Hi all.  I am rounding up supplies and speed reading books on making fly rods so I thought it time to start this thread.

I discovered that L. Cocker invested in British Patent 903574 and, with the help of AndrewH, downloaded the description and illustrations of same.  I had previously known that scarf joints were used to add a tip and butt to the bamboo stick, but did not know the reason for the grafted butt.  It looks to me that Cocker used the conventional six segment construction for split bamboo fly rods with each segment forming an equilateral triangle of half the thickness of the stick, and scarfed an eight sided wood butt end to utilize a conventional violin frog.  

I did find and order a router bit that would provide two sides of the 60 degree triangle (Amana Tool #49730), and will use this method as a backup.  I think that I can make an eight sided stick using a technique found in “Making Strip-Built Fly Rods from Various Woods” by John Betts.  This will save the effort of a scarf joint.  I also plan to use his method of scarf jointing the tip.

My next step in the process is to make a segment binder similar to the Bellinger Bamboo Segment Bonder (suggest watching YouTube Video, which is fascinating).  Once glued, the bamboo is secured with string in two directions to cancel torque moments.

I will also need to make an adjustable segment form so that I can provide the necessary contour of each segment as required for the strength and flexibility of the completed stick.