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Anglers Collectibles INFORMATION Bishop
Rodmakers E-Mail
Darrell |
A
Method For Polishing Bamboo Rods I have found that no matter
how careful I am I still get little specks on the rods that I dip in varnish.
These little blemishes are problems that are easily remedied with a little elbow
grease. Older rods that have varnish in poor shape can also be salvaged with the
same technique. The rotten stone, Brownell's triple “F” and five “F”
were the normal fix for little dust spots and it worked but
was an oily mess and time
consuming. Today with the advent of
the new paint polishes coming on the market it is much easier and you can get
better results with less elbow grease. The system that I use follows but can be
modified depending on what is available in your area. I start out after letting
the rod hang in the drying cabinet for a week or so (I use spar varnish) by
inspecting the rod for blemishes, There are always some. When the areas are
identified I then sand the bad ones with 2,000 grit paper mounted on a craft
stick (popsickle). The sticks can be cut to whatever width needed. Rubber cement
works just fine to attach the paper to the stick and the stick can be reused. I
then follow the light buffing with 2,000 with a rubbing compound like DuPont
or Turtle Wax. At this point it looks bad but then I
polish the whole section with Meguiars medium cleaner polish. The secret
is to use a lot of polish and keep the pad clean, I use shotgun cleaning
patches. Usually this brings the whole section to a very nice glow but I am not
done yet. This is a good time to
polish the ferrules also with the same pad. I then wipe the section down with a
clean cloth rag and move onto Meguiars Light swirl free polish doing the same
rub down and ferrules also. This should give you a very deep glowing finish with
no defects showing in the rod section. You can also go to a swirl remover but I
do not find any improvement by going that extra step. If the rod you are working
with has sagging varnish but the wraps are okay and you do not want to do a
complete strip down try doing the same thing except skip the 2,000 grit paper. I
have found that I can move the varnish around and back into place. You have to
be very careful because you can move the varnish right off the rod and onto the
pad. By careful rubbing one can get rid of little sags and bag impressions. I
have also found that this trick works but is not a long term solution. I have not tried the
polishing techniques described above on the Polyurethane type finishes but I
think that they would work just fine on a recently varnished rod. The Poly
finishes do not lend themselves to the polishing to get rid
of hook digs and scratches like a spar varnish. I guess that the spar
varnish does not get as hard. It is amiable to being microscopically moved
around to fill little gaps and such. Try it, I think that you will be amazed at
what you can do with this technique. If
you have any questions please feel free to give me a shout at:
CAIrvinerods@AOL.Com Or
visit my website at: www.bamboorods.org
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