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page 38
Bamboo Journal
Italian Bamboo Rodmakers Association
A long preface
Well established construction techniques.
If we had to choose an instrument as an icon of
the rod maker’s activity, the choice would
almost certainly be the planing form. Most of us
were introduced to the planing form by the
detailed description by Hoagy Carmichael in his
famous 1983 book on Everett Garrison, the
“Bible” (see bibliography). It was a revelation
for all of us, because after understanding how it
worked, we immediately started to think that if
we bought one, we would deinitely be succes-
sful. And from the book we learned that along
the journey we would be accompanied by the
second icon of bamboo rod building, the Stanley
9 ½ block plane. A winning combination! The
only problem now was choosing the taper we
liked and build a rod. Any rod.
The planing form described in Carmichael’s
book is the reined and almost deinitive evolu-
tion of a long series of attempts described in
Herter’s book (see bibliography).
It is a potentially precise instrument and expert
hands can achieve accuracies close to a thou-
sandth of an inch, the zenith for a rod maker. Of
course, buying a good planing form is an
investment that forces one to understand if he
(she) is really sure of the journey one is about to
take and face the expense of buying a professio-
nally built planing form.
The alternative was and still is building your
own, but it is not easy if you do not have kind
friends with a well equipped machine shop,
considering that to build one you need a good
milling machine with a long enough table. The
real “do-it-yourself”, which is made at home
with hand tools only, practically does not exist.
Unless you are heroes. Or not fussy at all.
Anyway, whichever path you might have taken,
the planing form has been the tool universally
used for the construction of bamboo rods for
many years and I think it still is the most popu-
lar today.
Then Tom Morgan’s Hand Mill arrived and it
represents the only true innovative technique
that substantially deviates from the planing
form. The hand mill has perhaps reduced even
further the chances of building the instrument
on your own at home and without precision
machines. Nevertheless, the Hand Mill has been
very successful, among amateurs as well as
professionals, regardless of the price considera-
bly higher than for a planing form. I think the
reason for this success is that many could not
cope with spending so much time sharpening
block plane blades or handling a deiant plane.
And the Hand Mill throws both sacred objects
away, the planing form and the block plane.
I do not have a Hand Mill, but I have read the
instructions manual and I have seen it being
used. I think it was a stroke of genius and I can
imagine Tom Morgan’s joy in conceiving and
developing the idea. The use of the scrapers
removes the hard limits imposed by the use of
the planes. The proof is that, while the Hand Mill
works on two sides of the strips at once, there is
no technique that uses two planes that do the
same. Even if, curiously enough, the antique
plane that was sold at the highest price is and
rare and perhaps unique double plane, or better,
a gadget made with two planes arranged in such
a way to plane simultaneously two sides of an
edge, and invented by Mr. Tidey.