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Graphite Inserts

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Anyone have any experience of graphite inserts. Would anyone care to share there experiences was it a worth while task?  (Gary Nicholson)

Do you mean the arbors, or the insert itself? I made one graphite rod with it and the graphite insert got permanently gouged real hard when I took a tumble in the stream. I don't think it would look good on bamboo, but whatever floats your boat. Use what makes you happy. It is certainly light weight if that is what you are after, but then I would suggest using something else if possible.  (Scott Bearden)

No I mean inserts into the hollow form of a bamboo rod. Insert of a graphite core. As in Ray Gould’s book Constructing Cane Rods. Someone must have tried it?  (Gary Nicholson)

I have both of Ray's books, got them for Christmas so I have yet to read them. If I were to do it I would want a custom made graphite rod that is too slow to be practical as a regular rod. Its hard enough coming up with one taper that works, but you want to work with two? Sheesh, more power to you. Just like the double built bamboo rods I imagine this is quite difficult to pull off well. Perhaps there is a way to contact Ray himself? At the very least you should be able to get in touch with him through the publisher. I would also want one that is very thin walled, and if that is the case I would recommend a Dan Craft blank, which are very nice on their own, but you are going to change the action considerably.

Another person to try and get in touch with would be Wayne Maca of The Boo Boys fame. He works with a lot of new age glues and materials and his hollow built rods appear to be very thin walled with very little surface area to glue splines together. He seems to push the limits of bamboo with the use of advanced materials. He definitely thinks outside the box and I bet he may have tried this or at least thought about it.

Best of luck, and give us progress reports.  (Scott Bearden)

I've read of several people trying this and they all came to the same conclusion. It wasn't worth it. There was an article on one of the rodbuilding sites about a fellow out in California who obtained the graphite cloth that is wrapped around the mandrel to make the graphite blanks. He trimmed the cloth in strips which he glued onto the interior sides of the triangle before gluing the strips into the hex blank. Of course this meant the final taper on the strips had to be .001-.002 smaller than the taper called for so that final dimensions of the glued up blank were what they would be if the cloth wasn't in there. My gawd I have enough trouble planing those small tip strips without trying to cut a piece of cloth that was even smaller and then trying to glue it perfectly straight so that none of it showed or protruded from the finished blank. This maker (I wish I could remember his name) built quite a few rods this way and everyone familiar with them said they were quite fast for bamboo with very fast recovery times. My only thought was to paraphrase one of Channer’s favorite expressions "Just how hard do you want to make this." (Will Price)

I believe it was Cecil Pierce(?). And, yes,  it seems to me this is one of those "how hard do you want to make this" situations.  (John Channer)

Yes indeed it was Cecil. He made a number of rods in that manner, and they were indeed fine rods. Cecil was missing some parts of his casting hand and was looking for the lightest flyrod possible. He gave me samples of his construction which I turned over to the Catskill Fly Fishing Museum. They had it on display along with a section dedicated to Cecil for a while,  but it must now be in storage.

Cecil was a great rodmaker, a great innovator and a great guy. He was truly a Man For All Seasons.  (Bill Fink)

Yes, that does sound very difficult to do. The way I was thinking was to hollow build the rod. And just insert a graphite tube inside of the rod. Mainly in the Butt section. (Gary Nicholson)