It all starts with a 12 foot culm of bamboo

Bamboo Rod Build, Part XI, Glue-Up

Glue-up is probably the most intimidating part of rod building for the beginning maker, especially those darn fragile looking tips. When you first consider the task, your thought is always, "How can it be done without without breaking those damn tiny tips?"

My first couple of glue-ups were borderline traumatic experiences. The first attempt seemed to go pretty well, until I woke up in the morning and, upon first inspection, discovered that one of the strips had rolled during binding and the enamel side was now on the interior of the section. Hours of work wasted.

During the second attempt, I didn't pay enough attention to the order the strips should be bundled and the nodes were together throughout the whole rod. While it really didn't really hurt the rod's action, it was not the result you want to see. I used too much binding pressure during my third attempt, which resulted in a snapped tip. Luckily, the break was beyond the cutoff point, so all was okay.

As with everything in life, practice and experience are the best teachers. Now glue-up night is merely exciting, even fun. This is when all the work applied to beveled strips pays off and the strips will soon become a finished fly rod blank.

There are many opinions on the best glue for rod building. I stick with one of the tried and true standards, Urac 185. It's the glue with which I learned and, most importantly, I've never had a failure or delamination. The glue is buff colored to start, but once the walnut powder activator is added, the mixture turns a beautiful caramel color, almost like warm butterscotch, with a wonderfully similar consistency. While I'm sure the stuff is toxic and carcinogenic as hell, I still enjoy working with it:


First we have to cut off the wider hold down portion of our strips. To make sure all strips are cut off at the same point, I insert my hex driver in the screw hole and draw a straight line above the swelled hold down area of the strip:


Then, one strip at a time, using a hacksaw, I cut from the enamel side of the strip, snapping the strip in an upward direction just before breaking through with the saw to prevent splintering:


I then soak an area of a leather glove with mineral spirits and run the strips though throught the leather, always in one direction, butt to tip, to prevent damaging the strip. This cleans the strip and removes stray fragments of bamboo from the pith side of the strip:


Aligning the strips at the butt, I bundle them together in the original predetermined node spacing and then check to make sure the nodes are in the correct placement:


The strips are secured temporarily with three strips of masking tape. The tape is then cut with a fingernail in the between the same two flats to "filet" the strips and expose their inner apex:


The glue is then mixed at a ten to one weight ratio, glue to walnut powder:


Using a toothbrush, the glue is spread liberally over the the strips:


A cotton swab is used to removed as much excess glue from the hollowed area of the strip as possible:


The strips are then rolled together and and cotton string is tied around the strips at the locations of the masking tape. The masking tape is then removed so that I don't have to stop in the middle of the binding process to remove it later:


I then move to my binder, wrap the drive belt around the ferrule end section twice, front to back,attached the cotton glace string from the roller and begin turning the hand wheel to advance the section through the binding process. At the end of the first bind, half-hitches are added to secure the binding string:


The drive belt is then reversed, back to front, to advance the strip forward in an opposite rotation to help prevent twisting of the sections. Once bound, the sections are checked closely for mistakes. If a strips "rolled" during binding, for example, the sections can be seperated, cleaned with warm water, allowed to dry, and then re-glued and bound.

The sections are then wiped with a damp cloth to remove as much of the excess surface glue as possible. Then the sections are rolled on a flat surface and checked for twists, which is corrected by twistiong the section in the opposite direction. Typically, as long as excessive pressure is not used during binding, twisting is not a problem.


After the sections are straightened as much as possible by rolling and running a wooden block down their length, I hang them in my "Drying Cabinet", a glass hutch with a 100 watt light bulb placed at the bottom to keep the cabinet warm during the 24 hours required for the glue to set properly: