One-piece rods are indeed worth pursuing. They always fish better than their 2-piece counterparts because that 1/4 ounce ferrule moment is removed from the middle of the rod. Hence you can build a substantially lighter rod for the same performance. They also eliminate the cost and bother of adding a ferrule set. Ferrules are at best a PITA.

I would dismiss all rods of shorter than say 6 1/2 feet. They all have to be clubs to do any real work.

For longer 1-piecers there are 2 downsides, transport and difficulty to make. I carpool to a lot of fishing trips and do not burden the pool driver with 1-piecers. But in many larger vehicles they are no problem.

To make useful 7 foot or longer 1-piecers there are 2 useful tricks. The first is to go nodeless. For this method there is virtually no length limit. The other scheme for node-lovers might be to build a staggered splice under the cork to get at least 3 inches of extension beyond your culm length. I've used both schemes and they work great.  (Bill Fink)

Do you see the fiberglass or graphite wrapped ferrules as a close second? I wonder how you liked the quad that Tom and you had built. I think it seemed quite nice. Thanks for the insight below, I am excited to try some more long one piecers. (Bob Maulucci)

Yes, the quad that Tom and I made is just fine. I'm fishing it now between floods. But don't forget that it was Ted Barnhart who made the Universal ferrule on that Zimny-tapered rod. What I like most about that ferrule is that it will work on penta's, quads, and my new pet, trirods. Also it is lighter than metal ferrules so we have that design advantage. I guess I would rate it as second to 1-piecers based on that.

I know nothing about fiberglass ferrules. Is someone working on those? (Bill Fink)

What do you all do for heat treating? Do you have 8' long ovens? (Pete Van Schaack)

For noded 1-piecers of 7 feet I borrow Tom Smithwick and his neat 7 foot oven. I keep trying to persuade him to drill a hole in the end so I can cook longer rods. Somehow he doesn't buy this.

For nodeless, the best way to go, I use my wife Carmen's kitchen oven when she's asleep. Bob Powell recently redid our kitchen but dared not to replace the old oven because I have it calibrated for cane cooking. My kind wife puts up with all this nonsense. I'm just lucky, I guess. (Bill Fink)

Many rods have been heat treated in a long piece of black iron pipe.

An improvement on the design is to center a length of 3/4" copper pipe inside a length of 1" pipe, and shim between the two with bamboo wedges so that the inner pipe has an even surrounding air gap between the outer pipe. Stick a ventilated cork in both ends, and heat with a heat gun or propane torch (or heat source of your choosing). To monitor temperatures, stick a thermometer probe in the end holes.

The heat source heats the outer pipe, which heats the air, which then heats the inner pipe. Not only do you get a relatively even distribution of heat, but the airspace also acts as an insulator, so that once you get the inside up to temperature, it tends to stay that way.

To evenly heat the entire length it will be necessary to constantly and smoothly move the heat source along the length of the "retort", and I would recommend turning/rotating the apparatus with each pass to keep it heating as evenly as possible. (Chris Obuchowski)

I built a 7'3" one piece by planing the butt end first and then resetting my form and planing the tip ends with an overlap.

I flamed the inside and outside of the culm in lieu of heat treating, works fine. (Steve Trauthwein)

One piece rods are easy to make with short planing forms. What you do is allow an extra 6-7" on the tip sections and butt sections. then you make your splices and hide them under 2 adjacent guides. This works great on nodeless and 3 on 3 staggering. I've built 9' one piece rods for a few friends that fish the salt. (Hal Bacon)

There are a few other second-order downsides to no-ferrule rods. First you can't just buy rod cases anywhere. There is plenty of nice aluminum tubing available but the terminations are a problem. I shape plywood plugs for the far end and have come on a few plastic caps to fit the business end. And of course, unless Darryl is willing, you must sew your rod bag yourself. And there is a special technique needed to easily take rods out of and back into long cases. You had best keep the bag in the tube as far as possible and remove only the rod, else you may encounter a real mess in getting everything back into the tube. (Bill Fink)