I am in the process of restoring a bamboo fly rod. The restoration is my first time working with bamboo although I have built several other rods. The rod is an early 50' vintage, Japanese made, production rod (I know, not worth the cost or effort, tomato stake, etc, etc,) 8' and probably around a 6wt. I removed the grip and the reel seat and underneath is a continuous wooden arbor about 10" long and 5/8" diameter. Both the reel seat and cork grip were glued to this arbor. It's essentially a hardwood dowel with a blind hole that the butt of the blank is glued into. Since the hole in the dowel does not go all the way through I cannot tell how far the blank is inserted. I would like to remove this and just remount the new reel seat and grip on the butt of the blank. Has anyone run into this before or does anyone have any suggestions on how I might get the blank out of the dowel without damaging the bamboo or possibly delaminating the strips?

It shouldn't be hard to split the wooden arbor stock from the end and just pull it off the bamboo. But I doubt the bamboo is inserted more than a couple inches anyway.

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Adam,
What is the necessity of removing the wooden arbor? Can’t it simply be left in place and reused?

Mark Talmo
FISHING IS NOT AN ESCAPE FROM LIFE BUT RATHER A DEEPER IMMERSION INTO IT!!! BUILDING YOUR OWN SIMPLY ENHANCES THE EXPERIENCE.

Mark,
The reason for wanting to remove the arbor is two-fold. It would make the rod much lighter (albeit shorter and change the action/power some) and boring that size hole in a new grip would be difficult. The walls of the new grip would be very thin after boring a hole that large, and I don't have a lathe so trying to do that by hand would be quite tricky.
Another thought I had was to cut part of the arbor off and leave it just as long as the reel seat. I am reusing the original seat so I could glue the seat to this stub of arbor and then ream the grip to the size of the blank and slide on from the front. This way the rod wouldn't be as short overall and I would still reduce the weight quite a bit. I would have to put the new grip on over the original logo though.

I have refurbished a few old post WWII ‘occupied’ Japanese bamboo rods. The bamboo only extends into the wooden dowel a couple of inches so it is easy enough to split it off the blank with a utility knife, just be careful and take your time. You are right they are not worth much and are made from Calcutta cane vs Tonkin cane. Although heavy and sloppy, they are still fun to fish.
Norm