As a newcomer to this craft, I have a fundamental question regarding Unibutt, Tuff-Butt, and aluminum rod handles in general.
How far into the handle/butt assembly does the blank extend? The Unibutt looks to have a ferrule that fits onto the blank which in turn is locked into the handle by a ferrule nut, meaning that there is only a few inches of rod in the handle. Is this correct? What about the American Tackle handles...the description in the Mudhole catalog implies that the ferrule is about as long as the handle. What gives?

Thanks,

Rusty Hodnett

Two or three inches is all. And that is sufficient. Once you go past a certain point, you're not buying any extra strength.

Some blanks should not be used in a uni-butt ferrule, however. If you don't have a fairly thick wall at the butt (or the point where you trim) you could be asking for trouble. Although generally this is not a problem with the type blanks designed for these units.

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You are correct about unibutt ferrules. Only about 4 inches of blank is fitted inside a ferrule. I believe you are over analyzing, or taking out of context, the AmTak unibut description on the Mud Hole Site. In giving their lenghts they do not actually mean the ferrule is that long. Instead the length is for the entire butt including the ferrule (I think). As with the Aftco butts, the AmTak ferrule should still be only a few inches long.

The Stuart Tuff Butts do not use a ferrule setup and are a bit of a hybrid between unibutts and butts with blank-through construction. Normal blank-through setups will include a gimbal, butt section (usually palstic, hypalon, or eva), and the reel seat. All these parts are individually joined to the blank along the butt. The Stuart Tuff Butt goes a step further by swaging an aluminum sleave to the bottom of the reel seat. To this sleave you attach your plastic butt and gimbal. Then you may slide the blank butt section down through the solid aluminum butt and epoxy. Because of the solidity of the Tuff Butt you have the option to not do a true blank-through setup. It is common to use the unibut ferrule theory of thought and only slide a few inches of butt into the Tuff Butt instead of going all the way through to the gimbal. I commonly slide the butt section of the blank only to the end of the reel seat of the Stuart Tuff Butt (approximately 5") with no problems.

You have a limited number of blank options when using the Stuart Tuff Butt as it has a small inner diameter. I have emailed Stuart with my concerns about this and hopefully they will come forth with a larger ID Tuff Butt in the future.

Jay