Update: Tuesday, October 6, 2009

In this post:
1) Gluing Up

One special note at the outset here: the further along I get in this process, the more indebted I feel to Lee (hexrod on this forum). Lee is a bamboo fly rod maker in Lincoln and his advice and guidance has become essential to me! I’m not sure if Lee still visits the forum, but if so, thanks Lee!!!

So anyway… the variety of glues available in this world is truly mindboggling. A guy could spend weeks just trying to get his mind around all the different kinds of epoxy and still come up short. So by this point in my rod making, I was inclined to dispense with the exhaustive tediousness of glue research and simply pick a proven and trusted glue.

URAC 185 is a modified formaldehyde adhesive and the industry standard in bamboo fly rods for perhaps half a century (with LOTS of exceptions). It is a two-part glue, including a liquid resin and a powder hardener, which I believe contains crushed up walnut shells or some such thing. I conducted several experiments with URAC 185 by laminating strips of bamboo together. At the end of all my experiments I learned that URAC 185 effectively glues bamboo together – go figure. So I moved onto the real deal, and here’s how it went.

To reduce the stress, I only glued up one section at a time. I began by using a razor blade to split open the taped up sections. I would then unroll them so all six strips were still connected on the enamel side to the tape and lying flat next to each other. Then, I used my plane to shave off the apex points of the strips. This was accomplished in just two or three light passes of the plane and was done to help the six strips seat together tightly. I then used a clean tooth brush and compressed air to clean any and all debris from the strips. At this point, I would mix the glue, ready a bucket of warm water (URAC 185 cleans up with warm water), and put on latex gloves. I would then apply glue to the strips with a tooth brush. A couple of passes were required to ensure adequate coverage.

Once the glue was applied, I would drop the tooth brush in the warm water for later clean up, and ready my spool of nylon twine. Here comes the most stressful part of gluing: leaning in close to my strips, I would carefully curl the six strips together at the butt end of the section into their hexagonal shape. As soon as they seated together, I would wrap the tape around to hold them together. Then I would slowly advance down the length of the section, curling and taping all the way to the tip. Once the entire section is rolled up into a messy, glue dripping hexagon, I would use a half-hitch or two to connect the nylon thread at the butt-end of the section and wrap around and around all the way to the tip and then reverse direction and wrap around and around back to the butt, where I would make a loop and secure the thread with another half-hitch or two before cutting it free from the spool.

At this point, I would spend some time ensuring that the section was as straight as possible and not twisted. The best way I have found to do this is to lay the section on a flat surface and roll it back and forth, starting with both hands in the center and slowly moving them toward their respective ends of the section. A few passes like this and my sections were straight and ready to be hung from the rafters to dry for a few days.

After several days of hanging, I got the sections down and removed the nylon thread. It was depressing to see how much dried glue covered the sections. I should have done my best to remove the excess glue before it dried to the outside of the strips. Since I neglected to do this, I had a lot more work to do in sanding off this excess glue. So I went to work sanding each individual face of each strip on each section. A week later, I was glued up, sanded clean, and ready to start figuring out ferrules.

Now admittedly, there are several dozen finer points that I omitted here, so if you’re reading this post today or 10 years from now, drop me a PM and we can talk specifics.

All three sections glued and sanded (most of the 'tools of the trade' are also pictured here)


The butt section glued and sanded