Christmas

The Christmas tree


... the 2007 and 2008 trees



WARNING - If you might be getting a gift from me this year - you might not want to read on until after Christmas







Cutting board (walnut, cherry and maple) for sis

A walnut box for Mom

A frame for sis and Dave

Spinning rods for Hap and Mel

Josie's first fly rod

Josie's handspun yarn

My Birthday Present - A Kiley Mosaic

Josie got me a 7ft' 4wt Steve Kiley "Fall River" Mosaic for my birthday. Steve taught me how to make rods.

Installing Ferrules

Jackpot Special - Rod #2

A Dickerson 8013 for Stewart. Grip is cork and spalted maple. This is the first rod I dip finished and the first made from cane that I split.

Wraps

Getting a little better at wrapping guides on. These are a few from my new rods - pre varnish.

New Grips

A few new grips and reel seats for my latest rods


Heart of pine reclaimed from the mill in Cabbagetown, Georgia


Spalted maple and cork with delrin spacers.

Roughing and straightening

I'm working on 4 rods two piece/one tip rods right now. At 12 strips per rod - I had a lot of rough planing and straightening to do.

Rough planing


Nodes in need of straightening.


Heating the strip to make it more pliable.

30 seconds in the vise and its straight.

Fir Bark Grip

I was down at my sister's farm last week and noticed a massive fallen fir tree. I had seen a fir grip before so I grabbed a nice chunk of bark off the tree - cut it to a size small enough to fit on my lathe and started turning.


The chunk



I turned the whole thing between centers into a cylinder. Not surprisingly - the lathe was pretty unstable with this huge chunk turining. It probably isn't the safest way to do this - but I don't have a band or table saw - so I just took it straight to the lathe.



After I got it shaped into a cylinder - I put it into a 4 jaw chuck and started shaping it into a grip. Then drilled a 1/4" hole and put it on a mandrel.



Here are some of the fissures and craters further turning revealed. I tried to fill these with epoxy - mixed with bark dust - but wasn't totally happy with the result. It looked kind of shiny in the spots that had been filled. After that I tried to fill with wood filler - but as you can see on the finished grip below - the filler stands out.







This also has a coat of tru-oil on it to make the colors a litle richer. I'm thinking I'll go back to filling with epoxy on my next attempt. I guess I could also just varnish the whole grip and fill in the gaps that way - but then it will lose the cork feel.

Splittin Cane

Picked a culm of bamboo out for Stewart's fly rod.

Cut in half with the chop saw - two 6 ft sections.

After the first split

After a few more splits.

The rod - butt section on the left- two tips on the right - with a few extra strips just in case.

The method I finally tried that actually worked for me was to measure around the culm - marking every 1/4" - highlighting the 1" marks. I started splitting on the 1" mark opposite the drying split. Started the split with tile cutters (pliers for cutting ceramic tile) then ripped the strips apart by hand. I split in half - then into thirds - then in half - then in half again. Once the strips got smaller than an inch - I used the dull side of a bamboo froe to keep the split centered. If it runs to one side - push the fat side out - the run will head back to the center. This worked pretty good - got most strips to about 1/4" wide - about 14 from the tip section and 15 from the butt section.

Bambooooooooooo

My next 20 or so rods arrived today

The variations in wall thickness were pretty extreme - anywhere from .40 to .14