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Split Cane Rod Making
Who ever thought of splitting a piece of bamboo, planing and tapering the split pieces then rejoining them to make a multi sided fishing rod?
Up until cane became the material of choice for rods, wood was the natural and perhaps only material that could be used. Historically, rods were often made of elder, ash, chestnut, oak, or hazel, and were often 19 feet or longer in length and certainly weighed an immense amount comparitively speaking. Eventually, greenheart became a wood of choice to make fishing rods with, as the wood could be finely carved and tapered to a fine point and it had the necessary characteristics; the right 'flex', was strong, and when casting became a practice, had the ability to cast lines well.
There were many ingenious practices in the 'old' days to make rods, and even in the 17th century, there were craftsmen who designed and made fishing rods, some of the wood sections even were hollowed out with a hot wire to decrease the weight and improve the performance of the finished product.
It was probably not until the early 19th century when cane was used seriously by anglers in the Western world for fishing. In 1845, Samuel Phillippe, a violin maker from Pensylvania, split cane and laminated the strips together to build the first split cane rod. Some historians believe that this type of work had been done in the United Kingdom 50 years earlier, however it was the work of the Americans that brought this splitting, planing and laminating of cane into an acceptable method of constructing fishing rods. These first rods were of a 3 and 4 strip construction, and it was not until some years later that the more common 6 strip rods were built. Many give credit to Hiram Leonard, the founder of the H. L. Leonard Rod company for the first 6 strip rods, however others believe it was in fact Charles Murphy of New Jersey, a freind of Phillippe, who originated the concept.
In the years that followed, many other craftsmen took up the art of splitting cane into strips and laminating them together after careful planing to very thin and close tolerances in order to obtain the finest tapers for rods to suit any fishing conditions. Bevelers were developed that could cut precise tapered triangular strips, and in fact, many of the bevelers that were made in the late 19th century are still in use today by rod crafters.
Many companies were founded to take advantage of the increased interest in fly fishing, and produced production line cane rods. Some of these companies are well known, such as Montague, Hardy Brothers of England, and South Bend and produced thousands of rods, including fly, bait casting, boat and surf rods from cane.
There is a belief today that simply because something is old, it holds great value. The fact is that many cane rods available are not worth a great deal in monetary value, and collectors prefer those rods built by individual craftsmen, and their desire is not for the production line products. Having said that, some would today still prefer to fish with an old production cane rod worth not very much on the collector's market to the expensive advanced composite material rods of today.
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