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Has anyone made reel seats from bamboo. If so how is it done. Do you cut 1" squares then somehow flatten and glue them together. I have seen them a few times. They look nice. (Rick Barbato) Haven't tried it, but one way would be to double build some short pieces to a bit beyond the required diameter and then turn and bore to size. (Mike McGuire) I'm doing a how-to on this type of laminated bamboo reel seat in the next edition of (April) Power Fibers. Basically I use a 1" hole saw to cut plugs from the butt of a culm then glue those together similar to the way you glue cork rings. There are a few tricks I've learned to make things easier but that is the gist.
Here is a photo of one that I did mounted on a rod. (Chris Carlin) Nice looking reel seat and so appropriate for a bamboo rod. I have never seen one but Cabela's sells Bamboo Burl Grips. They are priced cheap so maybe they are junk but maybe would look good with a boo reel seat? (John Freedy) I have made several. I just Make a big section using pieces planed at about .380. Then I turn them round and finish drilling them. They work best with pocketed butt caps. (Gordon Koppin) I have used bamboo for reel seats and for grips also. The reel seats were tam vang as well as Tonkin. The grips were all tam vang. I'll try to post links to pictures tomorrow. (Will Price) The 1st pic is a tom vang grip and a Tonkin reel seat
Before varnishing Tom vang grips and reel seat
There was no stain added to the second rod. It was just a lot denser grained and turned dark when varnished but matched the flamed PHY Midge nicely. I am currently working on my 3rd all bamboo rod which is a PHY Driggs River. (Will Price) You can actually buy this in thick pieces from places that sell bamboo flooring... it looks great. saw some reel seats and handles made from it at a Rodbuilding Show (graphite guys). You can laminate it yourself, but if I wanted to do it, I'd go with the prefabbed laminate. Someone may know of a good link, but, I don't do bamboo seats, handles so have no idea. I think if I were to do one, I'd just do a very large (3/4" flat to flat) hex piece and turn it round... Lee Koch makes a great looking hex reel seat, but he's a bit of anal retentive type and hammers out the caps and rings to hex... geez... (sorry, Lee... you know I gotta take a shot when I can... it's OK. I'll fall off of something, down something or get washed down a river in Colorado this summer and you can have your chance to get back at me!). (Bob Nunley)
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