Good morning all!

I just got my Dan Craft FT 8wt blank and can hardly wait to get it built up! I have a question about reel seat arbors (I know this has been covered before). When using fiberglass tape and rod bond to make do you make three or so 1" arbors leaving space between them or do you make one continuous mass of tape and rod bond? (Now that I think about it, this method would make it difficult to compensate for the taper of the blank). If you leave spaces between the tape do you fill those with rod bond or just leave them open? At this point I really don't want to switch to the flex coat arbors and bits as the wife is getting a bit irritated with the constant outflow of cash!

Thanks,
Peter

Hi Peter,
When i use the Fiberglass tape arbors I make one inch sized arbors of this stuff 'buttered' with Rodbond. I do NOT fill the gaps between the arbors with anything. I think the general consensus of most peope who do this process is that filling the gaps with RB would be overkill and just add more weight. So depending on the length of the reelseat just use one or two 1" wraps of the tape with RB buttered into it as you apply.

Scott Sheets

I would tend to do the same thing as Scott. It'll be more than enough for the job at hand.

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Thanks again for the help.

Peter

Sweet, Tom agree'd with me. Aparently I am learning something from this site. Thanks Tom.

Scott Sheets

OK guys, enlighten if you will a fella that was planning to use masking tape for the build-up mounting of the reel seat. Just like it used to be done. Now I'm on board with the Rod Bond. I'm still waiting for the blanks to arrive. Enter fiberglass tape... I take it this is superior to the old school method of using masking tape? Usually, I would use 3 bands of 1 inch tape for this, should I use this same approach with fiberglass tape, permeated with rod bond instead? Also,for fitting purposes, do I tape, fit the seat, unravel tape after that and apply RB, then reapply tape, then real seat?

Fred,

I tried the fiberglass tape/Rod Bond method last night. You are right about the method. I wrapped tape around the blank to determine the correct amount to fit the reel seat. Then I unwrapped the tape until there were just a couple of turns left around the blank. The tape was then rewrapped while "buttering" it up with rod bond. It seems went well and was only a little messy. In theory this method should work well as you have essentially a solid mass of epoxy supporting the seat. This is the first rod I've build using rod bond and so far I really like it.

Good luck,

Peter