I am in the process of building my first rod - St. Croix scV 4pc – 9ft - 6wt.
I am turning handle/reel seat/fighting butt. The fighting butt recesses into the reel seat 1” (it’s removable). This pushes the blank out of the reel seat 1”. I am planning to match the inside of the reel seat to the rod taper as best as I can. But........Will this create a weak reel seat to blank bond? Will the added leverage of the fighting butt / reel cause a wobble over time? Is there a better solution? I did run a search but came up empty. Any advice would be a great help.

Thanks

Rob Whitney

In the past I have filed off some of the fighting butt adapter O.D. to allow it to slip into the end of the butt section and then the blank will almost go into the reel seat its entire length. When I did this I then thread wrapped over the blank on the very end of the blank (the overlapping distance) to reinforce it, coating with epoxy. I went so far as to build up layers of epoxy staurated thread on the blank until I aquired the reel seat I.D. The same arbhors can be built up with fibergalss dry wall tape, but the thread having some tension on it when wound does a better job in situation where structual reinforcement is sought.

OK here is a differrent approach. I built a 8wt Gatti and made my own removable butt. I mounted a standard reel seat just as you normally would, but left the butt cap off. Then I built a fighting butt and glued it on to a piece of scrap blank that fit the inside of the blank tightly when pushed all the way in. This way the reel seat itself reinforces the end of the blank.
An advantage of this method is that it keeps the grip in the normal position instead of pushing it forward, as it does when the blank is extended into the fighting butt.

The only down side is the bottom section is a little longer, so it has to be reomoved before putting it in a rod tube. Just my method...

Rob,
You'll be fine, there will be very little stress ever given to the epoxy bond from a 6 wt blank and anything it can hold. Your bond should be many, many times stronger than your blank.

Another option in removeable fighting butts: a metal ferrule. the female part inserted inside the blank, and rod-bonded into place, so as not to fill the mating end with resin, and then the male half of the ferrule used to build the fighting butt on. A piece of tramp graphite can be used in the male ferrule to extend it a bit, for a longer fighting butt.
If the blank is too skinny for an insert, then you can go sleeve over. The reel seat would then need to be moved down, to cover, and the hole bored to the appropriate diameter in the end cap of the reelseat covers all quite nicely.
This sleeve over extends the length of the butt section of blank by the distance of the ferrule, so you can either live with that, or do a chop job, for the under 2 inch diff.
Works for me.... your milage may vary