stainless, and had it cut into 2” lengths. That would give me 1/2” to accommo-date the plugs on the dropouts and another 1 1/2” for the plugs to go into the bamboo stays. I drilled the holes in the extensions for the dropouts off center so the inside of the extension would be flush with the inside of the dropout. This would give me the maximum clearance for the wheel. Then machined the other end with an outside diameter of 0.510 for a length of 1 1/2”. It would have been simpler to make the outside of the plugs 1/2”, but the inside of one of my chainstays was just over 0.050, and I wanted the fit to be snug. To reduce weight, I drilled these extended plugs out. I also drilled a small hole connecting the two larger holes to relieve any gas pressure during brazing.

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Once the machine work was done, I did some rough grinding on the end that would be brazed onto the dropouts to reduce the amount of metal I would have to remove once they were brazed. Lacking a torch, the correct flux, and any brazing experience, I located a local bike shop that builds custom frames and took my dropouts and adapters down to them. One of their frame builders sil-vered the extensions onto the dropouts for me. After that, all it took was several hours of filing, sanding, and polishing to prepare the dropouts for mounting onto the frame.

The Jig

Among my biggest concerns were getting the frame angles correct and getting the bottom bracket and dropouts perpendicular to the frame. I thought about this for some time and decided to make a jig out of a piece of 3/4” plywood. I drilled holes in the plywood at locations corresponding to the rear axle and the center of the bottom bracket, and put pieces of all-thread rod through them with fender washers to get them perpendicular to the plywood. I machined plugs to fit into the bottom bracket and the head tube out of delrin rod, and drilled and tapped the plugs to I could screw them onto all-thread rod. I then cut blocks of scrap 4X4 and cut grooves in them to support the seat post and the all-thread rod in the head tube at the proper height. With the Fuji frame mounted onto the

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jig, I positioned the support blocks for the head and seat tubes and glued them onto the plywood. In theory, this should support all the metal pieces in the correct position and orientation. In practice, the all-thread rod is not that precise. Glue-up This was the most rewarding part of the construction. After looking at these seven short bamboo tubes for several months, finally gluing them together gave me some satisfaction. I thought that all of the tubes should be fitted together carefully. Since then I learned of a place in New York where you can take a class and build a bike frame in a weekend. They don't miter any of their tubes. They apparently just fit them into blocks of foam and then build the lugs up over the foam. The first order of business was to get a steel liner into the top of the seat tube and the stays glued onto the dropouts. I got a chrome moly seat tube, and cut off about 6”. The seat post is 27.2 mm in diameter. The inside of the chrome moly tube measured 1.071” in diameter, with an outside diame-ter of 1.131”. Somehow I needed to ream out the inside of the bamboo seat tube to accept the steel insert. My first idea was to make a tapered wooden mandrel, and glue coarse sandpaper onto it. I chucked this in the lathe and gave this a try after first wrapping the outside of the bamboo tube with nylon cord to prevent splitting. It didn't work at all. It rapidly generated enough heat that the adhe-sive in the sandpaper melted. Next I hit on the idea of using a hole saw. I bought a couple of hole saws: 1” and 1 1/8”. The hole inside the bamboo was oval and measured about 0.960 X 1.020. I mounted the hole saw on a piece of all-thread rod and chucked that in the lathe. First I ran the 1” saw down, and then the 1 1/8” saw. After this it just took a little sanding to enlarge the hole enough to accommodate the liner. This worked perfectly and left a nice flat-bottomed hole for the seat tube liner (see photos below). I glued the liner in using epoxy thickened with microfibers. I used this same adhesive for all gluing operations.

Next, I glued the stays onto the dropouts. To fit the plugs into the bamboo tubes I made a reamer out of wood with coarse sandpaper glued to the outside, and chucked that in the lathe. I used it to

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ream out the inside of the seat stays and chain stays to a depth of 1.5” and large enough that the ex-tended plugs on the dropouts fit snugly inside them. Then came fitting the tubes together for the frame. I mitered the tubes (see photo below) and care-fully fit them together. The first one I did was the seat tube. With the bottom bracket shell and the head tube mounted on the jig, I cut and sanded the seat tube to length and shaped the bottom end to fit snugly against the bottom bracket shell. By inserting the seat post into the top of the seat tube, and supporting the bottom end, I could keep the seat tube positioned. Next came the down tube. This was the most complex. It needed one end shaped to fit against the head tube at the proper an-gle, and the other end to fit around the bottom bracket shell and the seat tube. The only sanding drum I had that was near the correct curvature was a 1” drum that was 1 1/2” high. It would have been easier with a longer drum, but I was surprised how little time it actually took to get all of the tubes of the main triangle fitted. Clamping the glue joints was a bit of a challenge. The solution I came up with (see below) was to

wrap seine twine tightly around the tubes just beyond a node with loops tied in the twine, and then lash the joints together while the glue set and cured.

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Metal parts in the jig

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When it came time to attach the rear triangles, I didn't trust the jig. The dropouts had to be perfectly positioned to get the rear wheel centered between the stays, and I didn't think that the axle on my jig to hold the rear dropouts, made of all-thread rod, was precise or rigid enough to trust. The slightest misalignment would mean that the rear wheel would not be centered between the seat stays and chain stays, and could result in the tire hitting the stays. I decided instead to clamp the rear wheel into the dropouts and align everything by eye. When I did that I got a real shock. The angles on the dropouts were off substantially. The ends of the seat stays and the chain stays were both about 3” apart; I needed the seat stays to be touching and about 3/4” of spacing between the chain stays. For-tunately the investment cast lugs are malleable, and the angles are intended to be adjusted by bend-ing them. I began bending them by clamping the dropout itself in my vise, and hitting the base of the extensions with a heavy hammer cushioned with a block of wood. This worked fine on one side of the bike, but on the other side I heard a snap when I hit one of the extensions. The brazed joint had been starved of silver, the joint had failed, and the extension came off of the dropout. I finished bending the dropouts until the spacing was correct between my stays and the wheel was centered be-tween both the seat stays and the chain stays. Then I removed the bamboo stays from the dropout that had failed by carefully heating up the glue joints with my heat gun. I took the dropout and the extension back to the bike shop and a couple of hours later had the stays glued back on it. To attach the rear triangles to the main triangle, I left the main triangle in the jig, and clamped the rear wheel into the dropouts. Then I shimmed up the axle to center the wheel in the same plane as the main triangle and glued the stays to the seat tube and bottom bracket shell. At this point the frame actually looked like a bicycle frame, and I was feeling like this could all work out.

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Building up the Lugs I had settled on hemp and epoxy composite to reinforce the joints in the frame, and had a kilo each of hemp sliver, and raw hemp fiber (see above). The raw hemp fiber is pretty much as it comes off the plant stalks in varying shades of tan and olive green. It is uncombed and the fibers are in basi-cally just a mat. There are chunks of stalk mixed in and it's difficult to work with. The hemp sliver is fiber that has been through a couple more steps in processing. The raw fibers have been broken down and the cellulose fibers are separated, combed, and gathered into bunch that looks like large diameter unspun yarn. This is the raw material that would be used to make cord, or further refined, bleached, dyed and spun into thread. It's an off-white color and the fibers are all parallel, much eas-ier to work with than the raw fiber. I decided to use the raw fiber because I liked the color better with the bamboo I was using, and I had read that each step in processing fiber weakens it. In retro-spect, I suspect that the tighter packing of the parallel fibers in the hemp sliver would actually result in stronger lugs.

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My first attempt at laying up the lugs was a total disaster. I cut flat covers of ¼” delrin plate to cover the sides of the bottom bracket shell and the ends of the head tube and ran a piece of all-thread rod through them to clamp them tightly over the openings of the frame tubes. I also machined a cover from delrin rod that fit snugly over the liner in the top of the seat tube to keep epoxy out of that as well. I glued bosses for shifter cable adjusters to the head tube and bosses for attaching a rack to the seat stays, and plugged the ends of them to keep epoxy out. I wrapped the joints with hemp fiber to build up the lugs, and then spent several hours mixing epoxy, and working that into the mat of fiber I had built up. When I thought I had the hemp saturated, I bound the joints up with plastic tree tying tape from my local nursery (see above). It is stretchy and epoxy doesn't stick to it.

This all seemed go pretty well, but when I unwrapped the lugs and took off the delrin covers (see left), I found that the epoxy had failed to penetrate the hemp fiber all the way on all the joints in the main triangle. There were dry hemp fibers around the bottom bracket shell and the head tube, as well as in the center of the seat cluster. The joints would clearly have no strength, and I was afraid I would have to scrap the entire frame and start all over.

Fortunately, I had to go to out of town for a week and had some time to think before I destroyed the frame to salvage the metal parts. A friend suggested using heat to remove the epoxy, and given my experience with removing rod components glued on with epoxy this seemed like it might work. I was really surprised that by heating the hemp-epoxy composite with my heat gun, it became pretty soft at temperatures I could handle with my bare hands. I found that once the epoxy softened, it had about the texture of soft pine, and I could carve it off with a sharp knife. Heating and cutting care-fully, it took me six or seven hours to remove the hemp-epoxy composite, and I was back to the bare frame. I had seen pictures online of a bamboo bicycle project in Ghana that Craig Calfee is involved with. In some of the pictures they appear to be wrapping joints with fibers that are already soaked in ep-oxy resin. This is probably the best way to assure that the fibers are saturated, but it seemed too

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messy and looked like it would require more than one person to actually do the layup. Another op-tion I considered was to build up the joints in layers. The wraps I had done on the seat stays and chain stays seemed fine, but the fibers were not built up as thick as they were on the joints of the main triangle. I searched online for any information I could find on recommendations for how to layup composites, and to my surprise, I found the blog of Michael Mann who built a bicycle frame using the same kind of bamboo, hemp fibers and epoxy I was using (http://bamboobike.wordpress.com). He had great detailed instructions and pictures of the individual steps involved, as well as pictures of other people's bamboo bikes and links to their websites. His solution was to lay up the joints in three layers, so that's what I ultimately did. He also mentioned that an early frame he made with only one layer of composite had failed where the down tube joins the head tube. This got me to thinking about the stresses involved in the frame and I realized that all the joints on the bottom of the bike, those involving the down tube and chain stays, are under tension. The other joints involving the top tube, seat tube, and seat stays are under compression. These joints do not need as much reinforcement as the ones on the bottom of the bike, and the bonding between the epoxy and bamboo is not nearly as critical. Michael had stripped off all of the enamel from his bamboo tubes under the joints, right down to the power fibers. I just roughed up the surfaces up with coarse sandpaper to clean off the waxy cuticle and provide some mechanical bonding, and then cleaned them with acetone. Before beginning the layup, I glued bosses for shifter cable adjusters onto the head tube and for at-taching a rack onto the chainstays. I plugged the ends of the cable and rack bosses to keep epoxy out. For each layer, I wrapped the joint with hemp fiber, worked epoxy resin into the fibers and wrapped it with tape from the nursery. After the epoxy cured, I unwrapped the joints and ground and filed the epoxy down. I used a rotary file on a rotary tool for most of the filing. It makes a bit of a mess, but it really speeds things up. Filing the joints between layers accomplishes two things: it helps control the shape of the lug, and it provides a mechanical bond between the layers of compos-ite. West Systems 105 resin forms a blush on the surface when it cures, leaving a waxy layer. If you don't remove that, the next coat of epoxy will not bond to it.

Before building up the last layer of composite, I made forms for integrated cable stops for the rear brake and shifter cables. I made the forms by drilling a hole in the end of a piece of 1/4” delrin rod, and inserting a snug fitting piece of insulated electrical wire into the hole. I wrapped these into the lugs under the last layer of hemp fiber, then after the epoxy cured, pulled out the delrin rod and electrical wire to leave a 1/4” di-ameter pocket for the cable housing and a smaller di-ameter hole for the cable itself to pass on through.

Final Touches With the final layer of composite cured, I spent a couple of days filing and sanding all the lugs to get the shape I wanted and smooth them out. I had planned on routing the shifter cables under the bot-

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Ready for second coat.

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tom bracket, and bought a delrin cable guide for this purpose. After shaping the lugs following the last layer of composite, the diameter of the bottom bracket shell was increased by about 1/4”. There was no way that cable guide was going to fit, so I had to come up with something else. I found some thin-walled nylon tubing at the local hobby store that was sold as cable housing for pushrod cables on radio controlled airplanes. I filed grooves under the bottom bracket shell where I wanted the shifter cables to go, and bent a couple of pieces of the nylon cable housing to fit the grooves us-ing my heat gun. Then I epoxied them into the grooves, and built up a thin layer of composite over them. They seem to do the job, but time will tell how they hold up.

I also wanted to have a water bottle cage on the bike. It's possible to attach one with clamps, but I wanted to try to install water bottle bosses (see left). The bosses them-selves look kind of like oversized spoke nipples except that they have a closed bottom. They are normally in-stalled on steel frames by drilling a hole in the tubing and brazing the boss into the hole. With bamboo tubes, this was not going to work. I didn't think there was enough surface for bonding, and the hole in the tube would need some reinforcing. Nova Cycles also sells reinforcing plates for water bottle bosses. These are little diamond shaped pieces of steel with a hole for the bottle boss in the center, and they're bent to fit the curvature of the frame tubes. I silver brazed the bosses into the reinforc-ing plates, drilled the holes in my seat tube, and epoxied the plates onto the outside of the tube. I wrapped over these with hemp fiber and epoxied the wraps.

The last step was to protect the frame with spar varnish. Without a coating to protect the epoxy

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from ultraviolet light, the epoxy will rapidly break down and lose its integrity. Just like with fly rods, the coating also provides some protection to the bamboo from direct exposure to water. I used an aerosol can of Helmsman Spar Urethane, and applied a total of six thin coats. The finish didn't come out anywhere near as nice as a dipped finish, but I just couldn't figure out a way to fit the bicy-cle frame into my dip tube.

All that was left was to build up the bike. I installed all of the components from the Fuji bike I had purchased, with the exception of the front derailleur. That was a clamp-on style derailleur, and the clamp was too small for my bamboo seat tube. I bought a derailleur with a larger clamp that was compatible with the rest of my components. Then I modified the bike for commuting. I replaced the original plastic saddle with a Brooks leather saddle, and the pedals that came with the Fuji bike with some decent road pedals with toe clips. I added a water bottle cage, a rack, and aero handle-bars. There will certainly be additional modifications in the future, but now it's ready for my com-mute.

Sources of Supply

Frame Components

Nova Cycles Supply, Inc. 4111 Citrus Avenue #8 Rocklin, CA 95677 916-624-6549 www.cycle-frames.com

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Henry James Bicycles, Inc. 704 Elvira Avenue Redondo Beach, CA 90277 310-540-1552 www.henryjames.com Hemp Fibers Hemp Traders 11301 West Olympic Blvd, Ste 121-514 Los Angeles, CA 90064 310-637-3333 www.hemptraders.com Bamboo Poles Frank's Cane and Rush Supply 7252 Heil Avenue Huntington Beach, CA 92647 714-847-0707 www.franksupply.com

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Offering silk threads in over 60 different colors.

919-900-8998

www.fishhawkthreads.com

Rod by Steve Hoye Klondike Rod Company

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Ferrules — Last but not Least Text and photos by James E. (JED) Dempsey and Chris Bogart

As we have said in earlier articles, ferrules were an integral part of classic rod design and rod mak-ing. As Lawson Upchurch, who made the ferrules at Payne said, they matched the ferrules to the rod to make a complete package. The ferrules are integral to the classic taper. It seems today that a lot of the understanding and wisdom the classic rodmakers had about ferrules has been lost in the sands of time. People think if they have the Payne 98 taper then they know it all. To compound the issue, tapers have truncated to 5” stations and have lost the critical step-down across sections information. People then do not hesitate to substitute inappropriate ferrules to classic tapers without thinking or knowing otherwise. Still, ferrules are the most important piece of hardware that rodmakers put on their rod. It is usually the most expensive component they buy. A good ferrule costs more than a reel seat. So why is it given so little thought? So far we have talked about drawing NS tubing and the difference having control of the hardness and quality of tubing makes in building a ferrule. We talked about classic Halstead ferrule design. It is a design that is not replicated commercially today, but was an integral part of classic Leonard, Payne and Halstead rods. It is interesting to note that also early Garrison and Gillum rods used Hal-stead ferrules. Pinkie supplied Garrison with his ferrules until Pinkie’s falling out with Halstead. Af-ter that falling out, they had to switch to the now readily available Super-Zs. We have talked about classic step-down ferrule making from NS tubing. Finally we discussed obtaining an ultimate ferrule fit. Having this nice smooth, tight ferrule fit enhances the user interaction with his rod – such a sweet feeling that speaks of quality. So what is left? What we will talk about is the least talked about part of ferrule preparation – ferrule tabs. It is the last thing to do but not the least. Confused? Good! There is a lot of anecdotal informa-tion out there, some valid but most is incomplete. There is a lot of knowledge to be gleaned from looking at classic ferrules on classic rods. This may change your perspective on ferrules and also make you think about changing some of your procedures. It did for me. The only time today’s rodmakers talk about ferrule tabs are when cracks develop in the thread. This

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Varney Style Ferrule with Guide Foot Placed on Tab and Double Wrapped.

is not a totally avoidable problem, but definitely a manageable problem. So let’s look at ferrule tabs. Some classic ferrules such as Divine did not have tabs as we know them. The Edwards and Orvis ferrules are first annealed and then were swaged to fit the hex shape of the bamboo. You can see the consistent annealing on the end of these Orvis ferrules. They were most likely annealed in a water bath to provide this consistency. Once annealed, Orvis then had a small press where they swaged them to hexagonal shape. Edwards and other prominent makers of the day including Grainger and Heddon used this method.

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Original Orvis Ferrules Given to Dave Male by Wes Jordan.

Swagged Orvis Ferrule after Annealing courtesy of Dave Male.

Number of slits – classic Leonard and Payne had only 4 slits. My Dickerson 861711-D has 4 slits on

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Original Heddon Swaged Ferrule courtesy of Peter Jones

Replacement Heddon male ferrules with Swagged tabs.

the butt/mid ferrules and three slits on mid/tip ferrules. It is only much later that six slits became fashionable. The length of tabs – there is a marked difference between Payne/Leonard and those of Dickerson. Lyles tab areas are much longer. Yet I have had all of these rods in my shop that are well over 80 years old and there is still no casting fractures in the thread. So there is some unseen com-monality that unites them all.

As we see above, Leonard made a big deal of their patented ferrules and one patent was for the tabs with splits. They touted it as, “one of the greatest improvements that have been introduced in rod making, if it is properly applied.” Ah, those magic words, “if it is properly applied.” Ever stop and wonder what they meant? To understand this you must handle a number of these rods and look care-fully to see what they have done.

The first is thinness. Most tabs on commercial ferrules today appear thin but really are thick when compared to some of the classic ferrules. People will “crown” them because it looks neat, but they really do not taper the tips until they are paper-thin. Maybe they have a sharp edge, but the bulk of the ferrule tab is thick. So let’s not crown ferrules for this exercise and think about how to conform the regular ferrule tabs to the bamboo.

It was at this point in writing this article I got an 1885 pre-Kosmic Spalding rod in the shop that has what is believed to be William H. Reed patent ferrules on it. Conroy rods of the period also used these “modern” ferrules. The patent (322750) was for “a serrated ferrule having its projections re-duced in thickness, substantially as and for the purpose described.” We are talking tapering the length of the tabs to make them thin when they meet the bamboo. Also note the ferrules are annealed and lay flat on the flats. I also found a patent (422477) given to George Varney in 1890 for the saw-tooth tabs that are conforming to the bamboo. These patents show that early classic rodmakers real-ized the importance of the transition between the bamboo and ferrule.

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From 1924 Mills catalog

I have seen tabs on classic Leonard and Payne rods bent around rod edges. Edwards were swaged to conform. That is a clue. With hard tubing, it will not bend like that. However, if you heat just the tab area with a torch and anneal the NS tubing, it will become soft and pliable again. This is what needs to be done. After annealing you can take sandpaper and files and thin the tabs gradually out to a fine edge. You can mold the tab area to conform to the bamboo. This is important to have this tab lay flat on the bamboo with barely a transition. I have noticed in repairs that a number of these clas-sic ferrule tabs were not neat and even. They were made so thin that they could easily flake off. That is a far cry from tab preparation as practiced today. You can see this in the original Leonard ferrule in below. The ragged edges are result of the ends being so thin and just pressed on the bam-boo.

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William H. Reed patent ferrules on a 1885 Spalding rod.

Circa 1920 Leonard ferrule removed from rod with fragile tabs.

They did not leave the tabs round. They were thin and soft enough to conform to the shape of the rod. You can roll them flat using a round HSS drill bit / reamer blank and a mandrel – either steel or old bamboo cut off. This shapes the tabs to conform to the bamboo, just like Leonard said. They are that pliable. All this can be done before mounting on a rod. The example we show was a ferrule pre-pared by JED shown below as he was taught in the Payne shop. We should note that Payne normally used four slits in their ferrules and this is done with six slits. Regardless, JED will double wrap the ferrule using 3/0 silk, as we will talk about next. Remember, there was a lot of interchange between these classic shops, and techniques like this were adopted because they worked. Notice how similar they are even though they were done 90 years apart. Now why have we not noticed this? Simple, they double wrapped the ferrule tabs. You could not see them. Double wrapping provides extra support that also resists cracking. This is also a far cry from the translucent wrap trend today. Most people single wrap, since double wrapping is not in the rod-making “bibles” they read. Truth is that amateurs who developed things on a trial and error basis wrote those bibles. Someone who made his living as a rodmaker wrote not one of these books. As we have said, the classic rodmakers built rods for functionality. There is a fine aesthetic in the over-all rod design and in the art of properly marrying of all the components that has been lost. What we mean by double wrapping is putting a second layer of thread on the tab area only. It does not extend onto the cane. I like to wrap up on to the ferrule from the cane to the end of the tab area and then continue back again until you reach the cane. It is easy to do with minimal practice. You can miti-gate the amount of thread build-up if that is an issue by using 3/0 thread or combination of 3/0 under layer and an A top layer, but still double wrap. I have seen many old Payne, Leonard, Varney, Dickerson, Gillum and Halstead rods that show no sign of the telltale crack common in a lot of cur-

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Halstead Style Ferrule Prepared by JED.

rent rods. Remember, if these guys could have done it with one wrap, they would have, but they chose otherwise and for good reason. Their rods have stood up to the test of time. The last detail that has been lost is the placement of the guide next to a ferrule. Payne, Leonard and Varney all put the guide foot up on the ferrule tab. Put the guide foot half way up. It creates a transi-tion to the cane. Half on, half off and double wrapped. On the tab where the guide foot is to go, I see extra filing to make it flat for the foot. When you stop and think about it, it reinforces the transition from ferrule to cane thus reducing the chance of a casting fracture. It disperses the energy better. I have seen this done both on the male and female side. As a rule, when laying out guide spacing and placement, they made it a preference to put the guide at the female ferrule since that is where the greater stresses are and most likely have a casting fracture. It really bugs me when I see a Leonard rod that was “professionally” restored and they have moved the guide foot off of the ferrule. Some people don’t think or realize the guide foot was on the ferrule originally? Of course I have seen the same “professionals” put the guides back on a rod and they are not on the flat with the witness mark on the ferrule! The original maker put those marks on to indi-cate which flat to put the guides on. There is more and more information being lost in the sands of time. So look and learn when you have one of these rods in your hands. These are minor things to consider, but just look at your rods and then look at a 100 year old Leo-nard that shows no appreciable signs of wear or casting fractures. It makes you stop and think that these guys may have known something after all. Remember, these guys designed that classic rod ta-per you are building and maybe, just maybe, there is more to it than just some numbers. In summary, I have gained new respect for the underappreciated tab area. There is much more to this ferrule business than meets the eye. As we have found out, the classic rodmakers took them very se-riously, gave them great thought and patented their ideas. Today’s rodmakers need to really stop and think more about ferrules than taking them for granted. I know I have, and I have changed the meth-ods I use in preparing the tabs and how I place guides and wrap the ferrules. It may seem like just a small thing but it really has a big benefit. Remember the classic rodmaker rods you admire? You copy their tapers and do it for a valid purpose. A bamboo fly rod is the sum total of a number of things, not just the taper. So the more you know about ferrules and how the classic rodmakers treated them, the better equipped you will be to understand and interpret their work. As I said be-fore – last but not least.

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Classic Leonard Style Ferrules

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EW Edwards De Luxe, and Stepping Off the Ledge! Text and photos from Jack Holdridge

I received an email today from Art Parramoure regarding the two tips to my Edwards DeLuxe he is scarfing. Art was pretty concerned as to the varnish condition on the tips and if the rod was in the same condition, a complete refinish was warranted. Ever since I bought the rod on the 1st of March, I have had that fact in the back of my mind. When it comes to refinishing a nice old rod with his-toric script, you begin to have doubts as to if you are up to the job or if you should farm it out to an "expert." When I bought this rod I didn't know if it was going to be an investment or if it would occupy a spot in my nice walnut rod rack my father-in-law built for me a couple of years ago. With the scarfs and shipping, I will be at an investment of $500 on this rod. Not really too much for the caliber of rod it is, but still for a guy working up to 60 hours on an average week. I’m also helping to put one son through school and helping the other stay on his feet until he finally lands a better job or marries rich! Owning as many bamboo rods as I do now is still just a hobby and this is not a hobby rod! Pat Garner did something unspeakable, he wrote Playing With Fire: The Life and Rods of E.W. Edwards! Now I want, no dream, of having some good quality rods and as many Edwards as possi-ble. I had a nice Weber Henshall that once belonged to Pat and is pictured in his book. That rod is back in Pat's collection now and I'm really happy with that fact, as it was "his" rod! I valued it way too much to fish it, maybe because it was a part of Playing With Fire, a book I really enjoy reading and reading and reading. I guess that book, because of all its history and facts that he collected so well, helps to put Eustis right with you when you are standing there with one of his rods in your hands. Slowly turning the rod, looking at the edges, wraps, reel seat and incredibly beautiful ferrules. I know Eustis loved his rods, he didn't build them just because the meat shop on the corner didn't have a cutter position open, he kept coming back to his craft because its intricacies occupied his thoughts many hours each day. Even if he wasn't at his bench, and probably even when he was relaxing with the paper in his hands, and Bill or Gene playing on the floor in front of him. Many builders then and now have that love of the craft so much they can't, or don't, try to really get away from it very hard even when not splitting or planing a strip. At least I think they must. I know that even working as many hours as I do, I still find myself "escaping" away to my den to work on the next project! Back to my Edwards, after getting Art's first email today regarding the condition of the tips, I men-tally stepped off the ledge and decided, "Why not, it's my rod." I answered back to Art, "Yes, I know Art. I’m going to tackle that job starting today." I know I have the knowledge, the basic skill and the desire, so it's my rod and I want to do the work myself. Art, in his first email when I asked him about his price on doing the scarfs, also quoted a price on a total refinish. I did consider it then but wanted the rod back so that I could stand and turn it in my hands with Eustis watching from where he is now. I could afford it, but even then, I wasn't too sure that I didn't want to tackle that one my-self. I have refinished quite a few rods and have read up on removing varnish on yellowed script but one post says about dipping the rod, "Don't dip to the script as it will end up in the tube’s bot-

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tom!" Thanks, I'm nervous already! When I refinish an old bamboo with bad varnish I have an old pocketknife that I keep sharp and scrape off as much varnish from the flats as possible. I then use denatured alcohol and work the wraps with a soft bristle toothbrush. Following this I then work the script with Q-Tips, rolling them slowly and rinsing the cotton often to keep fresh alcohol on the script. Once Eustis's writing looks clean and white I stop and let the liquid evaporate off. I have the two sections done and the first coat of spar varnish applied. I am really happy with the results and since it turned out well I can write this instead of moving to Manhattan, Nevada to try and get a job working a goat herd! Hey really, if I had destroyed a national treasure I'm sure Pat would have a distant cousin who is in the Mafia come "get a little memento for the boss!" Here are before and after pictures…

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Believe me it will look loads nicer with the two full-length refinished tips along side!

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Joe’s Rod Shop Tutorials: Drawn Cap and Rings Text and photos by Joe Arguello

Well, a while back there was talk about drawing cups and rings for reel seats. This has always inter-ested me so I thought I would give it a whirl! First off I want to give Gary Dabrowski a great big thanks for his excellent article on how to make the necessary tools and dies. Here is a link to the ar-ticle: http://brooksiderod.tripod.com/pdf/drawncomponents.pdf Well, I spent an entire weekend making the necessary tools and here they are:

These are the tools I made, somewhat crude, but effective. I found that reloading lube works great!

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Landmark Components www.landmarkflyrodtubes.com Email: landmarktube@juno.com

Phone: 970.278.1311/888.779.4855 Fax: 970.278.1312/888.557.6561

Rod Tubes

Screen Printing Components Rod Bags

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Above is the blanking die in action! This is the 20 ton air over hydraulic press that I bought at Har-bor freight and modified so that I could mount dies for drawing Damascus billets for my knives. Also notice the release handle I made so you don't need to fumble with the handle that is used to release the bottle jack. And the result, perfect 1 1/2 inch discs.

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The first draw. This makes a cup from the discs. The resulting cup, notice that it is quite large and shallow.

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Second draw. This draw further refines the cup into the final dementions. The drawn cup will be stuck on the punch. The use of a specially made slide hammer to take the cup off punch which is threaded on the end.

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The finished drawn cup ready for trimming. Trimming the cup in the lathe using a collet. Some trimmed cups ready to be made into caps, rings and cork checks.

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Now the cup is mounted on a mandrel and knurled. I am cleaning up about 1/16th of an inch on the end for the cork check, this will come off when the cup is parted. Parting off, the parting tool is just wide enough that it leaves about 1/16th of an inch of knurling on each end.

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I now mount the cup back on the mandrel and take off about .005 to clean it up. Here are some caps, sliding bands and cork checks in different stages of completion. Some of the cups are sacrificed to make the sliding bands. Here is another view, if you squint real hard you can see the knurling on the last three cork checks. Well there you have it, I hope you enjoyed my journey as much as I did. I have to apologize for my lousy photography ..........but you get the picture....he he he !!!! There I go again amusing myself!!!!!!!!!!!!

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