Arizona rodmaker Mike Johnson, recently made a comment on his blog. I asked him if he was going to be able to stop by one last time befor I left this hell hole.
His reply was "Congress is a dangerous place to visit."
While I believe he may have been referring to one of the many dangers of visiting me, I don't think he had this in mind...

Downtown Congress, AZ destroyed by fierce winds..

Looks like the perfect time to be gettin' out of AZ...

New Digs

Hi folks...
Yep new digs.
I am moving as was obvious a month ago.
Contact info will change a little.
The email addy will stay the same;
Troutgetter@aol.com
Physical mailing address will be;
M. Shay
96633 Pinon Village Rd
Inyokern, CA 93527

The actual location is a little place named Kennedy Meadows in CA in the southern Sierra.
For me it will be 1/4 mile from heaven...The south fork of the Kern. A half hour to the Kern Plateau and little Golden's, Two hours by jeep trail to Monache Meadows. This was pretty much always my home water. I am only in AZ because I was spawning and when the river dropped I was stranded on a gravel bar.

If you ever want to check weather conditions before making the trek to fish (or see me) you can go here and see what's what.

(No, I won't be in Inyokern. Inyokern is little better or worse than where I now reside. The US Guberment has decided that mail can and will be delivered to Kennedy Meadows by the Inyokern PO. Funny they can't even do that in Congress AZ but I ain't complaining.)

Now as slow as the damn donkey that delivered mail to Congress was, I suspect that the same poor beast will also deliver mail to this address. I ain't complaining. Not at all!
Once I'm in there, I will apparently have a phone and so I will also have Internet even if it's somewhat sporadic. So my email addy will not change.
I will also have a phone number.
It will be;
559-850-7429 (SHAY) heh heh...

Anyway...the new place is going to be a 'bit' on the rustic end of the spectrum. No water, no electricity except what Mr. Honda provides and rodmaking is going to change for me.

When I first started making rods, I taught myself to make a rod two ways. With electricity and without.
I am going to be doing a LOT of things without firing up a generator. Your rod will be more 'handmade' than ever.
While I will have eliminated a lot of recurring monthly charges (rent, electric bill) I will still be a slave to intangibles (water begging, fuel for generator, denatured alcohol, sandpaper, etc) and the extra time needed to complete a task that would have taken moments or minutes with plug in power. Supplies that were just around the corner (so to speak) here in AZ will involve a day trek down the mountain and back. That's going to be pricey in this part of CA.
So I don't expect the actually cost of making a rod for you to be any less, but it could actually take longer. I'll find out for sure once I can actually get all my tools up there and set up. For now, I'll more than gladly honor any order at the price of $1395.00 if you're willing to have a bit of patience. The price may go up or down later but if you order it at that price, I will deliver it.

Anyway...the new shop right now is nothing more than a shack my dad built 40 years ago. This is not the same shack I'm going to try and live in. It's going to need a decent sized addition to make it work, not to mention windows. I'll need to find a new home for all the clutter and stuff in there right now...assuming my neighbors haven't stolen everything and cleaned it out for me.
This won't be the first task once I'm outa AZ. The first will be getting yet ONE MORE roof on the cabin. This will be the fifth roof in 20 something years. I'm sure this one won't last any longer. The last roof I put on blew off in a year or two and I haven't put one on in well over ten years. I expect to pretty much find the place a train wreck with the governor sending in another train in a matter of moments.

Anyways...the object of this page is to let you know I'm NOT out of business. I'm just rearranging things and it will take a while to get it sorted out. If all goes as planned, I will have my tools out of storage in the spring, shop set up and making rods by summer.

Luv,
Mike

Well it had to happen...

...sooner or later...

I've been keepin' the wolves from the door for years...

Yesterday it came to an end.

Now I've meant to post a lot of stuff this last month. I've taken tons of pictures, done a lot of work and it all came to naught yesterday.
I got my five day notice. I'm moving out.
This isn't going to be easy on many levels.
I owe people work, not just a little bit either.

So here's the plan...

I'm moving to "my Alamo." My last stand. The place I always held in reserve for when things got more than unmanageable.
The Alamo is located in Kennedy Meadows.
There is no phone, no electricity, no running water. It's my shack located pretty deep in the southern Sierra on the Kern Plateau. Yep...golden trout water. and plenty of it.

Now this is just about the absolute worst time of year to move deep into the sierra. I mean really...middle of sierra winter and talking about moving things such as a 500 pound lathe, ya know, to a shed you can't get close to with a truck and trailer.

So the plan is simply to store the shop here in AZ, move it in the spring (if I survive) and try and stay warm and alive until then. It's not going to be easy, it's not going to be fun, but I'll finally be out of AZ and I'll finally be back in trees, water, and fish.

There is going to be a holy shitload of work to do and just getting there seems insurmountable at the moment, but it will happen.

So I temporarily bid you adieu (SP? LOL)...I probably won't be able to post a damn thing until I can afford and arrange phone service (not an easy feat in this place) but pictures will be forthcoming at some time in the future.

Until then I wish all of you a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/whatever, and love and peace through the new year.
I'll update when I can and possible.

To my faithful customers...
Thank you...each and everyone of you.
To my new friends and brothers in AZ...an open invitation and a wish for peace, happiness and prosperity...
To the brothers I've been lucky to help here in AZ...I am always at your beckoned call.

Love to you all until I can do what I's gots to do!

Mike

movin' along

Well, the blank has been glued, the glue heat set and as of this morning, the last tip has been sanded.
The blank is now ready to be cut to final length and ferrules glued on.

The sanding involves for me, 60gr, 100gr, 220gr, 320gr, 500 grit. I used to continue to 1200 -1500gr, but I found it pretty useless, non-noticeable with no real benefit. Just burning up time and expensive sandpaper.

Here's an idea of the amount of sandpaper needed to get to 500gr...

And the somewhat finished product...

Now before I can consider this actually finished, the ferrules will need to be mounted and glued and a grip is to be installed on this particular blank.
So more when I get to that...

As an "edit thing" to the previous post, I had to make two new strips for this blank. One of the things I had neglected to take a picture of was the roughed out strip. By roughed out, I mean the strip is run through the rougher to achieve an equilateral 60 degree triangle.

Now as you can see, not all apexes are sharp. I don't care about this at this point. What I care about is that the angles cut are 60 degrees. The planing forms and a bit of skill will create the final taper.
Right now this strip will nest quite nicely in the forms.

So more later as the ferrule stations are cut, rod sections cut to final length, ferrules glued, and the cork rings glued on and then turned into a grip my bud wants...

Time Flies...

Well...hell...it's been almost a month since I last posted anything.
My bad I suppose but I've been busy. In fact I wouldn't even be posting anything right now but I have a blank heat curing in the oven and I'm just sitting here on my thumbs, so what the hell?
Much of bamboo rodmaking is hurry up and wait.

I think when I last wrote that I had three blanks in progress.
Still true.
However, one of the blanks had to be scrapped during final planing when undetected uglies reared their ugly heads. The second replacement blank was dangerously close.
I tried posting some of this stuff yesterday but I had a couple few pics I wanted to show but they were taking forever to load so I'll try it again...

The last pics were of a split out blank for a brother in Canada. That blank was scrapped and another started. Same procedure but different bamboo ya know?

I didn't take any pictures of actually planing but who cares and besides I simply forgot.

But...here is a picture of one of the drudgery's of making bamboo rods. Heating and pressing nodes. This can be very beer intensive as it's practically mindless work.
Heat the node to plastic, press the node to straighten.
I use a heat gun with a fishtail attachment.

The split strip is held a couple of inches over the top of the gun and is constantly moved to heat the area evenly.
Now most things rodmaking seems as though there is no right or wrong way to do any particular task. I know guys who heat a node so hot that it's charred. Their rods are fine as far as I can tell. But imho, the less heat the better. As much as IS needed for sure but I don't think you need to char a piece of bamboo to bend it to your will. Extra heat has been shown to make bamboo and nodes in particular, brittle. Not good.
Enough heat to plasticize the lignum is surprising little. Oh it will feel hot to the touch for sure but not charred. You go beyond the plasticizing and continue onto a hard, brittle, inflexible node. A node treated like that is as likely to crack as a node that hasn't been heated at all. BTW...if you hear your node crack while pressing it...scrap the strip. It's wrecked.
Now on the subject to pressing nodes and heat...The less heat the better as long as the bamboo has softened enough to move and be pliable. NO MORE.
Now I generally flame my bamboo and that is the heat tempering that I give it unless of course someone wants a blond rod.
Now if you use a bench vice to straighten your nodes, you normally heat each node twice.
Once to press the hump of the node and again to straighten a kink at the node.

To get around this twice heating business, a friend of mine, Robert Kope, came up with a quite useful tool.
It's one that is now indispensable in the shop.
Picture if you will, one of the old aluminum can mashers you used to be able to buy and mount to a post or wall. You set the can in, pulled a lever and presto perfect squashed can. This works on the same principal.
Robert's node masher is a lever/cam press that squeezes all four side of a node at one time.

This levered cam is powered by pulling a lever that pushes against 6 valve springs. The valve springs then push an arm against the strip. Now as I understand it, there are 3 springs from a Chevy 350 and 3 from a Ford 360. The springs nest inside each other so each set of springs (3 sets) provides some damn heavy duty but even pressure to a poor little heated node. The node wouldn't have a chance you'd think but bamboo is some tough stuff. The really nice thing here is the time savings. Heat a node once, press from all four sides at once. Cuts the time of drudgery in half. The tool is pricey but I think it's worth it. Hell the savings in beer alone will save you at least a 12 pack per rod. I like that and it will obviously pay for itself in a short period of time.

So after the strips nodes have been pressed and straightened, the strip is ready to be roughed into a "roughly" 60 degree triangle with absolutely no taper to the strip. just correct angles.

Then the enamel is scraped of, any imperfections in the nodes are dealt with and then the strip is ready to plane. Again I'm sorry, no pics of that. I got a little too focused. You're bound to see that somewhere here later on I'm sure.

After final planing and you arrive at your desired taper, you're ready to glue them all together.

Here the strips have been aligned, taped together and the butt section has been butterflied, apexes removed and ready for glue.

Now I always have the same problem here. I won't stop gluing once I start. That means no pictures of how to apply the glue and bind them. There is no reason to get glue all over my camera and I'm not changing gloves every five minutes to take another stupid picture.
So, no pictures of running them through the binder, tying loops etc.
Here is the butt hung in the cabinet

and all three sections hung to air dry over night...

This morning, the sections were rebound and are now being heat cured. This increases the heat deflection of the glue to about 285 degrees. These babies will stand up to being on you dashboard in a Sonoran summer without delaming.

The sections are heat treated and cured at 235 degrees for 3 hours.

20 minutes to go on the heat treat and I'm done with that and will be ready to sand the glues off, seal and cut to length.

Sorry for such a long damn post but hell it's been a month ya know?