I'm considering purchasing a Baston BUL seat in nickel silver and turning my own insert. Anyone have experience with this real seat including weight, looks, durability of finish, lock ring staying put, etc. Also considering the Struble U20 and pacific bay UL5 but they cost more. Trying to save money on the seat to invest in recoil single foot guides to go on one of the new Dan Craft 9' 5 wt rods. Any feed back on lower cost, but good quality real seats that would be easy to turn the spacer would be appreciated (i.e. no mortised real seats).

Thank you.

Unless Batson has changed recently the BUL reelseat skeletons I've used were chrome on brass, but colorwise looked almost like nickel silver. The true nickel silver Batsons I've used with insert retailed in the $50 range if I remember right.

Hi Ed. The bul is a nice seat. I pondered getting one one these for quite a while. I normaly use struble but they are expensive. The bul5 looks great. They are slightly heavier than the struble u20. I think you would be very pleased with it. You seem to be like me and like A nice looking flyrod seat. Tom

Thanks for the feed back.

These are fantastic reel seats for the money. They look like nickel and the wood and finish are beautiful. A great substitute for REC or Struble for $25!

I'm going to turn my own insert so I can match it to some wood rings I plan on adding to the grip. The insert will be cocobolo and the rings in handle will be small cocobolo bands on either side of approximately 1/2" highly figured maple curly maple burl along with a cocobolo cap. Hope I don't mess it up but if you don't try then you can't learn. Learn in my dictionary is how I justify messing something up as I usually don't repeat a mistake. I don't have to because I can make up new ones :-)!