Rod breaking on a cast

Dave Westburg

Dave Westburg

Fish the classics
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Took my Wright and McGill Granger 9660 to the Cowlitz today. First time fishing the 9660. It's a powerful 9'6" 7 weight single handed bamboo rod. Was throwing lovely long casts into a tailout and this happened.

IMG_4341.jpeg

A break in the tip section about two inches above the ferrule.

Anyone else had a bamboo rod break during casting? The 9660 is not a dainty tiny tip bamboo rod - it was marketed for bass, large trout and steelhead. I was fishing a 7 weight 406 weight forward line and so the rod was not over-lined. Wondering if it simply had a weakspot which I wasn't aware of when I bought it. The rod wasn't in great shape when I bought it and was a project.
 
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Oh no. That’s a shame.

I had a similar break happen on an FE Thomas 7wt I own. It was more of a longitudinal break though and Dennis Stone was able to do a serviceable repair on it for me.
 
Yikes! Must have been a weak spot but what caused it to be weak is anybody's quess.
 
Brute said:
Can the cause be similar to me breaking the tip on my 7wt Sage Instigator?…pretty sure I hit it on the back cast with a streamer with dumbbell eyes…
Click to expand...
Yes that is a possibility.
 
Have been trying to understand how a perfectly fine granger would break on a cast. I think I know now. This was a project rod when I purchased it. Here's a picture of it just after I purchased it. You can clearly see a repair wrap on one of the tips.
granger 9660.jpeg
After I purchased this rod I sent this rod off to a rod restorer to be revarnished and rewrapped and to get a new reel seat. It looks like he removed the repair wrap and simply varnished over the weak spot. I forgot that there was a repair wrap and didn't ask the repair guy what he did. You can see below that the rod broke exactly where the repair wrap was.
Screen Shot 2022-09-19 at 6.19.10 PM.png
Morale of the story. Always closely inspect your rod before and after you get it back from restoration.
 
Mystery solved. I would venture to say that there was a delamination, and the wrap was to hold things together. After stripping the rod, regluing the spot might have been believed to have made the repair. Too bad the damage was a bit more than originally thought. Other than that, the restoration work looks amazing for what you started with.
 
Bummer. I know nothing about bamboo.
Can a new section be made to repair the rod or is it a future tomato stake?
SF
 
Going to see if the break can be scarfed. A scarf is where they cut the bamboo on an angle and glue and bind it back together. May be more trouble than it's worth. I have a spare tip I can use.
 
Scarf joints are amazingly strong, especially if the right adhesive is used. When I built my pram I had to splice sheets of plywood together (couldn't find any 10 ft sheets). I fabbed up a scarfing fixture that my circular saw rode on at an approximately 11 degree angle giving me about a 6" exposure on a 1/4" thick sheet of plywood. Before the final glue up I cut out and made some test coupons to break, and the scarf joint was stronger than the original wood.

On that project I was using System 3 Gel Magic epoxy adhesive. I don't know if that would be a good choice for the rod work, but I bet you could fab up a scarfing fixture pretty easily.

Andy
 
I think I'd keep the broken tip and just fish the second tip section, but that's just my approach. You could have a section made to accept the ferrule and keep the original length using the remainder of the original (but have to worry about other weak areas in the original broken tip). Or you could have an entire tip section made to closely match the original.

Nothing wrong with single tip rods in my opinion.

Mike
 
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