Day 6 - Planed The Butt Section Strips At Home

Planing the strips sitting on the chair is much easier than standing.

I can use both my hands to exert a little more pressure and use my feet to move with the plane.

Shoulders locked. Less work on the forearm.

Completed all 6 strips on both sides and still have enough energy for more.

Day 5 - Planed 3 More Strips

Planed another 3 strips of the tips section.  

Some Peacock Basses

It's embarassing posting just one photo for Rod Making. My fingers were numb and I think it is better to take just a good photo instead of many blur photos.

Here are some Peacock Basses caught on Saturday and today.

Day 4 - Rough Planing The Bamboo Strips

Rough planing the strips. Now this is tougher. After 3 strip, one side only, my neck started to ache. So have to call it a day.

Day 3 - Straightening The Strips

Straightening using the heat gun. The first 6 strips looked okay.But after that, fatique set in the the rest were "terrible".Very tough job straightening these strips. Some of the strips were burnt.

Rough planing next week.

Ponggol

Crystal Clear Waters

 Caught on 3rd November 2013. After these photos, my iPhone took a dunk.

Spiral Pattern To Stagger The Nodes

Staggering the nodes in a spiral pattern.

Measured 50 inchses and cut. 

File the nodes flat

Node, not filed yet.

Marked. Red for the tip section. Blue for the butt section.

Next week, the straightening will be done.

It is going to be tough.

The Master and His Apprentice

Trying out making a Bamboo Fly Rod at Uncle Wong's house under Uncle Wong's guidance.

The 12 feet bamboo culm was cut into 2 6-footers and flamed.
One was flamed really dark. Sort of burnt. Not because I wanted it that way, but I "over cooked" it.
The next one was a bit better but still not up to Uncle Wong's standard. Hehehehehehe.............

I was supposed to split the bamboo culm into 24 strips of bamboo strips.

But I could only managed to split it into just 12 strips. Just enough to make one hex bamboo fly rod.

Without Uncle's timely guidance, I would have ended up only with 10 or less.

The trick is to correct the splitting at the next node to make sure that the strip is splitted in a parallel line.

Not tapered as it run down the bamboo culm.

Ronald was helping me.

Now we know what to do when splitting the next culm.

The next step will be to file the nodes and lay out the strips for cutting according to a staggering system.

Uncle will let me know how to cut them next week.

He recommended a Garrison 209 or a Payne 100 taper.

We'll see next week.

I'll post more photos as we go along.