42 SALMON FISHING 



tested before sufficient warrantable material is 

 procured. 



The manufacture of split bamboo fishing rods 

 is by no means new in England. There seems 

 good reason to believe that as far back as 1700, 

 bamboos were brought from India by officers of 

 the army, and made into rods in London. With 

 what success, however, we do not know; pro- 

 bably, as the makers had no experience with the 

 material, or special plant for handling it, the 

 rods were a failure. 



The simplest form of building a rod is shown 

 in section at Fig. 9, in which the triangular form 

 of the sections is clearly defined. Reference to 

 Fig. 8 will show how the sections are cut out 

 of a bamboo, for a single-built rod. This is 

 the method generally employed in making trout 

 rods. In order to further strengthen the sec- 

 tions for longer and more powerful rods, it is 

 customary to remove the inner part, and replace 

 it with the outer skin, and so build up a central 

 section, as may be clearly seen in Fig. 10. This 

 is called double-building. In extra powerful rods, 

 the centre of this internal hexagon of skin is a 

 finely-tapered and hard-tempered spring steel core, 

 as shown in Fig. 11. Rods so constructed are 

 very powerful without being heavy, and have 

 been in use for a great number of years. 



Cane-built rods are more generally made in the 



