ferrule making

Ever wonder what goes into making a set of nickel silver ferrules? I was making a set last night and took a couple of in-process photos.

There are several ways to make ferrules; among them, you can start with round bar stock and machine off anything that doesn't look like a ferrule (the Michelangelo method...); or you can solder together different-sized tubes of nickel silver. I do the latter. (Each maker has his methods - mine will differ from other peoples'...)

In general, tubing is labeled by it's inner diameter, usually in 64ths of an inch. Most drawn tubing has a wall thickness of 1/64th, give or take.

So here's the first photo, of the nine metal components that go into a set of 14/64th step-down ferrules. Super-Zs are different, requiring different-size tubes and construction is a little different.
The male moisture dams get soldered into the right end of the male slide. Then the male sleeves get soldered onto the slides. The slide usually has to be machined down a bit for the shoulder to fit over it. See the top male ferrule.

The female moisture dam gets soldered inside the female barrel, at about the mid-point. it has to be set at the right depth so the male slide will fit fully into the barrel. The welt (16/64ths) is soldered onto the left end of the female barrel, so as to give the end of the tube more support. The barrel must be machined a little to accept the welt.

So, 9 pieces, 6 solder joints, and machining of most parts before you fit them, then again afterwards.

Here are the 3 pieces with everything soldered together:
You can't see the dams, but all 3 are in place. You can see that I have shaped the welt, at the left-hand side of the female. On the right-hand side of the female, you can see where I have machined away some metal; that will be where I cut the tabs, to fit up onto the 6 flats of the bamboo. You can see some "scale" on the lower slide, the result of heating it during soldering.

The male slides are soldered into the shoulders, and on the left you can see where I again have machined away nickel silver for the tabs area. I have roughly machined away excess solder at the joints, but there is more work to do there; remember that if you want blued ferrules, some modern blueing agents do not blue solder, so if ANY solder is visible, it will show as a bright line.

At this point, I still need to:
cut tabs and crown tabs
cut decorative lines into the female barrel and the male sleeves
remove visible solder
polish the inside of the female barrel
lap the male slides so they fit into the female
polish all visible outside surfaces

I'll post a couple more photos as I make more progress.

Continued:
Here are the ferrules, almost finished.
Here's what I did since yesterday:
turn down the male moisture dams, to create a good, smooth cylindrical end to the male
put decorative lines on the barrel of the female and the sleeves of the males; I put one line 50 thou from each end, but that's all cosmetic - a personal choice
polish the inside of the female barrel
lap the males to fit into the barrel
cut the 6 tabs at the bamboo-end of each piece
crown each tab to a pointed end
sand barrel and sleeves with 1500 sandpaper

I like to lap my ferrules (partially or fully) before mounting , but many don't do it until after gluing their ferrules to the bamboo.

Finally, I blued the pieces today. They are pretty much ready to be installed on my next Perfectionist now.


Looking back at this post, I realize that it's the short-form description of what is to be done - there are tricks and issues not yet discussed. But it does give the general process.

Bailey Woods at CSE charges something like $60 for a set of ferrules like this. When you look at the steps involved, you wonder how the guy makes money. I think he does it a lot and has gotten pretty darned fast! I'm a slow lathe operator; 3 or 4 hours to get this far is not abnormal for me. I do it because I enjoy it, and I want as much of the rod as possible to be from my hands, but economically, it doesn't make sense to make your own. Of course, if economics were my prime consideration, I'd not make rods at all.

Lee

Simple Secrets

To follow up on David's secret tips, here's another:

After gluing and binding a rod, we typically tie a loop on one end of the section and hang it to dry.

I've taken to putting tension on my hanging sections, to "encourage" them to dry straight. The trick, then, is to fix the loops you tie on each end of the section so that when they pull on the rod, they pull evenly on at least 2 opposing sides of the section. If not, when you put tension on the rod, the loop pulls on one side of the section more than the other sides, and it puts a bend in that end of the rod. This is particularly true with the small end of the tips. I gave up on finagling with those loops (while you are wearing latex gloves, and racing drying glue!)

Now, and here's the secret, I go to the electrical section of the hardware store and buy a selection of heat-shrink tubing used for wire insulation. Now, when the section is glued up and bound, I slip a 2-3 inch section of the tubing half-way over each end of the section. The tubing shrinks 50% so i pick a size that will shrink and hold the section tightly - smallest for the tips, largest for the butts. I "hit" it with the heat gun for a few seconds, the tubing shrinks, and grabs the end of the section, evenly from all sides. Then I pierce the part of the tubing that is not pinching the rod section, and slip a paper clip through it. One end gets hung from a hook in my drying box, and a weight gets hung from the bottom end. This process, plus reducing my binder tension to the minimum, has done more to produce straight sections than anything else I have tried.

Lee

denver FF show

I promised David I would talk about the Tri-hex geometry I've been working on for bamboo rods, as opposed to the regular hex geometry, but I'm going to put that off. I'm driving up to the Denver Flyfishing show this weekend (Jan 9, 10, 11), and one of the guys who will be there has made 3 or 4 rods using that geometry. I showed him what I had done at CRR 08. I want to cast them while I'm there, then will report back on both his rods and mine. Ross is using a different math than I used, I'm interested to see the differences.

Lee

rod-making style

I got a surprising e-mail the other day from David, inviting me to contribute entries to this blog. I’m flattered to do so, and will try to live up to the high standard he has set. David and I are contemporaries – at my first SRG, in 2002, I brought both of the only 2 rods I had made (twin Driggs), and David was in the final process of gearing up to make his first rod.

I want to talk today about rodmaking styles. Not "style" as in whether you flame a rod, or what color you wrap guides, but rather what kind of rodmaker you turn into as you work through the process of making several rods.

Some rodmakers embrace a certain historical rodmaker ("I’m a Garrison man"), or a regional approach ("East coast rods"). Some guys make a lot of rods, like, hundreds, and never deviate from published tapers. On the other hand, some guys design their own tapers from whatever mathematical or theoretical principle they start from, and then move on from there. Some guys find a taper or set of tapers, and repeat and repeat them, making small refinements within a narrow set or parameters. On the other hand, some guys never make 2 rods that resemble each other. A few guys ignore everything that has been done before and dream up their own everything.

I don’t know all the rods he has made, but today David certainly falls into the "theoretical" group. He thinks about rod tapers (lots of them, more than he’ll ever make in his lifetime), analyzes them, and builds rods that help him understand how differences in a set of numbers translate into different casting characteristics. A large portion of David’s rodmaking efforts in the last year went into making 4 or 5 rods that illustrate a spectrum of tapers, ranging from "parabolic" through "straight taper" and ending with "tip action" or "dry fly". It’s one thing to read about a bunch of tapers and try to imagine in your mind how they might change casting action; it’s totally another to actually make 5 rods that illustrate the differences, controlling all other variables. David did this, and it was the highlight of SRG 2008.

One of our rodmaking friends, who makes beautiful rods and who has made well more than 100 rods, says he has never deviated from a written taper, in large majority drawn from Howell’s "A Lovely Reed." He trusts the tapers in that book (as well as the processes) and just has no interest in "tweaking" numbers. He repeats tapers that he likes, and works hard on making each one more perfect than the last. As a side-note, he also works on making more and more of the components that go into his rods. He hasn’t made wire snake guides yet (that I know of) but not only does he make his own reelseat hardware and ferrules, he now is drawing his own nickel silver tubing. How many rodmakers can say that?

I think I must fall somewhere between the 2 extremes. I start with casting a rod and liking the taper. That’s why rodmakers meetings are so important for me. You get to cast a lot of rods. I have no interest in stress curves, or analysis software. I also have no interest in designing my own tapers from scratch. I believe, as Gierach once quoted, "In taper design, there’s really not much new under the sun." For me, it always boils down to how a rod casts. I believe in casting a rod, and then if any modifications are to be made, it will be in response to what I judge to be the strengths and weaknesses of the rod in use. I guess that’s called the empiricist approach. I’ve made several Dickerson 8013s after casting an original, and I’ve loved most every one of them. The first 2 were made as twins to see if they would come out the same (they did.) The next was a 3-piece (stiffer and a 6wt instead of 5), the next was hollow (smooth, slightly more powerful), and the last was a tri-hex geometry rather than regular hex. That’s the best one yet. The point, at least for me, is that I get to learn something important from each 50 hours I put into one of these things.

Some rodmakers will make virtually any rod that you provide a set of numbers for, given that you are willing to pay. That’s fine with me, but being in the spare-time amateur category, I see absolutely no reason to spend my time making a rod I know I won’t like. A guy recently asked me to make a rod for him based on a Garrison taper. I don’t have anything against Garrison tapers, but I’ve never cast one that wowed me. So I told him that he’d do better talking to rodmaker X and Y, both of whom I knew make plenty of Garrison tapers. Nice rods, too. Not rods that I should make, though.

So what’s the point? Well, if you’re thinking someday of getting a new bamboo rod, at least think a little bit about the kind of rodmaker you’re talking to. If you want consistency over time, a guy like me is probably not your rodmaker. I don’t like repetition. If you want an almost-exact replica of a classic taper, there are certain guys to talk to. If you don’t know exactly what you want, talk to a rodmaker who is both a very good caster and a good casting teacher – he will know what you need even if you don’t. There aren’t that many rodmakers around, but there are maybe more than you think, and a little investigation might make your rod-buying experience a lot more pleasurable than you could imagine.

If you’re a budding rodmaker, think a little about what kind of rodmaker you’d like to become. You’ll become whatever kind of maker you become whether you do this or not, and things evolve over time, but it may save you some time to ponder it early – I know that I wish I had spent less time trying to be a rodmaker that I am not, and more time exploring the rodmaking issues that interest me.

Lee

Welcome Lee Koch!

Lee Koch has agreed to be an author here at the Sowbug. I think you'll find Lee's view of rod making thought provoking. Lee is relatively new to the craft like me, but he's probably made several more rods than I have. He has certainly gone beyond what might be considered normal with his hex reel seats and the Tri-hex tapers. Lee is an entrepreneur running a sign company, bamboo net company, and making rods part time in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Lee and I have spent many hours around a dining table at SRG and CRR with Alan Kube, Don Hansen and others visiting about rod making stuff that would put a good bird dog to sleep. I've learned more about rod making in those late night jam sessions than any book I've ever read. Splitting, scarfing, straightening, wrapping, gluing, sanding, varnishing, making ferrules and reel seat hardware, drawing tubing, tapers etc... We've covered it all. We've even shared a few rounds of burnt sausage for breakfast, but that seems to have improved since Don took over the cooking. I can't understand why they won't let me cook anymore...

Welcome Lee!

David