Bamboo Tips - Tips Area
Heat Treating - General

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Just wonder whether everybody has the same annoying static charge on strips out of the oven.

It is so frustrating and annoying to have the shavings stick to the forms, the plane, the bench, my hands, clothing, even the broom when trying to sweep them up.

Trying to wipe them off simply transfers them to another place, from which in turn they have to be removed.

Aaaarrrrggghhhhh!  (Peter McKean)

I often have static problems when it's cold and dry here. Lately that has not been a problem. Temperatures here yesterday reached 105 degrees F (40.5 degrees C) with  humidity  in  the 75% range.

To counteract, set the strips aside for a day or two, or somehow increase the humidity in your shop. (Harry Boyd)

Though I cannot speak to your specific question as I have not experienced it, I can address it indirectly and submit a potential cure for the problem. Second only to a dull knife, static electricity is the worst possible problem confronting someone making paraffin sections of diseased tissue for microscopic examination ( don't ask how I know!). The problem was related to the prevailing relative humidity; low in the case of misbehaving paraffin ribbons. The solution was to put a beaker of flask of water on a hot plate and heat to the point where there was a steady light stream of steam coming out of the container. I suggest you try increasing the relative humidity in your work area prior to removing your strips from the oven. This should cure it.

Remember, it was in times, or geographical areas with very low relative humidity, where one would get "the charge of their lives" when they went to open doors, or touch anything metallic, after having walked on nylon carpets. This was never a problem in areas, or days, when the humidity was high.  (Frank Schlicht)

Another reason to humidify your shop and/or your strips is to obtain the correct dimensions on your finished rod.  On average, bamboo will contain 6% moisture.  After heat treating the moisture content is 0%.  If you plane immediately out of the oven or if your ambient humidity is very low you’ll  wind up with what appears to be the right size.  But in a few months when the ambient humidity increases the rod will swell.  When it reaches 6% moisture content, the rod will have  swelled 4% in size.   That’s about 0.0025”  at  the  tip,  about  0.008”  at  the  mid  and about 0.012” at the butt. That will change the rod action by 1/2 to 1 line wt.

I’ve just heat treated three sets of strips and it’s taken about 5 days at 60% RH to get to a stable point.  So now I can start finish planing.  (Al Baldauski)

I have a moisture meter to determine the moisture level of wood.  Should this work to determine if the bamboo is at the correct moisture level to plane?  (Dave Burley)

Honestly Dave, I have no clue.  I’ve never used one and don’t know exactly how they work.  I weight my strips after heat treating.  When they stop gaining weight I know I’m there. (Al Baldauski)

Has anyone (else) given thought to why common practice has our planing mid strips/tip strips to smaller dimension(s) than butt strips prior to heat-treat? What is the advantage with the need to 'time' strip removal from the oven, necessitating opening and closing the oven door so often ~ thus introducing reduction of oven temperature during the process, as well as needing to monitor the timing with each of the smaller sections? Opinions?  (Vince Brannick)

I heat treat all of my strips at the same size.  (Scott Grady)

I build nodeless and heat treat the sections after the nodes have been removed and the sections split in half.  (Bill Lamberson)

I've never done that.  All my strips are rough beveled to the same dimension before they go into the oven.  I then rough bevel the tips/mids to a smaller dimension after heat treat so I don't have to remove as much during the final planing stage.  (Mark Wendt)

Because I split narrower strips for tips than for butts, therefore my rough planed tip strips for heat treating are smaller than for butts.  Why give yourself any more planing work than necessary?  (Larry Swearingen)

I did not know it was common practice to plane the tip and mid strips to smaller dimensions prior to heat treating. I don't do that. Seems to me a good way to screw up heat treating times.  (Timothy Troester)

Perhaps "common practice" was a bit of an overstatement. The inquiry itself was to elicit comments on pros and/or cons of (if), any advantage to heat-treating various sized sections to same temperature but different time intervals. If the responses were an indication of a "common practice", it was a surprise to learn that six of seven "didn't do it that way". My own procedure would make it six of eight, and Peter's 'Tips and Butts' thread may be included to make it six of nine. The one response that alluded to an advantage was Larry's suggestion that judicious splitting reduced planing time. What was also revealing was that the method of splitting had some bearing on the choice of heat-treat procedure. Of course nine is probably a very small cross section of the rodmaking community. If there are some other advantages/disadvantages to one method or the other, it would be of value to consider such. Thanks to all eight (of several thousand?) who did respond.  (Vince Brannick)

I generally split a bit thinner for tips than butts so rough bevel accordingly. I heat treat the same for both - I can't see or feel any difference in the tips and butts after heat treating.   (Steve Dugmore)

Being one of the ones that "don't do it that way," I didn't want to be one of those that just add the me too reply and didn't help you find the info you were looking for.  I may have been confused to what information you were looking for.  But to up the number of responses I'll throw it out there.  So far, I split my strips to equal width, rough them to the same dimensions, and heat treat all sections to the same temperature and time in one heat treating session.  I feel that bamboo isn't all that expensive and if I can cut out some of the variables and say that each strip had the same amount of heat exposure, I feel that it is worth it.  I don't mind planing and sharpening.  I think that it is one of the more fun parts of the rod making process.  (Greg Reeves)

The reference to "amount of heat exposure" is exactly the information sought. It does seem logical to expect the end result of 'heat-treatment' to provide a uniform change in the physical attitude of all the sections. The 'timing' regimen introduces, in some instances, variances which are often unavoidable, and which could have an effect on the end product. This may be construed as self-praise ~ which it is not, but I've been told by several (a few) good casters that my rods seem (to them) to be (a little) faster than some others they've cast. This is in part, what prompted the question, and before changing my procedure, I thought some some opinions by others may be of value. (Vince Brannick)

My reasoning for heat treating thinner tips and larger butts to the same regimen is as follows:

1. Heat treating is not an exact science. Bamboo strips from the same culm differ and one culm differs from another. No heating regimen is going to even that out.
2. The difference in my size of tip strips and butt strips is not large eg. 3.5mm vs 4.2mm
3. I use MD fixtures now (thanks Bill)
4. I bind the strips into the fixture enamel side out. I believe the heat will conduct through the enamel similarly on all strips given that the sides of the strips are in all instances up against aluminum (which conducts the heat similarly to the sides).
5. If there is in fact any difference in tempering it will be negligible and all it will do is indiscernibly alter the elastic modulus of the tip vs the butt of the rod. So what if it does do this? The ferrule separates the two parts anyway so there isn't a true continuity from butt to tip - even with bamboo ferrules. Most good graphite rods deliberately alter the elastic modulus in different parts of the rod.  (Steve Dugmore)

I don't do it that way.  Doesn't make any sense to me.  But I betcha it is rooted in Carmichael-Garrison!  (Roland Cote)

I don't normally make three piece rods. but it should be the same way it could be done for each section... I am a believer in soaking strips, makes planing real easy.. Rough the soaked strips to almost finish size of the largest number on the butt, same size full length. Dry in oven in MD's fixtures.  Heat treat all the same. Re soak the tip strips while final planing out the butts.

Plane the soaked tip strips to almost final, dry and final plane. It only takes a few passes on dry bamboo. Saves a lot of plane sharpening too. Easy on planing the nodes, another plus.

It may not be like the book says but it works very well for me.   (Tony Spezio)

One of the really nice things about this list is that you find out, not so much how to do things properly, but how other people do things - and you can make up your own mind as to whether it is any better or not.

When I split up a culm, what I am shooting for is 12 strips plus a few spares from the butt section; these have to be wide enough and thick enough to allow for butt dimensions, including the occasional swell for those folk who just cannot help themselves about butt swells.  And I want 24 tip strips out of the front end, and a couple of spares are a nice bonus, occasionally.  This allows me to do 2 rods from the culm, but occasionally, as I am sometimes sretched pretty thin getting my 24 plus, I have to use some of the second lot as spares, or even just don't quite manage 24 in the first place.

What this means, of course, is a big accumulation of left-over butt strips, and a pretty fair pile of tip strips, too.  Every now and then there suddenly appears a big heap of garden stakes for my wife, or a rod built out of odds and sods.

There is no way known, not while my bum points to the ground, that I can produce tip strips of the same size as butt strips.  And as for "untapered" strips - well, the bamboo is tapered and so are the strips that I split from it.  And I am a pretty competent splitter, using the finest tool ever made for the job - the Mk 1 Hand (assisted by the Mk1 Broken Butchers Knife and the Over the hill old engineers vice).

It's no problem, you just cook the thin stuff for less time; you learn when to take it out after a few failures.

It does mean that you have to pay attention, but rod building is a game of paying attention to details.  (Peter McKean)

Or, you can use a convection oven, M-D's fixtures, put the set temp to 360 degrees, and not ever have to worry about burning up strips.  (Mark Wendt)

Sounds as though we split using a similar method. Mine is shown here.

I'm a bit of a heretic when it comes to the question of "when to heat treat" After soaking, straightening and rough planing, I let the strips dry for a week or so then plane to final dimension. Then I bind the strips and put them in the oven for heat treating. I know, the bamboo shrinks and my final taper is a bit smaller than the original plan, but because I create all my own tapers, I allow for the shrinkage when designing the rod. But, to be honest, there's only about half a line size difference at most.

Tests were done several years ago to determine the amount of shrinkage when heat treating. The results can be found at here.  (Ron Grantham)

It's no problem, you just cook the thin stuff for less time; you learn when to take it out after a few failures.

What time difference do you allow between strips and what sort of rough size difference do you have?

With my setup if the tips were in danger of getting anywhere near to the point of failure if heat-treated as long as the butts, the butt strips would almost certainly be overdone too.  (Steve Dugmore)