I won't say the builder's name, but I put an order for a bamboo rod 13 months ago, and at the time I put the deposit down, I asked if I could get a special wood insert for the reel seat...the builder assured me it could be done...now that everything is "ready", the builder emails me to ask if I want to wait 2-3 months for the specific wood, or choose from an assortment of woods in a picture he sent me and have the rod in a few days...
Is 13 months an unreasonable time to acquire something a customer asked for?
I'm quite frustrated...

Bamboo takes time - but 13 months is, to my mind, unreasonable.

I'm not unhappy with the wait...that was expected...but to wait til all it needs is the reel seat to look for the type of wood I requested seems like poor planning at best...

Only for documentation -
The first bamboo fly rod I built from scratch (culm to finished rod) took around 120 hours all done by hand (split culm, rough and final plane, layup, wrap).

The last bamboo rod I built - again from scratch & by hand took 53 hours (lots of learning curve in cutting down time spent).

There was a shortage of raw high-quality material (imported asian bamboo) for several months I was lucky to have ordered a bundle (24x12 foot lengths) over a year ago. He MAY have been caught "boo-less" (?)

Yes, I feel you are correct that given the time spent heat treating, splitting, planing, truing the stock should have left plenty of time to get any special order wood in hand. The builder should have known the diameter of the blank based on the taper so it could have been orderd, prepped and ready for final assembly.

What is the specific wood? I cant imagine any wood taking that long. Especially something as small as a reel seat. Whats he doing ? Growing the tree? Ha ha..
Sounds to me like the project was put in line, and never really looked at until it came up for production.

P.S. As far as the 13 months goes, I had an uncle that waited well into 1 1/2 years to finally get his rod. Of course this was from one of the most, if not the most recognzed bamboo builder in the business.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2011 05:22PM by Larry Damore.

The problem is that your builder isn't likely to really care what anyone here has to say as to whether or not his business practice is reasonable or not.

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It's koa...I grew up in Hawaii, and he told me the rod itself was just finished, only waiting to be "seated"...I expected to wait around a year...not upset with the wait...just can't believe he didn't start looking right away, or at least 2-3 months before he thought the rod would be ready if he thought it would take that long...

Perhaps I wasn't looking for the right cut of Koa, but it seems to have taken me about 60 seconds on Google to locate a source of this elusive substance.

Ken, I have some Koa wood and would be happy to send you a piece.
Send me an e-mail.

Walt Natzke
Ripon, CA