Real bamboo is unmatchable. A special commission for U.S. President Jimmy Carter, hand crafted & engraved by Bill Oyster. Oyster photo.
Note the sudden surge in Synthetic Bamboo. With its cheap but effective approach, the synBAM movement is probably here to stay
by Scott Bowen / Micurrent / April 1, 2019
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]aybe you’ve seen a strange comment posted on various rod-makers’ Instagram or Facebook accounts: “synBAM **fail**”
Streamside this spring, you might see hand-made signs posted on trees or taped to windshields: “synBAMs stay home.”
You can buy a 3D printer for as little as an expensive Epson 13 X 19 color printer or as expensive as a commercial Epson printer at $8,000 or more. Fly Life Magazine.com 2015
“synBAM” is the generic name for the resin used by small army of rod-makers who are programming 3D-printers to produce synthetic “bamboo” fly rods. The word has also become a derisive nickname for the rod-makers themselves. The larger, faceless army of people who pursue synBams on-line have no collective name, but the synBAMs sometimes refer to them as “purists.”
“People who are afraid of technology shouldn’t be fly fishing at all,” said Merwin Gibbes, a 29-year-old synBAM rod maker in Altoona, PA. “Technology allowed for bamboo to be fashioned into rods in the first place. Technology now allows for a medium that’s equivalent to the organic composition of bamboo to be fashioned into rods. That’s called ‘progress.’”
For additional information of fly fishing and 3D printing . . .
