Product Description
Whoops – this page is giving us headaches. The coding for virtual products (ones with no initial shipping charge, since bamboo shipping is billed after it’s boxed), does not allow us to set up alternate drop-down options for grade pricing. Please email and we’ll bill you for Select Cut culms through PayPal. US shipments only.
A+ SOLD OUT – No more to be had – until someone buys GW & Peak Bamboo…
A $349 per 10-Pack of 6′ Culms
A- $189 per 10-Pack of 6′ Culms
B You don’t want it for rodmaking, but it’s dirt cheap if you want to pick it up in Columbia, PA. Email for details.
FINAL INVENTORY! Once our bamboo is sold out, it’s gone. Various grades at various prices. Grab some! We still have A Grade Select Cut material. The A+ is entirely sold out as of 3/30/22.
March 2022 Update: We recently had one client order hundreds of sticks of the A Grade Select Cut Culms. Until we’ve packed this order, we’ve marked these A Grade culms as Out of Stock – and it’s doubtful we’ll have any left after servicing this order. Good News: If you want the best bamboo we’ve ever sold, it’s the Select Cut A+ material, truly primo Tonkin, and it’s still in stock! Our inventory of these 6′ A+ culms is limited and starting to sell down rapidly now that we’ve marked the full-length A+ culms as Out of Stock. Pick up a ten-pack of these gorgeous culms before they’re gone and you’ll be absolutely delighted every time you decide to make a one-piece rod; alternately, you can use two 6′ sections and make stunning two-piece rods. These A+ sticks will not be further reduced in price. If you’re making one-piece rods, and if you have the knack for splitting fine strips, you should be able to get twenty rods, plus or minus a couple, from a single A+ ten-pack, making these culms a great value.
Hi Russ, Success at last {juggling bamboo through UK customs}. I now have in my possession the best bamboo I have to date managed to get my hands on. Already picked the first bit to work on. Two bows ready and waiting for this. Many thanks again, keep well, and I will keep you updated with progress. – Cliff G., Raven Longbows (United Kingdom)
What a re-discovery! When our second load was shipped to the US, our team in China offered to tuck 500 select cut, six-foot, A+ Tonkin Bamboo culms into the shipping container to fill a void. We grabbed them and we’ve aged them in our climate controlled warehouse. These 50 short bales were hidden behind stacks of full-length culms. We knew they were there, but we were patient and had plenty of other bamboo to sell. Now that we’ve sold all the A+ culms from our first batch, we’re unveiling the best of our culms from the second batch, to include these shorties. These culms are aged and ready for your shop, and for your finest work. Let us emphasize: THESE CULMS ARE SHORT CULMS, and each six foot piece is selectively cut from a separate 12′ culm. And keep reading, because we’ve recently added more options.
We have now sorted through the short culms and decided it was necessary to offer multiple grades of Select Cut culms. To those we brought in from China as 6′ sticks, we added even more short culms that we’ve trimmed in-house as we have sorted through thousands of culms over the years. If a stick had a beautiful end and a so-so end, we halved the culm and one piece was stacked with the A+ or A, and the other end with the A- or B. These culms are being sold at great prices, especially in the lower grades. If you’re willing to work with short culms – which means mixing and matching culms when making longer rods – then we’re happy to offer you better pricing to help us move inventory. Grab these Select Cut bundles while we’ve got them. You do get what you pay for. The A- culms, at least to my eye, need to be flamed (mottled) to look sharp, or you need to be really picky with which strips you use. The B culms are butt-ugly, but great for practicing techniques or making high-end tomato stakes. The A culms are pretty darn sweet, and as emphasized all over this page, the A+ are primo…realistic, not utterly flawless, but primo cane.
Select Cut. Prime. Double Plus Good. What does Select Cut mean for you? It means that when our second batch was harvested, there were culms, as there always are, that were mostly gorgeous, but with wonky ends – usually a pronounced kink, but sometimes a swarm of bug holes, a rash of watermarks. These culms weren’t A+ taken at full length. But neither were they A or A-…they were top shelf, with limited, unfortunate, spans. We had to remove the unfortunate portions to salvage the glorious bits. From each of these twelve foot culms, one six foot section was cut – wherever that six feet yielded the finest possible section. Our team selected, and our team made two extra cuts, fore and aft of that best portion. You get this best portion. Now we’re offering ‘best portions’ of four separate grades, which really means the quality is standard from stick to stick, regardless of which grade you opt for.
These culms are short, but they’re as close to perfect as you’re ever likely to work with when dealing with a natural material like bamboo – at least when you buy the A+ material; the fact that they are not perfect in a synthetic sense, only serves to emphasize that they are natural and that they are fine indeed for a wild-grown forest product. No, you can’t build long, single-culm 2/2 rods with them. You can, however, make shorter single-culm rods, potentially even 2/2 rods if you split some of the larger sticks with extreme care. You can certainly craft stunning one-piece flyrods up to about 5’6″ long (with a 3/3 node stagger) – and you should be able to get at least two, maybe three, one-piece rods from a single culm. What about one and two piece spinning and baitcasting rods? Absolutely. Trolling rods? Sure. Premium golf club shafts? It’s been done. And ski poles? Yes, those, too. Bike makers, these 10-packs call out for your frame-building skills. Imagine using one pack of this stunning bamboo to build a bike frame, a pair of ski poles, a couple putter shafts, a longbow with a half-dozen arrows, and then a few fishing rods to round out the collection of bamboo-based sporting goods. If you do this, we would love to see pictures!
Regarding those fishing rods… You can make longer two-tip rods, but you’ll need to mix strips from two of these shorties. If you go this route, you might want to get funky with culm color to creatively emphasize that you are using strips from two culms. Yes, these are nearly all pitch-perfect, or picture perfect, monochromatic blonde culms, but nevermind that. Darken one culm, keep one as blonde as your heat treating system will allow. Alternate the strips, three of dark & three of light, to make a visually stand-out rod! Or get really wild and mix six culms, arrayed in evenly sequenced order from light blonde to something safely short of crispy dark. A demo rod like this could be used as a sales tool to show your potential clients the six blank colors you can hit when creating their next custom rod. If you make nodeless rods, slice these shorties up and start scarfing.
Single 12′ Culms of A+ Grade Peak Bamboo retail for $129.95 + S/H/I; that puts these few ideal six-footers at $64.97 each but we’ll offer a modest discount and sell these in 10-Packs for $599.95. They are worth every penny. Expect shipping, which will be billed separately, to be $125-$165, perhaps a smidgen higher if you are really distant from our warehouse. These culms will not go on sale. Grab a pack while we still have them. Fifty packs. Forty Nine. Forty Eight. Forty Seven. Forty Six. You get the picture? Perfect.
Grown In China. Imported by Peak Bamboo.
This is our premium-grade, A+ bamboo, sold by the short culm. (The pictures don’t do our bamboo justice, but read the testimonials to fully understand what you’re ordering)
Read everything you need to know about Peak Bamboo at PeakBamboo.com, then return here to order. You’ll learn things like:
- What is the bamboo graded on?
- Who’s doing the grading?
- Why you should buy Peak Bamboo, as opposed to other brands
- How much do we keep on hand? and how much should you keep on hand?
Important Details:
- Shipping of all bamboo is on a custom, per-order basis and will be billed separately, after we cut, package, and weigh it. This currently takes 10 business days due to our backlog. PLEASE BE PATIENT.
- ORDERING 60 OR MORE CULMS? DISCOUNTS WILL APPLY. EMAIL US FOR DETAILS.
Looking for a Sampler? or a Beginner Pack?
RE Drying Splits:
Culms WITHOUT A Drying Split may travel better, but may also develop entirely random check splits due to temperature and humidity variations; Culms WITH A Drying Split will have, obviously, the drying split and they will also have a hinge split opposite the drying split…these culms are more compressible and may develop additional “handling” splits especially at the ends of culms, but they are less likely to develop random splits. It really is six of one, half a dozen of the other. Pick your poison. Or travel to pick them up yourself, which is the best way to secure the sticks and to protect your investment. We offer Warehouse Saturdays approximately once per month by appointment.
Length of Short Culms:
- 6′ culms (most are 71.5″ – 72″ actual length)
ROUGH U.S. Shipping Estimates: These are just ballpark estimates and you’ll note that the shipping drops dramatically as you move from one to six culms. A single culm is running $85-$120 to most Continental US locations, but it’s the box length and ‘dimensional weight’ that drive up the initial shipping cost. Two culms would be in the range of $95 -$135.00. By six culms you’re looking at $145-$195. At ten culms figure $22.00-$35/culm depending on location. Individual culm weight does come into play, and the average A+ stick weighs more than the average A- stick, so ten of one grade vs. ten of another grade would have modestly different shipping costs to the same location. If we run a sale that offers you the chance to request an extra culm or two, expect that the free culm(s) will still add to your shipping expense. Individual culm weight does come into play, and the average A+ stick weighs more than the average A- stick, so ten of one grade vs. ten of another grade would have modestly different shipping costs to the same location. If we run a sale that offers you the chance to request an extra culm or two, expect that the free culm(s) will still add to your shipping expense.
The culms on this page only ship as a ten pack, and they’re only 6′ long, so the entire pack fits inside one very large box. Figure ROUGHLY $125 – $165 for domestic UPS shipping.
