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Snips... ;-)People of the Piscatorial Persuasion,
Some time in the early seventies I met a cheerful old chap who had arrived from the Old Dart a couple of years previously. Over a pot or two of the Irish Club's finest Fourex he informed me that he made cricket bats, cricket balls, hockey (non-Arctic) sticks and split cane fishing rods. He certainly had hands which were "broken to the trade", in particular, a thumb (I forget which hand) with a mighty groove along the inside length of the top joint which, he informed me, he acquired from binding the twine which constitutes part of the insides of a cricket ball. He made balls for first class matches and bats for some of the leading cricketers of the day. At the time most of my angling was confined to the surf or rocky headlands and glass-reinforced plastic rods were the order the day. Before hollow fibre-glass rods became generally available entire Rangoon canes were used as surf fishing rods and split cane rods were used, by those who could afford them, for salt water estuary and fresh water angling. Otherwise shorter Rangoon poles or, yuk, solid fibre glass rods were used. Hardly any fly fishing for introduced game species (trout and salmon) was undertaken in South-east Queensland then as the high water temperatures militated against the survival of released fingerlings which had to be imported from New South Wales. Some hardy enthusiasts persevered with trying to introduce them to various impoundments but nothing much ever seemed to come of it or, if it did, such success remained a dark secret. During the course of our acquaintance I asked him how split cane rods were made and he went into some detail to describe how things were done but, seeing the bemusement on my face, he told me that he believed that there was a book in print which described the process and that he would write to one of his friends "back home" to get particulars of it. All was accomplished in a leisurely manner and some months later I picked up the tome in question from my favourite seller of law books, whose staff found that the occasional client of eclectic tastes brought some relief from their general tedium. Its title is "How to Build and Repair Your Own fishing Rods", its author is G. Lawton Moss, M.C., T.D., D.L., its publisher is The Technical Press, London, its date of publication is 1969 and its ISBN is 291 394116. Now, I have never built a split cane rod myself, being content to follow, when I get the time, my surf and rock angling pursuits. I have occasionally fly-fished, again with a hollow glass-reinforced-plastic rod. However, this little book is far more widely-traveled than I am, being the inspiration behind the construction of numerous rods by various fly fishing enthusiasts who have borrowed it, to the extent that one young farming chap (he has barely reached the age of 60 years by now) in the New England district of New South Wales established a nice little sideline for himself in building and purveying split cane fly rods, again, to those who can afford them, after using my book as his guide on his first few attempts. The beauty of this book is the Galootishness of its prescribed method of rod construction. Neither metal jigs nor grooves down the soles of planes are required. Concerning planes, the author prescribes "One or two small metal wood-planes. The cheap metal planes about 6 in. long are suitable. One plane will do, but two are better (one is kept set 'fine' and the other 'coarse')". There is also prescribed a "planing board" of oak (or anything else, I suspect), 5' x 8" x 2" and 2 strips of deal (ditto with oak), 5' x 2" x 3/16" which are fixed to the board so that it may perform the functions of holding strips of cane to be planed to their initial, parallel sided, thickness and then to support the strips on the "former" (see next para.) whilst they are planed to their triangular-sectioned taper. The heart of the business of converting strips of bamboo into tapering, precise-angled, one-sixth segments of fly-rod is what the author calls the "former", a piece of hardwood of equilateral triangle section of parallel sides and about 6 inches longer than the intended section ('joint") of the rod. Two or three of the arisses of the former are planed (depending on how many pieces the rod is to be divided into) so as to form a flat, tapered surface down the length of the arris corresponding with the desired taper and thicknesses of the various joints of the rod. These planed surfaces are slightly hollowed to more or less match the rounded surface of the enamel side of the strip of cane and the six strips of cane are, in turn, glued to the planed arris and, with the cane-bearing former placed so that one protruding edge of the cane piece rests slightly over the edge of so-called "planing board", planed along the planing board in turn, one side first being planed, then the other, with the plane canted so that its sole is parallel with uppermost side of the former. According to the author, a heat-release glue is used to fix the cane strip to the former for planing and heat is applied to release the planed, tapered strip. However, when I mentioned the gluing process to my old friend who had put me on the track of acquiring this book he told me that there never were enough hours in life to wait for glue to dry. He used practically the same methods as are described in the book, stating that he had numerous formers of different sizes for different sizes of rods, but that he simply fixed the strips to his former by malleting the strips to 4 or 5 fine brads which had been driven well into the former and had their heads cut off and the remainder of their shanks sharpened to points. He said that he never had any trouble with the strips "escaping" from the former during the planing process. He filled the brad holes with bamboo slivers and glue before he glued the segments together to form a joint. I think that the 2" thick planing board recommended by the author is designed to give some clearance above the bench for the plane if one adopts his methods. I understood from my friend that he simply malleted the bamboo strip on to the chosen top arris of the former and, leaving it in that position, planed away on either side with the sole of his plane canted parallel to the side of the former. This probably requires more skill and experience than the author's methods, but bamboo is a pretty cheap material for making a few mistakes with. Speaking of bamboo, my friend did not scruple to use locally (Brisbane) grown bamboo with butt diameters up to 4 or 5 inches. He simply made bigger rods with the bigger pieces as salt water fly fishing involving heavier lines and flies started to become popular and also used it for the "springs" in cricket bat handles. He preferred that it was cut whilst it was fairly green and he would immediately knock the inside nodes out of it after which it could be stored indefinitely under cover. He said that he did not cure a piece of bamboo, that is, an unsplit length of a bamboo pole, until shortly before he was to use it and that it was cured over the exhaust heat from the top of a kerosene hurricane lantern by moving it through and turning it around in the heat column until, as I recall his words to the best of my ability, "a bit of steam is driven off and it changes colour just a bit", which words provide room, I think, for more inexpensive experimentation. All of this is just to let Galoots everywhere know that there is truly a Galootish method of building a split cane fishing rod without calling upon the skill and resources of any fitter of our acquaintance who is a Fellow in Foreign Orders. Instructions on finishing a rod with its bindings, accoutrements, varnish etc. can be found in any one of a thousand publications on rod-building. Regards from Brisbane, |
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