Hello,

While doing a few casting tests, I noticed that the reel was rocking a bit, so of course I started cranking down the seat nut. In the process, I found the problem is a loose hood. Is there a way to remove/salvage the fore grip? And is there bullet proof way to secure the hood?

Thanks in advance,
Steve

I once built a casting rod and used a Fuji size 18 reel seat. It was the first ones that Fuji came out with that had a trigger on it. By todays standards it was an awkward looking thing. No matter how much I tightened the hood, the reel would still wobble. I took a small piece of leather and cut a piece to fit in front of the reel foot, shoved it into the reel seat hood and solved my problem. In other words, I overlapped the reel foot with the leather and tightened the hood nut.

Steve, I don't know of a way to save the fore cork, but you may be able to dribble some epoxy down into the front hood. If that doesn't work, take off the rear grip and replace the seat and a new rear grip. Good luck...................Gene

Mix a small amount of epoxy finish and put some on both ends of the loose hood, work the hood back and forth and even spin it all the way around if it will move that much, you want to get the epoxy under the hood as much as possible. When you have as much under the hood as you think you can get, clean excess epoxy off seat, aline the hood with the guides and let dry. Jesse

Thanks for the tips everyone. I had to cut off the fore grip to re-glue the hood. It could have been worse as the guides were only held in place by elastic bands and I didn't do the but wrap yet. The inlays were salvaged so I had to shape another fore grip and glue everything back together.

Steve

Steve D. - Is it too late to totally remove this once-failed reel seat, ... or are you confident this glue-job will hold and that it won't fail later?

... Once you put on the guides, if the glue-job fails, you'll have to do an oblique cut-out thru a failed reel seat, or hope that a rear-approach from the butt cap works, losing the rear grip(s) and using a new-mount. Otherwise, you may wind up having to strip off the guides later anyway. ... I'm not trying to be pessimistic; I'm just trying to think another step or two further into the long-range scenario. LOL, -Cliff Hall+++

Now you got me a bit concerned. The reel seat in question is a Rainshadow GS17C-GWG-G, which is a skeleton style I believe. The lock nut, insert and hood come separately and need to be glued to a graphite barrel of sorts. I'm thinking I didn't glue it well and that's why it came loose. Am I missing something here? Or isn't this the way skeleton seats work?