QuestionHi Joe & thank you in advance for any information you can provide.I happen to have received an old & used Tonkin Bamboo rod from my father who in turn had received it as a used gift sometime between 1940 & 1950. I am a private builder of lamiglas surf rods for pleasure, but have yet to venture into the bamboo scene. The following is a description of this bamboo rod:
-2 piece setup where the wooden handle (female section) measures a total of 31.25". Starts at a black rubber butt end cap followed by a (22 Rib- grip, 4.0" diameter),a handle grip(19 rib- grip, 3.75" diameter), & ends at a chrome plated reel seat. The male section starts with another grip (21 rib- 3.5" diameter), followed by a brass ferrel sleeve (1.5"),& hexagonal 84" (7') pole currently with 3 wrapped nickel/chrome plate eyes including tip. It appears that 2 eyes are missing. The Thread wrap is dark blue with a varnish coating. The pole finish is overall tung oil colored and in fairly good shape @ 9.5' overall length connected.
- White lettered & numbered description painted onto male hexagonal section of pole just passed brass ferrel sleeve
" Rex - Flash- E #180 " ( painted in print)& below this is
"Genuine Tonkin Bamboo" ( painted in script).
- Some light green corrosion on reel seat,rod eyes,& tip.
I hope all this information is helpful. I'm basically looking to find out if this pole has any particular value prior to restoring it. Your expertise is greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Vinny
AnswerHi Vinny,
No problem. I'm happy to try to help.
I assume you mean circumference and not diameter as a 4" diameter rod butt would be the size of a small tree. This is a pretty substantial boat rod given the length of the butt and rod shaft.
The white lettering and the "Genuine Tonkin Bamboo" tend to identify this as a Horrocks-Ibbotson rod. My reference book does not list an H-I rod this long or with any of the "Rex-Flash-E#180" descriptors. However, that doesn't mean too much as the book does not list every possible model. I would guess it was made somewhere in the 1920-1940 time frame.
The turned wood handle sections and the rubber butt cap also tend to identify this as one of the mass production company rods so H-I is likely a good guess. The Homel value guide lists rods of this type in approximately this length as: Poor/Fair = $25, Good/Very Good = $50, and Excellent/Mint = $100. These numbers are 6 years old (but the latest ones available) and you can probably infl;ate them a bit.
I would think the rod is worth restoring because: it was your Dad's, you can do it yourself, it is probably a pretty good old rod and you would enjoy using it.
I would be happy to provide suggestions and hints on how to restore the rod. Just email me at
[email protected] with questions.
The restoration would not be too much of a job for someone with skills to build surf rods. The corrosion will come off with "0000" steel wool and elbow grease. Lots of vendors, including me, sell the guides you need. Refinishing the bamboo and the wooden parts is not tough. Straightening the bamboo, if it is needed, is not tough. If you want, you can update the guide spacing to more modern spacing since the rod is not real valuable. And, rewrapping the rod is pretty much like you do now for the surf rods you build.
Is the tiptop one that allows line to enter from both sides? Most of these old boat rods had that sort of tiptop. Then they had guides on both sides of the rod shaft...when you wrap on a guide, you wrap one on each side at each location simultaneously. This would let you fish with the rod for a while and then turn the rod shaft over and fish with it using the other side for a while. This was intended to keep the bamboo from taking a set by being constantly bent in only one direction. It worked pretty well, too.
Let me know if you decide to take this on as a winter project. Joe
