I am thinking my way through the process of my first casting rod and have a question. I am going to use a fuji exposed blank reel seat. The picture (of said seat) is at a funny angle in the catalog so it's hard to tell how off center the blank will be in the seat, relative to my cork rings... I looked at several rods I have with that same type seat and all but one of them require the cork to be reamed off center to line up with the back of the reel seat. I'm hoping the seat I order will be (or at least very close) to center but I doubt it will actually be in the center. Is there any trick to reaming the cork off center like this or am I going to be going very slow, one ring at a time before glueing them together?

Also do you know of any site (other than the photo section of this site) that i can see a bunch of thread color combinations on rods? I'm absolutely horrible with colors and would like to see some wrapped examples before picking colors off a picture on my screen!

Many thanks!!

-keith

edited to add:
Scratch that color question.... my page didn't load correctly on the earlier try... plenty to look at there!! ...lol



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2005 10:59PM by Keith Neidhart.

OOPs, sorry!!!

Bill in WV



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2005 11:44PM by William Bartlett.

Keith,

Give whomever your gonna order your components from a call. I'm sure they would be happy to help you get the exact right things you need to accomplish the task.

Bill in WV

The seat will not be off center. Exposed blank seats are ordered to fit the blank size at the point where you want the opening on your seat to fit. If you already have the blankk you can measure the diameter wher you want the opening to fit and order the correct size. If you are ordering blank and seat to gether, tell the vender how far up the blank that you want the opening to be and ask them to fit the seat for you.
Here is a recent discussion on this subject [www.rodbuilding.org]



Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

Keith,
The Loomis rods using the Wiebe 363, 364,etc.exposed blank reelseats that were offset by 15 degrees. This might be what you were talking about. I either used Wiebe's cork or some tennessee handle graphite tube cut at an angle to match the seat. With an angle cut arbor at the reelseat's back edge, I could use a nomally centered arbor at the butt cap. That was the way the Wiebe cork was drilled, offset at the reelseat and centered at the buttcap.

Many of the older exposed seats were offset; usually they were sold in a kit with either cork or EVA, hypalon to match.

I know the Pac Bay and Amer Tackle ones are centered, now.

Putter
Williston, ND

Thanks for the info, I finally got the print catalog and it shows the picture with the dotted lines where the blank will be. The one I was planning to order is centered.

Best to all.

-Keith