Bamboo Culm Selection for bamboo fly rod

welcome to tom morgan rodsmith i'm rick plant i'm the bamboo rod maker here at the shop today i'm really excited we're starting our first video in a series of how to make a bamboo rod we've got our hand mill mounted we've ordered our bamboo it's arrived today we're going to talk about choosing a comb splitting a comb and staggering a node so i'm really excited to get started making our first rod [Music] okay so let's talk about calm selection some things that we look for and we go all over all of this in our class when we're teaching our bamboo rod making class so first thing that we want to look at is the straightness of the comb if the comb is crooked of course we can go into how to straighten it and do that but makes life a lot easier if you find combs that are already straight other things to consider is the depth of the power fibers uh the deeper the power fibers we tend to use for butt sections power fibers that aren't as deep we use for the tip sections other things to consider combs that have leaf nodes in them such as this that's a weakness in the comb we would never use that strip here i have a great little section of calm that has bug bites bug bites actually penetrate the enamel and go into the power fibers making them weak as well so i cut this off of a comb because i've really never seen so many bug bites in one section [Applause] so let's get into it first things first let's look at the depth of power fibers [Music] yeah so when you talk about depth of power fibers what exactly do you mean by that okay so let's come over here and take a look joel so let me show you you can see in this column we have a lot of power fibers going from the outside enamel into the pith there's a lot of depth there whereas if you look at this cone here the depth from the enamel into the pith isn't as much so this is a comb that we would use for our butt section and this is a comb that we would use for our tip section okay so the broader distribution you like for butts and the lesser tighter distribution you like for tips right because these strips are going to be so much thinner than your butt section strips right so even though there's less depth of power fibers it's still going to be all power fibers when we cut our strips because the strips are going to be so small for the tip and if you have a comb like you mentioned that has a bug bite or a leaf node on one place would you still split it but then just avoid the strip yeah in fact you have a great question so what i do is i actually mark them with a grease pencil like this so when i do split them it's easier for me to find that mark let me give you an example for instance a blemish like this i know just through experience that that blemish is going to stand out i really don't have to worry about that one right whereas a blemish like this this is not going to stand out that's going to stay throughout the rod so i would not use any of this section okay here at tom morgan we actually throw out about 70 of the bamboo because we cannot have any of those blemishes they do not affect the integrity of the bamboo but this would be like a watermark on your coffee table doesn't affect the coffee table but the mark is there gotcha so joel let's talk about node spacing and how the comb grows most bamboo when they cut it they're cutting it either from the bottom half or the bottom two thirds because it leafs out as it gets to the top of the cone right so you can always tell that the nodes are closer together when you get to the bottom of the column and they get spread out farther apart as the comb grows another thing if you look let's take this column for example the first node spacing is 10 inches the next one is 11 and three quarters the next one is 13 and a half so i know that that's the way the column is growing another size important to know top and bottom of the cone because you're always going to go when you're building your rod from the butt section up okay so i'm going to start with my comb at the bottom for the like under my handle and go up same thing when i get to my tip right you have the butt of the tip and the tip of the tip you always want the cone going in that one direction okay another thing you can tell as the cone grows is how it has this ridge and then a little valley it's easy to tell that right now issue comes after you've sanded the nodes and this mark goes away sometimes the comb uh the node spacing can be very close within an eighth of an inch or quarter of an inch so it gets kind of hard to tell at times so what we do here is we color codes the ends so we always know this is the butt section of the comb we always know that's the top and it just makes it easier to keep track not a big deal right now but after they've been sanded prepared for roughing you know it can be tricky at times so we highly recommend that you color code and during our class we color code all the strips for all students okay okay joel so another thing about selecting combs things to think about for the home builder that might be building you know two three rods a year they may take one comb and build a rod here at tomorrow and rodsmith you know we're making a couple dozen rods a year so a lot of times i will be blending the colds right so let me show you what i mean by blending the comb here i have two separate cones but if i take this one and i put it here you can see the node spacing is almost identical even though these are two separate cones right so the reason we do this we blend it and kind of homogenize the nodes if i were to build a rod just say using one column right and it has a different depth of node of power fibers and then i use another comb with a different depth of power fibers the rods are going to feel slightly different even though i'm using the same taper i'm building the same rod so we think that blending them you're mixing everything together you stand a much better chance of creating the same feel of rod rod after rod so the way you're kind of averaging out those variances and power fiber distribution reflects correct okay okay because if i were just to build a rod with the depth of power fibers here it's going to feel one way depth of power fibers here it's going to feel another way okay [Music] let's talk about splitting bamboo three different ways to do it here at tom morgan rod smith we use these bamboo splitters we think they're great you get consistent width in your strips and also in my opinion makes the strip straighter which of course you can straighten strips but again we want to make life as easy as we can when we're making a rod another way to split strips and a lot of people use it is with the fro all you have to do is take your fro pound it in and just twist it and you can split your comb first thing you do is cut it and split it in half and then take those halves go in half again and in half again people who are really good at splitting with froze can get strips down to about a quarter inch in width they do a great job are there options for the splitters to make smaller strips yeah great question so we sell these in different fins right so this is an 18 fin probably our most popular for the home builder right people who are going to do the 2 2 node spacing in the or the 2 two node spacing they're probably going to go with a wider fin splitter because after they split this they're going to take back and they're going to split that piece of strip again because i want to take those two nodes and put them exact opposite of each other on the rod okay okay uh for the home builder a lot of them again the 18 fin splitter does a great job think about it you're going to split this you're going to get 18 strips approximately the same width fairly straight makes your life pretty easy okay okay so here at tom morgan rod smith we use these bamboo splitters to split our bamboo we feel it makes the job so much easier and makes the strips a lot straighter again you can split with the fro but it takes a lot of time a lot of experience to get really good at it this just makes the learning curve so much easier simply take your splitter mount it in the center of your bamboo if you're not sure how wide your strips are going to be i can simply tap it pull my splitter off and i can measure the width of my strips again the width of your strips is going to be different based on the amount of fins and the diameter of your comb first thing you need to do is just give it a tap get the splitter going you can see i have nice consistent width on all my strips a little tip that we use is we use these hose clamps and we simply just put them around the bamboo and that keeps the bamboo in a nice configuration as we pound the splitter through i'll hit my splitter as far as i can take it with my hammer next what we do is we grab this heavy pipe and this is just simply a gas pipe that you can buy at any hardware store from here i actually let the weight of the pipe pound the star splitter through the bamboo sliding my hose clamp along to keep the strips tight and equal in width as i get through the bottom or as i get to a node it gets a little stiffer i got to hit it a little harder and then you'll actually feel the splitter pop through and then it's easy again till you reach the next node do this until the splitter comes all the way out the bottom of the comb okay joel we split our comb using our bamboo splitter right what we've done is just lined our strips up just as they've been split now what we're going to go through and we're going to look at each strip for any of those white marks that we put on blemishes obviously this is really gross we're not going to use that at all okay we're going to look through each strip find any of our white marks wherever we find those marks right we're just going to pull those strips out right because we're not going to use them here's another one here that we've marked okay all right that goes away and again those are not affecting the structure of the strip it's just for cosmetic reasons that we're pulling them yep correct if i'm a home builder and i'm just going to make a rod for myself you know i could use that it's not going to hurt the integrity of the strip okay but it's something that people who are in the in the field they really look at those cosmetic things as you get better as a builder you're going to pay more attention to those things so we look at the strips find any of those white marks there's another one there we can throw that out that looks good this was actually a really good comb we only had to pull out three strips okay so that's really good we're left with one two three four five six seven eight nine right and we need six strips to make a rod so you can see in looking at these strips this was pretty easy to pick these out as being you know really bad blemishes that we wouldn't want really in any rod okay joel these strips are for a seven and a half foot rod butt section so we never want a node to fall under the ferrule that could be considered a weak spot so as we stagger the nodes we need to take that into consideration is that because the ferrule's a joint or there's already an eruption in the yeah stress there right there's more stress there already and again um just like in a graphite rod a lot of times when they break they break at the ferrule it's kind of a weaker point so we want to make that joint as strong as possible so we don't want to put a node under the ferrule if we can avoid we'd like to keep it at least two inches away from the node okay first thing we're going to do is we're just going to slide our strips right and take and i'm going to take a measurement we know that a seven and a half foot rod half of that is 45 inches so initially slide you're just offsetting this node so it's halfway between the adjacent nodes yep so i'm going to start with it in the middle of the two other nodes i want a minimum distance of four inches we don't like to get the nodes any closer together than that so on all of our tom morgan rods you'll find the node spacing to be at least four inches apart in the stack of the nodes so i need 45 inches going from here i can see i have 45 inches here and you can see the first node is five and a half inches away so i would be in great shape there okay right and that 45 inches is based on the seven and a half foot rod length correct gotcha so if i was building an eight foot rod i'd be looking at 48 inches right or a seven foot rod then i'm looking at 43 and a half inches okay another thing is on the hand mill we want an extra five inches on each end so really we want a strip that's 55 inches long i'm going to cut off five inches from one end and five inches from the other and leave me with 45 inches so if i cut off five inches here right this is going to be fine my first note is there right but you can see on this next one that five inches puts the node right at where the ferrule would be right right so i have to make an adjustment i can slide this keeping my minimum of four inches between these and now i have three inches five inches i'm going to cut off three inches before the node we'd like to have a minimum of two inches okay so we're in good shape there and we're in good shape here so simply staggering each one sliding them so you're lining up those first two measures yep yep i'm just sliding each one now i can look at each strip i make sure that i'm good i got my note spacing so these strips are lined up these strips are lined up and then your cut point is five inches from the end of the tape measure right yep okay and then my first node would be three inches away from the ferrule so i don't have to worry about what's under the handle of the real seat right because that's not going to be a weak point whereas the ferrule could be okay so my next step is using my tape measure these strips that are long i'm just going to put a mark and that's where i'm going to cut them okay here i'm going to go till i get to 55 inches that's 45 inches plus 5 on each end and again with my marker i'm going to put a mark and that's where i'm going to cut these strips okay does that make sense i think so perfect okay joel we split our comb we have our strips lined up we pulled out all the ones with blemishes you watched me stagger the notes for a seven and a half foot rod okay let's see how you do okay so we need 48 inches for a seven and a half right 45 inches for a seven second but then we want to take five so i'm just going to make that a little bit longer okay okay so now remember we want to add five inches on each side for the hand belt okay so i want to go to eight inches total so this is three inches away from the ferrule right okay minimum yep you want a minimum of two three inches is good i'm just gonna bang in there okay let's see okay and then i'm gonna take this and go in between and line up like this like this just line up all the nodes i'll be doing this a little bit out of sequence from the way you did it but that's okay okay and then now i want to make sure that i'm safe so i've got my five inches for the hand mill and that gives me three inches before this node yep and this node and this node in this node and then the nodes themselves are two to six inches apart yep that's so that's good with my minimum here and my minimum node spacing all along right okay so go ahead and mark this where you're going to cut them off okay okay next thing now that we have our closing do i want i want this to be right where that note works [Music] right there okay got you okay okay so i'm still i'm just going to double check triple check yep so i'm still good my nose facing here is still eight to thirteen and a half so that's five and a half inches that's enough yep okay okay so the next thing we want to do is so we can keep track of our node spacing throughout the making process we want to color code each opposite one so you could go black you could leave this one blank black blank black and so on okay just like color it a bunch of color on the enamel side makes it easier to see don't be shy right so now we know that all those that you colored black have the same note spacing all the ones that are not colored also have the same note spacing okay so as we go through the making process you'll be able to pick them up real easily okay and again we need three strips of each node spacing you can see you've got one two three four of those one two three four five of those so you have plenty of strips okay great why is it uh an advantage to have extra strips you know i like to say everything comes out perfect every time but sometimes mistakes happen right so it's good to have an extra strip to fall back on so here at tom morgan rod smith we use what's called the 3-3 node spacing there's a 2-2 and also a stair step so the 3-3 it simply looks like this you have a node blank node blank node blank so you never want two nodes together on your strips okay joel you just finished staggering the nodes on your butt section now we have to stagger the nodes on our tip section one more thing to consider here obviously we don't want a node under the ferrule we talked about the weakness but now in a tip section we don't want a node under the tip top either we try to keep each of them at least two inches away i like to even if i can get it farther away from the tip section okay all right so let's see how we're going to do first thing i'm going to do is i'm just going to take my strip and i always start by just dividing the two existing nodes just to kind of give me a ballpark is where i am all right next take my tape right here i know my rod is 45 inches right um and i'm gonna have five extra inches on each side so i need a strip that's 55 inches long if i look at this i'm going to cut off my first five inches so that put this snow way down but let's go from five inches to 45 right so i have to go to 50 inches so i have no note here which is great way away i got like seven inches there cut off my five inches i have eight inches there so this strip is great now i gotta see what can i do with the second strip and stagger the nodes if i cut off five inches you can see that node's going to be within one end too close too close yeah way too close so let's slide it it's at one inch now there's two inches three inches there's four inches so that's going to put me four inches away from the tip and you like to be more than two inches just where the tip top is the tip of the tip right okay okay because when you're catching a big fish with this rod you want that tip to uh stay intact yep so i go from my five inches i add 45 inches that puts into 50 and you can see this rod this strip is going to get cut off right here so that node is actually going to get cut away i'm in great shape here okay i have no node this node is going to be what's that 11 11.5 inches away this one is seven inches away right this one here is eight inches away and this one is actually four inches away okay so now do you ever need to check the intermediate spacing as well as the top and the bottom just to make sure nothing's gotten too close so we wanted a minimum of four inches right so i can look at these and say okay here i'm at ten one two three four four and three quarter inches i'm in good shape there okay so i would be able to mark these that's where i want to cut them come down here 55 inches mark them again because i know i'm going to cut off five inches that note is going to get you do the same things with butts right so we take this one and line it up like that yep and then this one line it up yep oops sorry i got caught there but then just line them up the whole way across them right and now now i'm gonna have you do it okay okay all right all right here's the tape measure remember you're building a seven and a half rod okay which is a 45 inch section 55 inches and you don't want any node under the tip top or the ferrule okay so here i'm gonna take this guy and go four inches five so nine is where i want that ideally right okay so four inches from the tip top and my five inches i'm cutting off for the hand mill here and then i've got nine there and then i'm going to stagger this halfway and kind of see where i'm at right so this is my cut line i'm okay i've got a lot of distance to that node i've been measuring it but i know that's more than three inches or four inches and then down here when i get to my 55 mark one two three four inches here remember you're going to cut off five oh it's kind of up to 50 that's right yeah so yeah that node's not under the handle that's right so that's the same as yours and then i'm 50 and then i'm to 46 basically so i'm four inches here to this node 40 i guess three and a half yeah a little close yeah no that's fine that's okay yeah oh cause it's under the hand or no it's two inches away from the ferrule so three and a half is okay yep right okay and then if i yeah so i think everything's okay i'm just checking the intermediate spacing here these all look like they're far apart yep you don't even have to measure them as well more than four so i'll come back and take this guy and wind him up yep and then line this guy up line this guy up just staggering back and forth that guy up that guy up and then now i can mark my cut point here yep go ahead and mark them marked out here too right yep okay you can mark all of these because we're going to have to cut them all oh right because they're all cool and there you go great you're all set make sense okay thank you [Music] so rick i just had a couple questions as we went through that that section of the class uh first of all can you talk about how you get bamboo and if there's any considerations for storing it at home uh yeah first if you're going to buy bamboo and store it at home we recommend that you store it inside you don't want to leave the bamboo outside on the ground and get wet and good and that kind of stuff so best way to store it is in your garage in a dry environment a lot of people take their bamboo and they'll put it up in the rafters and let it sit there if you store it correctly it will last for years there are still some bamboo rod makers around the country who are using bamboo from pre-embargo pre-world war ii and the bamboo is still good there's nothing wrong with it if it was kept correctly so you can store bamboo forever okay we are very fortunate here at tom morgan rod smith one of the people who imports bamboo lives right over the hill from us in livingston so all we have to do is give him a call and he brings us bundles of bamboo we always have a few bundles here at the shop for people that come in and they want to go home with a few sticks we have them here for them okay um what are some of the other options for note spacing i know you said that we are at the shop using three by three spacing technique yeah we use the three by three it's we think it's it's the easiest and it makes for a great rod some people will do and i'll kind of lay this out for you what they call the stair step so each strip right just like you're going upstairs you can see the nodes stagger going in one direction so they'll go around and then they'll continue up the next one so that's the stair step the other one is what's the challenge of using this technique challenge of this is if you were to break one of these strips when you're making it something happens to it you've got to find a strip that now is going to fit into that stair step pattern so it's a good idea to have multiple strips as you're doing the manufacturing in case something goes wrong right you don't have to throw away all your strips you can actually fill in the one that that maybe broke on you got it okay okay uh the other one that people use is what they call the 2 2 where they have the nodes actually opposite each other on the rod right so what they'll do is they'll take a strip they'll cut it wide and then they'll split it in half and they'll number one and two or three and four five and six so when they're putting their six sides together these two nodes are exactly opposite the idea behind that as you can see this bamboo is kind of has an arc to it now you take these two and you put them together and they work against each other to keep each other straight so that's some of the theories on the 2-2 they think that it makes for a nice straight rod okay and then uh i had a note here as well so we used a splitter when we were showing how to split this how do i get a splitter and what sizes are available yeah great we use the splitters here at the shop on all of our rocks it just makes splitting so much easier so we sell them here at the shop we have three different models we have a 10 fin and 18 and a 20 pin right 12 18 and 20. 12 18 and 20. um depending on the diameter of your comb that will affect the width of your strips all right so if your comb is two and a half inches in diameter the strip's going to be a certain width if it's one and a half inches in diameter they're going to be a different vector so a lot of people they each smaller the smaller the strip right right true okay some people will buy the 20 thin for their tip sections and they'll buy either the 12 or the 18 maybe for the butt sections because the strips are a little wider so today we went over comb selection splitting and staggering the notes join us next time when we'll get into how to prepare the dams on the inside and the nodes on the outside and we'll show you our rougher

Channel: Tom Morgan Rodsmiths

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Id: V3fQgM57N1I

Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021