Splitting Cane

Splitting cane into uniform strips takes practice. You have to develop the right body English to maintain an even width throughout the length of the strip. The basic idea is to split the work in half until the desired strip width is achieved. You start with one big strip--the culm itself, split it in half, then split the two halves in half, and so on. You'll observe an exponential growth in strips since you're halving them. Ideally, you'll end up with 32 identical strips. That's 2^5 strips or five rounds of splitting. Easier said than done, however, until you get the hang of it. And that's more strips than you need, too, since you need only eighteen strips for a two piece, two tipped fly rod. I do this because it gives me plenty of strips to sort through. There are still many reasons why a particular strip won't pass muster and will have to be discarded. Also, if the rod you're making has particularly thick dimensions in the butt section, you won't want to split all the way to 32 strips. You'll need to leave some of them thicker, so that you have room to work with when it comes time for beveling and tapering those stout butt splines. In this case, I will split 24 strips. That is, eight thick ones (only four rounds), and sixteen thin ones (the full five rounds).

The Bamboo Froe

The tool you use to split cane is called a bamboo froe. It's not a particularly sharp tool. It doesn't need to be since you're using it just as a guide to help the cane split itself along the grain or fiber patterns. The tool isn't used to cut the strips. Some use a bandsaw for this purpose, but I tend to prefer the cane to make up it's own mind about what it wants to look like--with a bit of gentle suggestion from me.



Starting the Splitting Process

Wear leather gloves throughout this process. Bamboo has a nasty habit of tearing up hands and drawing blood. The first split is accomplished by centering the froe perpendicular to the culm wall directly opposite the center of the check split. Use a mallet to start the split. Hold the culm upright on the floor and give the mallet a good tap. That'll get things going. Push the froe down the length of the culm, grasping both sides of the froe. If you get jammed at a node, use the mallet to help the froe along. At this stage, no English is needed. Just allow the froe to follow the grain of the work and try not to force anything.



You should end up with two halves of roughly even dimension.



Quartering

Quartering is accomplished in the same way halving the culm. Hold each half upright on the floor, tap the mallet on the centered, perpendicular froe, and guide the froe through the length of the culm.



You should end up with four strips of roughly equal dimension.



For the rest of the splits, we'll use the froe clamped in the vise. This allows for more controlled splits by manipulating the strips instead of the froe.



Begin splitting the quarters. Center the end of the strip (pith side down) on the blade edge of the froe. Give it a light tap with the mallet.



Notice how the blade isn't cutting the fibers. Rather it is enabling the cane to split itself. Once enough of the work has made it past the blade, grasp it with your other hand. So you'll have the un-split portion in your right hand and you'll have the two split portions in you left.



The eight strips are still rather uniform in width.



Repeat the cycle. You'll end up with sixteen strips.



Notice that while they're still fairly consistent in width, some inconsistencies appear. It happens. There's still plenty of splitting to be done and each strip will be evaluated before splitting again.



Splitting Smaller Strips

Start the split on a small strip just like you do with a larger one. Only now, it's critical that the work is centered on the blade. It's important that the blade splits it exactly in half.

The ideal butt strip will be three eights of an inch wide while the ideal tip strip will be five sixteenths of an inch wide. If, in the fourth round, a strip is too narrow to be split into two 5/16ths strips, then don't split it--save it for a butt spline. A strip much narrower than a quarter inch won't bevel up properly. A good rule of thumb is "Too fat is OK, but too thin is useless".



An off center split dooms one of the two resulting strips to be unusably narrow.



As the strip is guided along its length, pay attention to the widths of the two strips--don't take your eyes off the splitting point. This is especially important when the split runs through the nodes. Invariably, the split will want to go off track. In other words, it's likely that the split point will want to veer off to one side or another at a node.



Any time that happens, stress has to be applied to the work to correct it. This is what I call body English. Here's how it works: If the split is veering away from you (i.e., the strip closest to you is becoming too wide), then push both hands away from you. This will create a bow in the work that will help center up the split point again. The opposite method is used when the strip furthest from you is becoming too thick. Just pull both hands back towards you so the apex of the bend is away from you. The rule to remember is: "Move your hands in the direction you want the split to go".



I ended up with 29 strips. One of the strips in round four was too narrow to split, and I lost the one that was too thin. All in all, not bad--eleven to spare.



There's certainly a more noticable distribution in widths now that all of the splitting is done. That's fine. These strips will be sorted by their suitability for butt and tip splines.



Preparing the Nodal Dams

One last thing before we can consider the strips prepared for beveling: node preparation. We've covered the preparation of the nodes on the enamel side. This time we need to address the pith side. The nodes must be planed, cut or sanded down flat with the rest of the pith surface. It doesn't have to be perfect. The beveling process will smooth out any inconsistencies. As long as the bulk of the nodal dams is removed, the strips will pass through the beveler jigs (as we'll see in the next section) without jamming.

I use the froe that is still mounted in the vise. I pull the node across the blade at a low angle in a quick jerking motion.



The prepared node surface will preferably be flat against the pith surface of the rest of the strip. However, erring on the side of removing too little is prefered over removing too much--especially for butt splines.