Rotten made good.

Back at the start of the year I purchased a Milward 10ft Split cane fly rod that was in need on some TLC, this was the first Cane Fly Rod that I had decided to buy and try and carry out the repair myself and for £17 what could go wrong. The item was described as having handle damage but the cane was straight & in good repair.
This was the picture of the handle.

However when I received the rod the handle was in much more of a state when I stripped the old cork sheeting and binding from it, the water had got into the wooden handle below and was literally rotten, on speaking to a good friend who makes cane rods he was sure that the cane blank did not run the full length of the handle which would have made things easy to change the handles over but he was right after I cut away the bottom 6" of rotten handle there was no sign of the cane blank inside.

I decide that the only solution was to keep the handle the length it was after cutting out the rotten wood and after all the handle was considerably larger than what I'm used to. I was toing with the idea of putting a new cork sheet wrap on it as that was all the was covering the handle but my previous acquaintances with cork sheet haven't turned out as well as Id liked so an alternative was sought.  On the original some sort of binding had been wrapped around the handle and when out for a drink last week with some guys from the British legion I mentioned it in passing and got some advice from an old gentleman in his late 80s who fished when he was younger and he said that some rods were purely wrapped in twine and given a coat of waterproofing over the top to seal it. After a few phone calls and some advice I got sent some binding with instructions on how to use it and here is the finished result.

It might not win any medals for authenticity but it certainly brings the rod back from the knackers yard and gets it back to what it was built for.

 You can see the butt section is now 6" shorter than the middle & tip but it handles ok and for a total of £21, I cant complain the proof will be in the use of it. Here fishy fishy.....