I would think a cork reel seat with sliding rings is about as light as there is but what's the next lightest fly rod reel seat? I saw an old response where someone turns a cork insert and used a Fuji SKM16 skeleton for a lightweight reel seat but I don't think I could turn cork on my drill press to the tolerances needed. Plus I don't really like the looks of the Fuji seats. I've got several PacBay U3 reel seats that weigh about .93 ounce with the skelton parts at .72 ounce and the wood insert around .21. So it appears the majority of the weight is in the aluminum skeleton and improving on the .21 wood insert has a minimal advantage. I used a small $10 graphite body reel seat from Cabela's once, and although it seemed very light at the time, I don't know how light it really was. I'm redoing an older rod and since I'm mad at St Croix right now I don't want to spend a lot of money on it.

Any suggestions for a super light uplocking reel seat? Thanks.

A cap and ring or a slide band see with wood insert would probably be the next lightest and it also depends somewhat on the wood used for the insert. Different woods have different densities and thus different weights, but there won't be huge amounts of difference between varieties of hard woods, except Ironwood, but I don't know of anyone doing inserts with that, it wears out carbide cutters rapidly.

A Fuji seat on brick/foam arbors is pretty darn light. Feather-light almost.

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Neal's has some of the wood and black ring sets that are pretty light and priced right. You have correctly deduced that there is a big weight jump for a threaded barrel, even if made of aluminum. Nickel silver anything is much heavier. A cap and ring of aluminum over a cork seat is pretty secure, if that is your concern. REC makes an downsized uplock reel seat. Sometimes you can shorten the wood insert to save weight and hide the cut under the hood. On a down lock, you can shorten the threaded barrel and hide the cut under the grip. Rick's rods in Denver has some old/new Varmac brown aluminum seats that will work up or down. As I recall, about .6 oz. and cheap.

Check custom tackle supply pac bay cap and ring seats ( average 0.6 oz)

Tony

I think the Pac Bay seat and brick foam arbors might be lighter than cork and rings; could be wrong, but this baby is light!