Finished Planing

We're off to a rocky start in 2008. Tornado's, snow storms, flooding and more flooding. If the rain doesn't stop, there will be even more flooding along the White river basin. The lakes are hovering around the top of the flood pool. They opened the flood gates at Beaver, Table Rock, Norfork and then Bull Shoals last week. Homes and business that were dried out and almost ready to move back in are now full of water again. I live about 300 yards from the Little Red and 50 miles downstream from the Greers Ferry dam. Greers Ferry is about one foot below the top of the flood pool. I've heard that they will open the flood gates if the water reaches the top. That will devastate properties along most of that 50 miles of river. Hopefully, my house is high enough to stay out of the flood water, but there's no way to know until it happens. We're just waiting and watching.

I'm not sure where I found the time but there are two 7' 4wts glued up for the Montana boys and three 7'6" 5wts ready to glue up. I should be able to glue them all up this week. The 5wts will probably be demo rods. They're the ST2, ST3 and ST4 from the standard taper series. I'm fired up about these rods. They will either validate all the taper research I've done, or shame me back into making tried and true traditional tapers.

That picture of the drying closet is from the top, not the bottom. The light bulb is actually at the bottom of the closet. A 60 watt bulb will hold the temperature at about 90 degrees and the relative humidity about 25% lower than the rest of the shop. The florescent bulbs are used to enhance the varnish curing process with UV light. Not sure if it really does, but it seemed like a good idea.

I've accumulated enough bamboo shavings to fill a five gallon bucket. Mary thinks I should make something with the shavings. I'm just not sure what that might be. Suggestions would be welcome.

Since I was taking pictures for who knows what, I took a shot with the hand planes. I've been using two planes, one to take the strip down to about ten thousandths over final and the other to finish up. That way I sharpen once before I start each rod section. The black Stanley on the planing form is my favorite. It's an English made G12-020. It's a little wider and heavier than the earlier American made Stanley and the Lie-Nielsen 9 1/2. It's very comfortable in hand and requires very little pressure for a consistent cut. Fine tuning the depth of cut is smooth and efficient. So long as I keep the blade sharp, I rarely ever lift a node. Found it at the flea market covered in rust. I cleaned it up, tuned it and added a cryo Hock blade. Flea markets are a rod makers paradise!

Just a note about the Lie-Nielsen's in that photo. They're outstanding tools. The workmanship is perfect. I ordered both the 9 1/2 and the scraper with a "rod makers groove" when I was tooling up several years ago. I can't say enough about the quality of the Lie-Nielsen tools. However, I'm more comfortable with my Stanley G12. The rod makers groove was an unnecessary expense and I've found no practical use for the scraper in the rod making process. I just use the scraper to remove cured glue from the blanks. If you're tooling up, you don't need the Lie-Nielsen's. Buy a Stanley 9 1/2 and put your money in a hock blade and a sharpening system like the Work Sharp WS3000. I'll sell or trade my Lie-Nielsen's some day, but I made my first rod with them. They still have some sentimental value for now.

I'm going to clean up all the bamboo shavings, glue up the 5wts and get busy making ferrules this week. I should have plenty of time to work on rods for a few months. We're going to have nothing but really high water around here until July.