The Bamboo Boys and Their Rod Building
Gordon Dana, Don Dillport, Bob Goldman, Jim Klein, Keith Lembo, and Alex Reeves
In April, 2010, six Club members went to Blue Ridge Georgia to build bamboo rods. Three members were novices (Gordon Dana, Bob Goldman and Jim Klein), two were on their second workshop (Don Dillport and Keith Lembo), and our veteran member (Dr. Aelx Reeves) was building his fourth rod. The group was guided by Bill Oyster, a young professional rod builder. The six would work for five days in Bill's shop in downtown Blue Ridge. Four members stayed with Bill at his home outside town, and two members drew the "cabin" on the Toccoa River a bit farther out of town. Blue Ridge is a lovely Northeast Georgia town, near the Tennessee and South Carolina borders, high enough in the hills to support some fine trout streams and rivers. The town has a number of excellent restaurants, and a very popular scenic railway. The week our members chose for their classes turned out to have perfect early spring weather: sunny, breezy and cool (particularly by Georgia standards).
Some of the group were devoted bamboo rod fisherman; others viewed bamboo with considerable awe and a bit of suspicion. But each member was eager to discover whether it was true that even a novice could build a rod in five days (albeit long days - 10-12 hours a day). Anyone glancing at the photos included in this article can see that it was true . And anyone at the 2010 Club Spring Outing, or at lunch in the Club during the Spring of 2010, can testify to the tedium of listening to these bamboo rod students brag about their individual and group achievements.
While the feelings of the individuals are important (and will be part of this article) for our general readers, it may be more interesting to focus on the technicalities. These will be organized chronologically.
Day One (Sunday, April 11). The group arrived on Saturday night and had a leisurely dinner at the house of our instructor Bill Oyster and his wife Shannen. Bill is one of the leading bamboo rod builders in the country, and he has built not one, but two "presidential rods" (both for President Carter, one of which was auctioned for charity; the other President Carter uses often, and is said to be his favorite rod). Bill is also a skilled engraver, working with rod fittings, as well as shotguns.
Rod building started at 8:30 Sunday morning, at which time each member of the group was assigned a workbench, tools, and two six-foot pieces of bamboo ("culms"; see the photo included) which would become a fine cane rod by the end of the week. The culms were split in half, and the first task was to file down the nodes (the rings, or bumps in natural cane). Then came the first big decision: flaming. This means taking a large blowtorch and burning the enamel side (outside) of the cane. The choices range from no flaming (blond, or natural) to dark flaming (resulting in a final rod that would be dark, almost mahogany in color).
As explained by Bill Oyster, this was primarily an aesthetic decision, but one with significant implications for the process of rod building. While experts dispute the exact performance results, Bill was fairly sure that the final product would cast about the same without regard to the flaming.
Others might say that the more flamed, the stiffer the rod. But as our group found out, there were very obvious differences in the behavior of the bamboo during construction of the rod, depending upon flaming.
Our group took a full spectrum of flaming, and at one extreme (Don Dillport, very darkly flamed) there resulted a beautiful rod, but the bamboo was more brittle, making straightening the strips and flattening the nodes very difficult, and more below beyond (al slight color change ran a serious risk of becoming brittle ...'Brown toning, a cosmetic coloration added to many rods, is an example of what Garry considered unnecessary heat-treating; a matter of opinion, but one that Garry felt very strongly about" (page 64).
After flaming, the culm was split into about 8 or so strips from each six-foot piece. As the group discovered over and over during the week, this was done the old-fashioned way: using only a knife and a hammer (no special splitting ring, as shown in some videos on building a bamboo rod). For the novices this was rather nerve-wracking, in that if a split went away, much of the culm would be lost. The balance of the day was taking the best 12 strips (six for the butt end, six for the tip), scraping the enamel and choosing a staggering of the nodes to cut the six foot pieces down to about four feet. Our group took a fairly straightforward approach to the staggering, making sure that only two of six strips had nodes in the same position (and these would be opposite each other when glued, since these would be hexagonal rods).
When the master Garrison was consulted, it was noted that his preference was a much more complicated order; "Garry's reasoning for placing the node in this [complex] order in the finished rod was the same as that of the designers of the 6-cylinder engines with the firing order 1, 5, 3, 6, 2, 4. Their object was to displace the explosion (nodes) in the cylinder head (rod) so that the firing would have no unbalancing effects (weakening) on the performance of the automobile (rod)" (page 18). Now that's an engineer for you!
Day Two: Reader, if you are already exhausted, think of our members. On this second day, each member's 12 strips were given a rough "bevel," meaning each strip was put through a machine which made the strip have a cross section of an equilateral triangle. This was done with a large, rather intimidating beveling machine - the only piece of equipment used during the entire week that would not be found in a good home workshop. Beveling can be done by hand, but the machine helped considerably. The strips were now tempered (baked about 30 minutes) in order to remove much of the moisture and some of the oils.
In this process, all the rods (even the blond rod) were given significant heat treating.
Day Three: More planing to get the exact tapers (exact to about one-thousandth of an inch). At the end of the day, the 12 strips were glued into two recognizable rod sections (each rod would be a two piece hexagonal rod). The gluing was done by soaking the pieces in glue, and wrapping them by hand with string. Often machines are used for this wrapping, but Bill Oyster believes that hand wrapping allows the builder to mold and roll the pieces into a fairly straight section before the glue sets, and this approach also avoids twisting of the strips.
Day Four: At this point the bamboo began to look like a fly rod. The string was removed, the sections sanded, ferrules and cork added. The cork was fashioned by hand (using sandpaper and a simple lathe) using various rod grip styles as a visual guide. Guides were taped on.
Day Five: This was the day for "wrapping guides." That may sound simple, but using #100 silk thread and trying to keep a smooth line is much easier said than done. Once again, the Bill Oyster approach was a totally manual application of the guide wraps. Many of the rods were wrapped using white silk, which becomes transparent in the varnishing, hiding any sloppy wrapping work. However, some brave members did elaborate colored and bi-colored wraps (Gordon Dana had particularly fine wraps, with many bands added for cosmetic appeal). This may be an innate talent rather than an acquired skill, as others may confirm. By the end of the day, the first of four coats of varnish was applied.
Day Six: Sand and varnish, sand and varnish, sand and varnish. By about 10:30 PM on Friday, we had our finished rods. As clocked by Gordon Dana, we had spent 58 hours on these rods (backing out all lunches, dinners, goofing off, etc.), but this was a labor of love (see the included photo of the group with finished rods).
Day Seven: Several of our members used their rods in local rivers. Others had a mini-reunion/outing on the Farmington in Connecticut the following week. All of them became great bores at the Club and on outings, although our membership in general has been very tolerant and kind to these new knights who have completed their own "Idyl of Split Bamboo."
Here's what each member had to say about his experience:
Gordon Dana: "I fully concur with all that's been said by my fellow bamboo students. A couple of points that deserve emphasis: (1) Bill Oyster is an absolute purist and insists that the rods from his workshop are made with the most traditional methods possible. The only mechanical devices used for these rods are the beveling machine (for rough shaping), the lathe (for the cork grip), and a pulley in the dipping closet. This results in a lot of work, but a rod that one is even more proud of. (2) Bill makes it a point never to touch the rods of his students except for an occasional brief demonstration to the class. Again, this results in a real feeling of kinship between the student and his rod, knowing that he was fully responsible for his own success." Bill is a remarkable teacher, and amazingly, he's had a 100% success rate with every student he's ever had at his workshop. Perhaps not every rod over the years has come out exactly as planned, but every student has gone away with a rod they're really proud of. That certainly includes the six of us. It's a week of hard work (and significant mental stress during the flattening and tapering processes!), but we would all agree it was tremendously gratifying."
Don Dillport: "Three years ago, Keith Lembo and I were fishing the Soque River in Georgia when Alex Reeves showed up with an absolutely beautiful bamboo rod he had just finished building. As we admired it, Alex urged us to join him the next April and build one of our own. With no expectation of finishing any kind of rod, much less a fishable one, the next spring I found myself in the mountains of Northeast Georgia at the lovely home of Bill and Shannen Oyster. That year our class was held on the main floor of their house, and we slept downstairs in very comfortable single rooms. Bill Oyster is a gifted teacher and builds beautiful rods. Under his tutelage, I overcame my nervousness and some of my clumsiness and was able to keep up with the class and avoid major mistakes. At the end of the week I was totally flabbergasted to be holding a seven foot nine inch, 5 weight, dark flamed bamboo rod that looked great and threw as good a line as I am capable of casting with any rod. I know that some who have seen me cast might point out that such a claim does not, in and of itself, imply that it is a great casting rod. Nevertheless, I now use that rod and the seven foot six inch, a weight, I made this April almost exclusively for trout fishing. They both perform admirably, and each has landed a trout of over 20 inches with no strain whatever, I am looking forward to next year's class and plan on making an eight foot for 6 weight."
Bob Goldman: " However interesting (or uninteresting) the details of the rod building are, the real story is Bill Oyster and system that he has developed for taking six (all are really novices) individuals, some of whom could barely hang a picture and have everyone turn out an aesthetically pleasing and perfectly serviceable cane rod. After all, the making of bamboo rods is the stuff of mystique and legend and the builders are folk heroes. Yet here was the equivalent of Henry Higgins taking Eliza Doolittle and turning her into 'My Fair Lady'. His secret was the patience of a saint coupled with an analysis of the process and the breaking down of the building that resulted in this unique achievement that would be treasured forever by the participants. It could only be done by someone who loves, and believed totally in, what he was doing (even during short breaks he was outside casting), coupled with the mentality that goes with being a Marine pilot and an internationally competitive bicycle Racer. But the picture or the accomplishment would not be complete without mentioning the indispensable contribution of his wife Shannen. This remarkable woman was the anchor of the visionary and dreamer, juggling three young children, cooking for the group, keeping the books and handling all of the business end of the enterprise, all with good humor, even while insuring that all money due was collected."
Jim Klein: "When I first read the Garrison/Carmichael book, building a bamboo rod seemed beyond anything I could hope to accomplish. Over the years I have been a devoted user of bamboo rods, both recently built and very old, both English and American. I have found my new, self-made rod to be as good as any of my classics. My only fear is that I am becoming so devoted to this rod that I won't use my others."
Keith Lembo: "Before a chance meeting with Alex Reeves at Blackhawk Flyfishing, that familiar haunt of Anglers, I had been long on knowledge and short on experience when it came to bamboo rod-build-ing. That is to say, I'd been a devotee of bamboo rods and the history of the same, along with a longstanding interest in vintage tackle generally. I had acquired a fair bit of knowledge on the subject, from how to build a rod (in theory) to knowing who the great makers (and some not so well known) were and had been. But it never occurred to me that I would ever be a member of the rodbuilding fraternity, or 'the craft', as Hoagy Carmichael calls it. My personal journey began with that chance meeting with Alex. Don Dillport and I were impressed with the rods he pulled out of his tubes, and astounded when he told us he had made them him-self. We signed up for the Bill Oyster class immediately, and made our first rods in the sur class year. A bit rough going, lots of anxiety, and not without some heartache when everything turned out 'just ok'.
Folks, this is hard work! But our second year, of which Jim Klein writes, was a different story. My rod turned out to be lovely, in my humble opinion, and although still a rookie, I now consider myself a junior member in good standing of the 'craft.' It's an experience any Angler would treasure until he fishes around the bend."
Alex Reeves: "Building a bamboo rod with Bill is like an 'Outward Bound' experience, in that you are on your own to create the experi-ence. But in this case there is a big difference: at the end of the week you have your own bamboo rod. This really heightens the entire experience."