My name is James. I'm a rodmaker.

I am a rodmaker. That ought to be the opening line at some kind of twelve-step meeting. Let me admit something right up front: there is no good reason to make cane rods. If you value your time at even the lowest rate (let’s say minimum wage), then you can buy exceptional cane rods for less than you can make a mediocre one. When you’re done, you’ll have a rod that is truly unspectacular in all ways but one. That one way in which it is better than any rod you can buy, at any price, is that you built it.

It’s not easy either. If you decide you want to build cane rods you have choices to make. The first is whether to build your tools or buy them. That’s actually kind of a lie, you WILL buy tools. Lots of them. And hard to find ones, too, if, like me, you live in a place where some things are not so easy to find.

I am also a woodworker so I started with a set of substantial tools that made the rest of the process a lot easier. I own a tablesaw, some handplanes, router and bits. So when I made my first rodmaking tools, roughing forms, I was well ahead of the curve. You need two roughing forms, one with a compound angle. That one’s a little tricky. The other with two sides of an equilateral triangle (60 degrees at the bottom). That one is pretty simple on a good tablesaw. Actually they were both pretty simple since I’m pretty decent with a tablesaw.

Then you need a tapered planing form. There is no easy way to build one of these. I jacked around trying to make metal forms before giving up, and building a set from maple. Once this was done I was ready to start planing bamboo.

But the bamboo wasn’t ready to be planed.

First you gotta find the right bamboo. There’s a handful of places to do that. Chances are, none of them are anywhere near where you live. Don’t worry about it. We’re talking bamboo here. Some of the anal retentive types who make cane rods will agonize over the quality of their bamboo. I decided to just relax, it’s bamboo for god’s sake, how much does it matter? I’ve decided not much. Lower grade bamboo might have some ink marks, even some slash marks. 95% of these markings will be removed in the rodmaking process. And if they aren’t, well, it’s proof that you worked with a natural product.

So you built your planing forms, you ordered your cane, you’re ready to start planing bamboo, right? Wrong.

This is the point where you discover you can’t build all of the tools you’ll need and it’s time to break open the checkbook once again.

As you do that (and as you try to scheme ways to avoid admitting to your wife or husband that you're about to spend more money so that you can make something) remember this: there is no good reason to make you own cane rods. You could just go buy a much better one.

If you’re like me, you know this, but you still want one that YOU made. If you share that kind of illness, come back for the next installment.