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.