Bamboo species in "Mostly bamboo" book

[jan96]

In the book there are mentioned some rodbuilders who use alternative(to tonkin) bamboo species. Hachiku, Yadake, Madake... As the book is about Japanese builders is the use of those bamboos limited to Japan? Anyone tried any of them? I built some rods from Madake but the other two are a "mistery" to me..


One of the rods I built from Madake:

[Tony_Young]

Can't comment on the species but I have the book and it's really very interesting and well published.

Tony

[jan96]

Very interesting book indeed! As I can understand, the reason why some builders use Madake, Yadake or Hachiku is "rooted" in Japanese rodmaking tradition and thinking why using Chinese bamboo if so many native bamboo is readily available in Japan. Another reason is the flyfishing style practiced by Japanese flyfishers... Smaller streams and smaller fish are more fun to fish with softer/less powerful rods...
I don't want to be provocative with my question... Is there any USA/EU rodmaker who uses other species than tonkin? I guess professionals use tonkin exclusively but hobby makers?
r

[mrampant]

Like yourself, I have only used Tonkin and Madake. I know that rod maker Nick Taransky uses Madake a bit as well as Tonkin. Nick has now located in New Zealand from Canberra; Australia. Nick has spent time in Japan with a few rod makers and has a passion for the alternative cane although I don't know if he has used the other varieties as access in either Australia or New Zealand would be difficult.
Cheers,
Mark

[PSicher]

In the current issue of Power fibers you can find an interesting article on this subject: "Avoid nodes, use Vietnamese Bamboo", written by Peer Doering-Arjes, Germany.
I was part of the group, building rods using two Vietnamese bamboos compared to Tonkin - I did build three rods, identical taper.
A very interesting experiment, take your time to read about!
https://www.powerfibers.com/assets/file ... sue_65.pdf

[jan96]

In the current issue of Power fibers you can find an interesting article on this subject: "Avoid nodes, use Vietnamese Bamboo", written by Peer Doering-Arjes, Germany.
I was part of the group, building rods using two Vietnamese bamboos compared to Tonkin - I did build three rods, identical taper.
A very interesting experiment, take your time to read about!
https://www.powerfibers.com/assets/file ... sue_65.pdf

Thank you for the link Philipp. I read the article when it came out, got the link from Peer Doering-Arjes( I don't know where he found my email address.. ). Interesting reading indeed, some results were obtained with scientific approach, other other ways. Somewhere in the article it is mentioned that the right taper should be chosen, tonkin has its own tapers - for other species the appropriate taper should be "discovered" by "trial and error", scientific approach is not much of a help in this case. For my first rods I used local bamboo(grown in north Adriatic area) and tapers which were used for tonkin. You can imagine that the "local" rod was much softer than rod built to the same measures with tonkin. At the time(1996) I didn't know how tonkin rod will flex and cast as I never saw a "real" bamboo rod "live"! I just knew that I should build a more powerful rod to be usable... So I came to idea to laminate my local bamboo and increase the taper for one to two line weight heavier... Resulting "laminated rod" was a relatively fast rod, maybe too fast so for the next I changed the taper a bit to get a "normal" rod... I like experimenting
r