What do you glue or put on a rod sectoin if its split or cracked to repair this,have a rod with three sectoins that are split?

Most cane rods were originally bound with urea-formaldehyde types adhesives, or newer powdered epoxies. You may find either a pain to work with just for a small repair. You might try Titebond II or III and get pretty good results, but you're up against a bigger problem - if the rod has some areas of delamination between the strips, there may be other areas ready to "let go" as well. In other words, you may fix one seam only to find that another lets go next month. I would have to suspect that the entire rod may be suspect if a few areas have already opened up.

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Rick,

Before you proceed much further we need to determine if the old rod is a valuable collectors item or just a wall hanger. If it is worth more than a few $$, you need to turn this work over to a competent rod restorer. Doing this work yourself, without some experience, can really hurt the value of the rod.

Many bamboo rods were glued originally with Urac as Tom suggested. Even more often than Urac, older rods were glued with hide glues and/or Resorcinol. If the rod has delaminated it is likely one of those two glues which has let go.

Titebond will do an adequate repair job, but I prefer the polyurethane glues like Gorilla Glue or the Elmer's product currently called Ultimate Glue, or something like that (used to be called ProBond). I just think it is a better glue for bamboo because it will stand more heat.

Be patient with this repair job. Do some gentle flexing of the damaged sections to see if other joints pop open. Use some straight pins between the strips of bamboo to gently try to open the splits. Use very light pressure. When you hit good glue, stop!

Slather the area to be repaired with glue. A brush like many of us use to coat wraps will work well. Be sure to get glue on both strips in every damaged area.

Once you have the area coated with glue, make a spiral wrap with heavy string over the entire area. Wrap one direction, then back the other. Tie off with half-hitches. Wipe away excess Tite-Bond with a damp sponge. Clean up excess Polyurethane glues with mineral spirits (paint thinner) on a rag. After an hour or so, remove the glue-soaked string, and re-bind with fresh string. That makes things a lot easier in the next step.

After 8-24 hours the excess glue needs to be removed. Carefully scrape or sand away -- the glue only -- without removing ANY bamboo. Many people cover the delaminated areas with white thread, which disappears when varnish. Refinish the area as required.

Hope this helps,
Harry Boyd