A Craftsman's Legacy | The Fly Rod Makers | Fly Fishing

[Music] one of my favorite things to do in my downtime is fish I especially love fly-fishing but I've never had a chance to cast with a cane ride so I'm going to visit Jeff Wagner and qez Myra Arlovski they're a husband wife team who have been crafting bamboo rods for decades I'm pretty excited to work [Music] a craftsman battles for perfection never willing to give in or walk away I'm Eric gorgeous I built custom motorcycles using skills passed on by countless generations before me I used to work nine-to-five chasing money and titles and it nearly broke me so I started over I decided to work with my hands to feed my soul please join me on a quest to uncover the skills that built our society we'll discover what drives the men and women who I call my heroes we'll learn their craft and maybe even find some inspiration along the way there's a part of you in everything you create your legacy a craftsmen's legacy [Music] I hire keV Myra nice to meet you to meet you I'm Jeff hey Jeff meet you welcome to Sunnybrook thanks a lot you ready to build a bamboo floor right oh I sure AM let's do it [Music] I can't get over how beautiful this place is yeah it's gorgeous isn't it oh man I I would love to live in something like this you know but I'd never get anything done with coffee and cigars and just fishing and thinking so how long have you been coming out here this is sunny brook trout club our 18th year teaching classes out here we when we decided we wanted to teach classes we didn't have the room and the capability to do it out of our home in our shop and luckily we stumbled upon a sunny Brook and talked to them and they invited us to have the classes here and it's we've been here ever since and what kind of classes are you teaching here cane rod building cane rod light machine thyroid building all right and how long have you guys been doing that I'm gonna edit for 23 years and Kazmaier came on board a few years after yeah about 20 years now how'd you find your way into it I just sort of started by making wooden rod cases and nets and fly boxes and stuff like that that was a result of Kazmaier here getting me a table saw for Christmas really right he was supposed to make me birdhouses started selling those as some of the fly shops okay and so one day I was delivering a bunch of these and I saw a book on the Shelf handcrafting bamboo fly rods and picked it up and I was just like just transfixed with it I was like I got to do this you know I just jumped in and he did jump in literally I can remember the day when Jeff decided to start this business yeah then he just sprung it upon me that he was gonna quit his job really to build fly fishing rods cane rods full-time Oh oh my gosh how'd that make you feel well you know it was it was a bit of a shock but at the same time I know I could see how excited he was he was just like a little kid all excited about you know it's like you want your partner to be happy and to be you know that look it felt good to us to see how excited he was she just said go for it yeah what else you gonna do right well what's the worst that can happen the worst that can happen it doesn't work out and you have to go back to your job yeah that's a good way to look at it now you're an avid fisherman right correct yeah so you've been fly-fishing your whole life well I started out as a bait fisherman my grandfather would take us fishing in Pennsylvania had a little cabin in the Allegheny National Forest and it was there that he taught us how to catch trout you know on babes been fishing when I was in my early teens I developed an interest in learning how to fly fish at the time this would be in the 70s you know most of the rods were made out of fiberglass but we had a fly-fishing store nearby and they always had a few cane rods and it was like like a magnet you know they were the most expensive ones too of course I dream of it was like this dream object II know I was making money as a paperboy and doing odd jobs and stuff like that when I started I had a real long clunky nine-foot rod and it didn't cast very well but then when I discovered how good they could be you know it's like like a fine violin or a guitar or something that's all handmade you know they're just wonderful instruments and you both work hand in hand do you enjoy it yeah it's it's different working together kind only - it's like one of those things we're like most couples I don't think it to spend like as much time together as you know until they retire basically sure and you know we're around each other 24/7 365 do you remember the first cane ride you made oh yeah yeah the first one like from picking up the book to having like the finished rod it took about a year to do okay because at the time if you wanted to build bamboo rods you were pretty much on your own you had to make your own tools so yeah remember the the very first one I made and I was it was kind of rough you know cosmetically but I was amazed that it actually cast you know I was kind of blown away by that and we have a trout club in Cleveland Cleveland Natural History Museum trout Club and we were members there and we went down for a meeting and they let me put it out for a display and a local physician a cardiologist looked at it and asked he wanted to buy it and so I'm like okay you know I sold it too I'm figuring that'll give me some money to make the next one sure and then somebody else wanted one then somebody else wanted one so here we are and it just kept growing yeah exactly how many do you think you've made over the years gosh I don't know when we first started we had kind of like big plans that it generally takes about 40 hours to build one okay okay about a week and so we figured if we work together you know we could build two rods a week mm-hmm and you know we could make 80 rods a year and take all summer off to play it doesn't work out that way it's all pretty much one at a time custom building so you do an awful lot of talking with the customer to find out where they fish how they fish what they're casting style is all that stuff and through the course of that you know these long talks with people are going back and forth with phone calls and emails and stuff one of the wonderful things is at the end you know you've you've done a lot more than like maker on sold a rod you've made friends with somebody sure and it's really cool it's very rewarding because you know we've met people through this all over the world it's it's mind-blowing so does that ever make you think about your legacy yeah yeah what you hope for is that they just enjoy it and they fish the heck out of it he want them out fishing with it catching a lot of fish and then hopefully passing it down to their kids and cheer down to their kids again so I want them to be around in a hundred years how do you look at yourself do you look at yourself as a craftsman or as an artist I'd say a craftsman craftsman yeah I mean there's some art to it but I think it's it's primarily like a handcraft yeah yeah I I would think of it as a craft because I think I'm very practical and as much time as should be put into the cosmetics of a rod it's still a tool sure sure something to be used frankly as utilitarian value tonight so it sounds like you're gonna have to keep Jeff and I online and off the water today while we learn how to make a rod it's time-consuming process to build a rod but it's I think you'll really enjoy it oh I'm pretty sure I will hopefully we'll find some time to get out there and do a little fish in there sure I'm sure you will you guys ready sure let's do it let's do it all right prior to the 1800s fly fishermen used wooden rods that were at least 11 feet long and frequently rotted warped or broke these issues led to experimentation with other materials like bamboo samuel philippe of Easton Pennsylvania is credited with creating the first multi-sided fly rod made with split cane which is the basis for the design still popular today Hyrum Leonard a gunsmith turned rod maker revolutionized the industry with the creation of a machine called a beveler this allowed him to cut the six strips needed for Philippe's design with incredible precision and accuracy using this technique Leonard open a factory and hired a team of talented craftsmen to mass-produced bamboo fly rods the increased availability of high quality but affordable bamboo fly rods led to a golden age of fly fishing although fiberglass rods became very popular in the 1950s there will always be those who prefer to cast with a cane rod Jeff and Kaz Mira's beautifully handcrafted bamboo fly rods ensure that these fishermen will have something they can cast for years to come [Music] so this is a piece of bamboo here right yep this is called Tonkin cane it's from southern China and it's the material used to make a bamboo fly rod and how long does it have to wait and dry it's usually just sitting for about six months or so before we grab a piece subsequently heat-treated which will drive off even more moisture oh I got you I got you and you've got a fro and a mallet afro in a mallet because the first thing we're gonna have to do is split this calm all the way down into two it was split right in half all right I was a little worried at first I thought you were chasing me no no promise I feel better now okay so once it's split in half then what are we gonna do then we're gonna lay out our rough section lengths for tips and for buts for the suctions we're gonna make okay then we're gonna cut them to life and that's why you ever saw that's correct all right and there's a propane torch over though yeah yeah the big torch will apply the flame to the cane and it drives off excess moisture and raises the modulus or the stiffness of the bamboo it sounds like we got a lot of fun things happening oh yeah all right well can you show me how to how to split this yeah we're gonna turn it and what you just basically do is you're gonna try to just I it in the center oh look at that and it's just as you just walk it down you walk it right down my take over and get back beautiful there we go all right so our next step will be to cut it to rough length okay all right we're gonna make a seven and a half foot to piece rot or else that means the sections are gonna be about 45 inches long I'm going to take one side and shift it down a little ways and why do you do that process called staggering the notes and the idea is is that when you have the rod all assembled that these nodes aren't on adjacent spots on the flats and right right these represent weak spots in the Canes so you don't want them all concentrated in one area that makes sense and will make your mark here and a mark here it'll seize me your cut will use a Japanese saw I'll hold it and just saw way up to cut mark there you go well done all right okay all right one more there we go well done all right we're gonna start from the bottom and work our way up okay okay oh wow want to give a try yeah for sure okay good so do these other two [Music] so that's fun oh yeah everybody loves the torch yeah why wouldn't you all right so now what do we do with these all we're gonna let them cool a little bit and then we're gonna take them inside the shop and continue splitting them down all right what do we do next the next thing we're going to do is take one of these sections here huh and we're going to measure out into thirds and eventually we're going to take it all the way down to 24 strips so a cane rod is just made up of multiple segments of this sort of put back together and it forms a hex yes traditionally cane rods are hexagonal we are going to then have to straighten these individual strips we do that by using heat with our hands we're going to be pressing it and straightening it out really right taking out any major bends or okay sent to the end okay and then after that we're gonna go over to the belt sander we have to get the nodes flush to the cave so we just stripped that right down we're gonna sand it right down keep it on the line keep it on the line tap that to get it started but as you see once you get past that first node you'll be able to just use your hand and it really splits pretty easy yeah it does now we're gonna take these and split them up three more times right putting it right in half I'm gonna split it right in half [Music] oh there you go Mary got that how many of these have you done in your life oh I hate to even think can I try this one yeah and then just right in half right in half cool we have to divide these again right right this right now we're gonna end up with 24 strips right now we have 6 so we're gonna divide these again that's 12 and then we're gonna divide them even again oh my gosh we start the same way pretty much we I it they're gonna go down in half bro give it a good tap and then you're gonna go to the nail here and we're gonna actually split like this when I try course [Music] that's good [Music] that's very good so let's turn around we just turn it get to eat becomes flexible got some of it out already okay we got one more step to get you ready to go over to the planing farms with Jeff you're gonna flatten these down the sander all right [Music] good [Music] now this looks pretty serious it is a serious tool yeah what is it used for this tool is called a planing form and its uses to taper the strips that you prepped with casts Myra so that we can glue it together into a blank by the time we get them down they're gonna be real real tiny okay let's see how it's done all right well we start out by taking a strip and we're gonna place it into the form I'll take a few passes with the plane to remove some material and then we'll flip the strip to the other side and take a few passes okay and I'll count like five passes and then we'll flip it and we'll take five from the other side but we're going to take it down until we can't remove any more bamboo [Music] that is crazy look at that yeah that's pretty cool is that it's amazing so all we have to do now is do five more I've got enough to glue up a tip section alright alright here I'll give it a try yes please all right [Music] you are done beautiful you think so oh yeah great job well that's the last one yeah so what's next now that we have these done well we've got all six of them tapered up so we're gonna glue them together and in order to do that we're gonna run them through a machine called a binder oh I thought I was gonna have to use superglue and magnifying glasses the binder is just a little simple machine that applies a cross wrap of cotton thread that acts as a clamp until the glue sets up really so we just got to clear this up and down the glue machine and that's it all right well let's do it [Music] once the moon sets up we remove it sand the blank of excess glue cut it to length and start our finishing process all right so step me through this the first thing we have to do is cut the thread off yeah we're gonna remove the thread and then we're gonna sand off the excess glue okay we'll cut the section up here to mount the ferrule the Farrell's are the metal parts that hold the sections together we'll have to turn the ferrule station in the lathe we'll slide some quark rings down onto it and glue up the grip and then turn the grip in the wave oh so these the grip is just by stacking these up that's correct and then we'll we'll slide them down into position glue them to each other and to the blank and then we'll put it in what's called a quark press that will hold it until the glue sets all right well we've got a little bit of work left to do oh yeah and we're fishing seriously [Laughter] [Music] [Music] nice and I can't believe how close we are oh man we're almost there look it's just a couple more things to do so we've got the bottom done right right yep we've got the tip done yep and you started to put one guide on correct right I'll show you how to do that yes please do so we'll start with the first guide which is called the stripper place it in position and just hold it so to wrap the guides you use just silk thread okay it's a very simple process so you start by bringing the wrap and just rotate the wrong now look at that and there it goes [Music] do you go over over it over the top and then go around three times with it okay first one so how many more do we have we got about seven or eight more left oh geez have at it fish this through like this yep just like that that's it there you go and we are done [Music] so how'd you do Eric well I learned a ton I'll tell you that much thank you so much thank you thank you did a great job yes [Music] being outdoors on a lazy stroll it doesn't even matter if you catch anything spending time working with Jeff and Kaz Myra gave me a sense of how much precision is built into a cane fly rod the tools were amazingly simple but so clever as with any master craftsman they make everything look so easy [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: A Craftsmans Legacy

Views: 85,727

Rating: 4.8964648 out of 5

Keywords: cane fly rod, building a fly rod, cane fly rod building, fly rod building, fly rod building tools, how to build a fly rod, fly rod building instructions, bamboo fly rod building, steps to build a fly rod, fly rod building 101, bamboo fly rod, fly rod building video, a craftsman's legacy full episodes, fly rod building jig, fly rod building wrapping guides, fly fishing, fishing, fishing rod, fly rod, cork handle, building a fishing rod, bamboo, wrapping a fly rod, eric gorges

Id: 1mxCVsYTm14

Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 07 2020