I am in the process of making the tooling needed to build a cane rod and have been trying to find out why graphite builders use two part epoxy such as Threadmaster on their wraps while bamboo makers use varnish. Is it simply tradition or is there a technical reason. I ask because I have a lot of Threadmaster on the shelf and limited interest in building another graphite rod.

JW

Part of it is probably tradition, but varnish brings some advantages for me.

1. Rod shafts are finished with varnish, so there is no compatibility/adhesion concerns at the wrap/shaft junction.
2. Varnish a naturally low build finish that doesn't over build on the light silk threads.
3. For translucent wraps, thinned epoxy is much slower to get to the dust free state than a urethane varnish
4. I like the color of oil based varnishes and the glow that they bring to the rod.
5. Its easier to get varnished thread off the blank when you have to redo one... and you will have to do that on occasion

That said, others do use epoxy and get results that they like. When you make up your color test stick, try out you epoxy and see if you like the way it looks. Its your rod. Ignore the style police and make it the way you want.

There is also the fact that epoxy type finishes stick better to graphite than varnish does.

Since I'm finishing the cane with varnish, it's just makes sense to do the wraps with varnish as well. It's never a good idea to mix finishes.

For nearly one hundred years varnish was used on bamboo because there was no epoxy. A few of the modern makers do use modern epoxies on bamboo but they are a minority. Mixing varnish and epoxy presents adhesion issues and since the bamboo itself needs to be finished with something, it would seem to be easier to keep it all varnish. IMHO the major advantage of varnish is the ease of stripping and refinishing. Bamboo rods are usually built to outlast many owners and many revarnishings. Traditionally, periodic revarnishing was considered proper maintenance and the high end builders provided this service for their customers. Stripping varnish with no harm to the bamboo is quick and easy, epoxy, maybe not so much.
AgMD

I'll agree with most everything that's been said with a couple of disclaimers. If you want crystal clear wraps with no "shimmers" and no magic to get there, thinned epoxy works better than varnish. It's also not quite the nightmare to remove an epoxied wrap that you might think, I stripped some test wraps done with epoxy just to see how bad it was and it's do able, not fun but not impossible and no harm done to the blank, just be careful .
john