As your skills progress, you can begin to design your own tapers. Since most bamboo rods are built with two tips, you need 12 strips for tips and 6 strips for the butt section of your rod. Because I only make rods of one length from each culm, I cut each culm to length before splitting. The finished length for each section will be a little over 45 inches. Allowances must be made for staggering the nodes and for extra working length.
Nodes are the weakest part of the bamboo.
Good rods never have nodes adjacent to each other in finished sections. I've settled on a 2x2x2 node spacing where each node is separated by two strips without nodes. Allow a minimum stagger of two inches between nodes. Allowing another 2 inches leeway on each end of the strip gives you a little margin for error in planing and gluing the strips. This is how the nodes will be positioned when the strips are glued together to form the rod blank.