A year ago a friend of mine gave me a 135 year old Hardy bamboo fly rod. It was straight and the wraps were tight, no real problems except that varnish was badly alligatored. I brought it to the Bamboo Fling and asked about having someone do a restoration for me. Someone suggested that I use alcohol to clean up the varnish since everything else was in good shape. I spent 3 or 4 hours with Q–tips and alcohol cleaning up the varnish. I noticed that a few of the intermediate wraps started to unravel. I was able to find thread to repair the wraps. Now the problem; the new wraps show up and look much better than the old wraps. So I decided to take off all of the wraps a restore the rod myself. So far the butt section has been striped using alcohol and the first 2 coats of varnish have been applied. The nice thing about using alcohol, I didn’t lose much of the patina. I will try to remember to take some photos of the progress.
Restoration of an old Hardy bamboo fly rod
- Thread starter jerry
- Start date
Jerry - good for you on launching into a refinish project. Those are a labor of love, and it can be very satisfying to fish a rod that you have poured so much effort into once you're done. Please keep us updated, and if you have any questions along the way there's more than a few of us who've gone down that path before and are happy to offer our "free" advice, which might be worth what you'd pay for it. LOL. But we'll a the least cheer you along. Ron