Chilly bamboo afternoon

Today I got together with Christian and Wolfhard to talk about bamboo, fishing and Pizza. Although this November afternoon was wet and chilly we had a great time. It's nice to see these two bamboo enthusiasts talk about their favorite rod building material, the Arundinaria amabilis. I'm nowhere an expert as these guys. And let me tell you, these guys eat and breath bamboo! Okay, I found out they appreciate a good pizza as well...

Our friend Wolfhard decided to start building (and restoring) his own rods and he is improving VERY rapidly indeed! He took several classes from the well known German bamboo rod maker Rolf Baginski to soak up the basics of bamboo rod making. Wolfhard showed us his new bamboo studio where he has spent (and will be spending) many hours working on his many bamboo projects.

Seeing all the equipment needed to build a bamboo fly rod is just fascinating. It's really interesting to see how systematically Wolfhard arranged his studio to work on his bamboo rods. He makes everything from scratch: ferrules, hardware and the bamboo blanks. And his 'office' is as clean as an operation room!

Before and after the lunch we decided to do some inevitable casting of several project rods as well as newly (to be) acquired rods. Wolfram Schott seems to be Christian's new hero. The demo 'rods' Christian brought were looking promising. Not sure how this builder's finished rods look like, but I'm told that it's one of the best Christian has ever seen. The two rods from Schott were parabolic rods, which were slightly too soft for my taste. Wolfhard showed us a three piece rod he is building for a guy to try in New Zealand. Boy, this rod is a real cannon! Beautiful flaming marks too.

This afternoon brought us back to what makes bamboo such an interesting material. The many different tapers that can result in totally different rod action, it's simply astounding! Not to mention the different cosmetics that makes the rod the eye candy it can be. Now, this is a personal thing of course.

The nice thing about such a get together is the lazy pace and learning from each others experience. We talked about details on building bamboo rods, how to get the best taper by trial-and-error as well as how women see men as parquet (once laid, they just walk over them for well over 40 years! *grin*).