I’m happy to be able to say that New Zealand now has another three bamboo rodmakers! After all the lockdowns and other restrictions, it was wonderful to finally hold my first NZ-based rodmaking class at the end of 2022. Tom, John and Angus, who attended my 5-day rodmaking workshop all made outstanding rods. We are just waiting for a window in the weather and respective schedules to have a class reunion to fish the rods together. That’s proving more of a challenge than completing the actual rods!
Five days for a class might sound like a lot of time, but quite a bit of work goes into making a split cane rod. Even for me, with over 20 years of experience under my belt, making a rod from start to finish still takes over 40 hours of labour. That doesn’t include the waiting time for glues to set and varnishes to dry.
Where does the 40 hours go? It’s a combination of many different tasks, plus a lot of repetition. Most people have some idea of the configuration of a split cane rod, but it might be of interest
