I am building my second fly rod, a 9'6" 7 wt and am trying to pick out a reel seat. I like the graphite or titanium color and uplocking but most of the ones I have found are flush mount seats. Being new, I have no idea how to attach a flush mount seat. Can I get some help? Are they easier or harder than other types? I looked through the search feature and could only find topics about preferences for flush mounts vs others. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Check out the American Tackle 3ULT line of reel seats. They come in Titanium color with a variety of colors/types of wood inserts available....

good wrapping
David A. Fuller
Great Basin Fishing Rods

Kurt,

Flush mount seats just butt up against your cork grip. The part that fits flush is usually the front retaining ring on an uplocking, and just a trip cap on a downlocking seat.

IMHO flush uplocking seats are not as nice looking as inletted seats. The only problem with inletted seats is that you need a matching preformed grip to accept the recessed retainer, or you need a cork ring inletted to match your seat (or you can inlet your grip/ring yourself). I have rods with both styles of seats and see no real difference between them functionally.

Most of the sponsors to the left have both styles of seats in many different anodized colors. It is mostly an asthetic choice that you need to make for youself.

Barret

That all makes sense but how is it actually attached to the rod?

The flush mount seats are mounted like any other reel seat. I do the following:
Prep the blank with very light sanding; space the desired arbors about .5" apart using three arbors; apply paste epoxy (I use PC7 or PC13) to the arbors and in between; Slide the reel seat onto the arbors so that the butt cap barely touches the bottom of the blank; let this dry overnight; ream your cork grip to fit blank; test fit to make sure the cork fits flush against the flush mount ring; if improper fit is found, lap the bottom of the grip on light sand paper until proper fit is found; use 2 part epoxy like Devcon to mount cork grip and put aside to dry. That's about it. I like to put the entire thing in a clamp so that the grip doesn't slide up the blank before it dries. If you don't have a cork clamp, use masking tape and wrap a stop around the top of the cork grip to keep it from sliding up the blank. Make sure to align the seat with the spine. I also apply masking tape to the seat and grip to eliminate too much glue getting on either part where they meet.

You can also leave the butt cap off until the grip is dry and epoxy that on last. Just be sure to leave enough room in the bottom end of the seat for the butt cap.

Hope this is clear and it helps.

Lou

Perfect. Thanks.

Check out the Forecast components on www.batsonenterprises.com. We have the reel seats you are looking for along with the cork to match. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us or one of our many distributors.
Thank you
Bill Batson
CEO
Batson Enterprises
Rainshadow/Forecast
wbatson@olypen.com

One more thing. If you want to use a fighting butt that glues directly to the blank. Do as I stated above, but leave enough room at the botttom of the reel seat to mount the fighting butt. Do the same test fitting of the fighting butt and lap on sand paper as need to get a good fit.

HTH,

Lou