I’ve made numerous rod racks, for all my rods (plastic and bamboo). Most of these are utilitarian to a T, just to store my rods, and in some cases to have them ready to grab when I go fishing. Some were made to display individual rods at shows, and incorporated different ‘mechanisms’ to protect the rod in the rack from occasional pilfering - like the new rack I showed in the previous post - a 2-rod rack for doing a side-by-side comparison of rods made from Tonkin and Lô ô bamboo; this rack has a split central shelf with holes that prevent removing individual sections from the rack when closed, and can be ‘secured’ by screws that ‘lock’ the central shelf to the uprights - not completely secure, but more than sufficient to prevent occasional pilfering. However, I now also wanted to make a more elaborate display rack, that would enable me to keep some of my go-to rods ready for grabs in a more accessible, visible location. I came across a picture of a nice wall-mounted rack and decided to...
As mentioned some time ago, I have been experimenting with Lô ô bamboo for making rods. Lô ô ( Bambusa procera ) is a giant bamboo from Vietnam and has many of the same characteristics that make Tonkin bamboo ( Pseudosasa amabilis ) such an excellent rod building material. In addition to that, its average diameter is significantly larger than Tonkin’s, and its internode length is such that 3 piece rods up to 8 ft in length can be made nodeless-spliceless, each section made of strips from a single internode. Its only drawback is that it has a slightly lower Modulus of Elasticity, requiring a slight change in taper dimensions to match a Lô ô rod to a Tonkin rod made from the same taper - multiplying the overall diameter of the taper by a factor of 1.035 usually does the trick. Last summer, I made two Lô ô rods based on my existing tapers, adjusted accordingly, a 3 piece 7.5 ft rod for a #4 line and a 3 piece 8 ft rod for a #5 line, and tested them extensively in Norway. The rods performe...