"the skinny" - chapter nine - by means of arson

foolishly I didn't put a date on chile colorado my first bamboo rod

I do know that I picked it up the day before I drove up to the rio grande by way of the san juan river

the day after that I blooded the rod in no time flat

drifting through the texas hole w/ steve and chris

that date was july 9 2006

I'm also fairly sure I flamed and split a culm up at mike's shop for rod number two

I seem to remember mike flaming it though I may be wrong

I took the strips home bought a heat gun and vise

and started working the nodes

as I was doing so I noticed some bad news charlie brown...

at least half the strips had a soft spot like shown above and were kaput

not for the last time I was forced to start over

so in all likelihood I flamed and split again up at mike's 

I know for a fact that I did it this time

not wanting to repeat the fiasco

I know it may sound as though I'm blaming mike

but I'm not - he'd done this xxx amount of times

while I had done most of one culm so it would be far more likely that I was the guilty party

death to bamboo by means of arson

whatever

eventually I got this one done
rod is dated 10-18-07

somewhere around about this time adam had started again to build a rod

having given up the first time perhaps because he found the work too hard

or he couldn't find the time

but he stuck to it and I found myself traveling often to congress w/ him

I started to accumulate some tools

I still needed plenty

first and foremost planing forms

I couldn't afford them - well I suppose I could have...who knows

matt shliske generously offered me his old set - I jumped on it

ordered a lie-nielson plane and scraper

sometime shortly later down the road my father bought me a depth gauge and binder

at which point you could say we were off and running...

actually it was more like learning to crawl