The Magazine Of Custom Fishing Rods

RodMakerThe Magazine Of Custom Fishing Rods

RodMakerBirch Bark HandlesExpand Your GripMaking Horizons

Birch Bark HandlesExpand Your GripMaking Horizons

The 2006 National Rod Builders Show Report

The 2006 National Rod Builders Show Report

Volume 9 - Issue 2 • $7 USVolume 9 - Issue 2 • $7 US

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Birch Bark HandlesBy Antti KymalainenPhotos by Markus Mannisto

Why not try something different for your next rod grip or handle? Unique materials for making truly custom fittings may be as close as your own backyard.

Birch Bark HandlesBy Antti KymalainenPhotos by Markus Mannisto

Why not try something different for your next rod grip or handle? Unique materials for making truly custom fittings may be as close as your own backyard.

The following article originally appeared in the Volume 9 #2 Issue of RodMaker Magazine.

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Finland is a land of forests and lakes. Birch havebeen said to be Finland’s national tree. True, butbirch is widely used in handcraft works all overthe northern hemisphere - anywhere you can

find birch growing. One could write a long article aboutmany ways to use birch, but this article will concentrateon birch bark and its usability to rod builders.

During the past year I have been greatly intrigued bythe method knife makers have been using to make beau-tiful birch bark handles for their knives. I did a lot re-search into implementing this technique with regard torod building. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anyone whohad been using such a method or material already. Al-though many rod builders seemed interested in theprospects of such a method, I was unable to find muchmore beyond my original suspicions that it could be ofvalue in custom rod building.

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The MaterialGrowing birches can be found in the northernhemisphere. White birch is the best to use in craftwork. The best time to take bark from the tree is inspring or early summer. At that time bark can bepeeled off most easily and will be at its thickest -which is important for what we’re going to bedoing with it. Cut the bark all the way to hard innerwood and peel the bark off around the trunk. *(Be-cause quality bark can be gathered from fallen trees, thetaking of bark from living trees is not advised. The re-moval of bark from a living tree can result in death of thetree.)

After the bark is removed, cut or bore yourrings from it as soon as possible. If you intend touse the bark sheets later, lay out the sheets and putsome weight upon them. This prevents bark fromcurling up, which they have a tendency to do ontheir own. Always store them in dry place.

Bark can be also bought from craft stores whosell items for knife making. Another good sourcecould be birch bark canoe makers, who might sellyou small leftovers from their projects. Such left-overs may not be large enough for further use oncanoes or kayaks, but can be sufficiently sized forour rod building uses.

Preparing Bark RingsWhen you have bark sheets ready for processing,you need certain tools to do it. There are two op-tions to cut bark down to usable sizes. You can justuse a knife or scissors to cut bark to squares of35x35mm. With this method, you need to do muchmore work while sanding a grip. A better way isto use an hole punch with an inner diameter of 33-35 mm. An example of a hole punch is shown onthe left on picture 1. Place a bark sheet over awooden pole and use the punch with a hammer toobtain as many rings as you need.

After an adequate amount of rings are done,they need to be cleaned. All bark’s surface material(white) needs to be removed. It will peel off easilywith a knife. If the bark is very inflexible or theinner side of it is very thick, remove enough mate-rial from there as well. You want the pieces to beclean and flexible so they are easy to use.

The last thing to do is to make a hole in the cen-ter of each bark ring. The diameter of this hole orbore, should be the same as the diameter of thethreaded rod or mandrel you are going to usewhen turning the item. You can make these with asmaller punch as shown at right in picture 2. Otheritems needed are nuts for your threaded rod andlarger washers (bigger than your bark rings).

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Making the InsertSince you are making a bark handle, you need tohave a drawing of a handle with the desired meas-urements before you start to glue the individualbark rings together. In such a drawing, the lengthof bark sections are decided. Bark rings need to beglued on together in small parts. As a rule, I don’tglue more than 20 rings at one time. The handleproject I’ve outlined for this article required 4stacks of 20 rings each.

First use a candle or block of paraffin and rubit along the threaded rod to prevent glueing therings permanently to the rod or mandrel. Spin anut on the rod, put the washer on and slide the firstbark ring down to the washer. Apply slow cureepoxy to the bark ring on the rod and slide the nextbark ring down on top of it. Make sure you turnthe second ring 90 degrees before putting it top ofthe first bark ring. The third ring, and each addi-tional ring, are also turned 90 degrees when com-pared to the preceeding ring. Alignment of therings is shown in picture 3. By aligning the rings inthis manner, the overall strength of the grip isgreatly increased.

After all rings are glued and stacked, put thesecond washer on the other end and tighten thepacket with another nut so that all excess glue willbe squeezed out. Wipe the excess glue off and letthe assembly fully cure. Keep the packet unopenedfor a couple of days (leave it clamped). If you needto make additional 20 ring sets, do it now. An ex-ample of ready set is shown in picture 4. This ex-ample set is not glued, but it is here to show theapproximate size of a bark ring set that you canglue up together at one time. Also pay attention tothe size of your end washers - they need to belarger than your bark rings in order to apply theproper pressure on the entire surface of each barkring.

After all the bark ring sets are dry, remove the20 ring packets from the threaded rods and gluethem together into a single unit. Let the packet dryagain under adequate pressure on the threaded rodjust as you did when assembling the individualrings earlier.

Putting A Handle TogetherIf you closely examine the structure of a bark ring,you can see that it is made up of layers. So use cau-tion in handling the sections. Even after the barkrings are glued together, bark sections can easilybreak in layers if you bend them. Hence neithershould you start or end handles or grips with bark.There needs to be something solid on both ends. I

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suggest using impregnated wood or cork at boththe handle ends.

Now that you have all the sections of barkrings ready, it is time to put the whole handle to-gether. You can use the same threaded rod or man-drel for this. I use mandrels from Andy Dear. Glueall parts together with slow cure epoxy and allowto fully set and cure.

After drying it is time to put the mandrel onthe lathe and start turning it. Start with rough(coarse grit) sanding paper to get close to the lookand shape you prefer. As you approach the desiredshape and size, start using finer and finer papers.The grip in this article was finished with 1000 gritpaper!

FinishingOnce you have achieved the final desired shapeand size, it is time to put some protection on thegrip. Although bark is water resistant to a point, itis better to add some extra protection to it. I useBirchwood Casey’s Tru-oil to add additional pro-tection to the handle. Two thin coats will suffice.

After sufficient drying it’s time to mount yournew handle on your custom rod.

Reaming the HandleWhen the Tru-Oil has dried, remove the handlefrom the mandrel. Keep in mind that when you re-move the handle from the mandrel, the bark sec-tion has no interior support. There’s some risk ofsnapping it in two if you bend it too much. Keepthis in mind when reaming the handle to fit yourblank. �

Editor’s Note: While this article deals with using BirchBark to make a fly rod grip, the same technique and ma-terials can be used to construct grips and handles for anytype rod. Because the end product is a beautiful, tough,relatively light grip, it is equally suitable for use on cast-ing, spinning, boat and trolling rods.

In addition to using bark as a grip material, it couldalso be used via this same technique for reel seat inserts.Other rod parts could conceivably be made with theseinstructions as well. Let your imagination work on thisone and consider the many possibilities this techniqueoffers.

If you cannot source birch bark locally, it can oftenbe purchased from specialty lumber/wood supply stores.There are also other type barks and some veneers thatcan be can used with the same technique to constructsimilar grips and handles.

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