I made a dumb mistake...I installed the reel seat retainer ring backward on a fly rod I'm building for a friend. To fix this, I need to remove the wood fighting butt so I can reverse the position of the ring. I know how to remove the fighting butt using boiling water, but is there a way to protect the wood while I do this so I can re-install the same fighting butt when I'm done? Thanks, Bryon

You can get a zip lock bag and put it into the bag then in the water. make sure there are no holes in the baggy.

Bryon,

If I'm correctly picturing in my mind how the fighting butt is attached, I would think you could use a heat gun or a hair dryer and avoid the water all together. I'm assuming that the fighting butt is inserted and bonded with epoxy into the skeleton of the reel seat. I think that if you could concentrate the flow of the hot from the hair dryer onto the metal piece, being careful not to get the wooden pieces too involved in the process for fear of softening the finish, that you could break the epoxy bond and remove the wooden fighting butt. I had to do a very similar thing recently and this is the method that I used - it workd great. I didn't have a wood fighting butt to concern myself with but I did need to remove the metal butt cap and rear piece of the skeleton. The hair dryer did the trick with no damage to the finish of the wood insert. I applied the heat , tried to break the bond, applied a little more heat, tried top break the bond and continued to repeat the process until the metal skeleton finally broke loose. After making the adjustment, I just cleaned up the debris from the old epoxy, mixed up a new batch and reassembled the reel seat - case closed.

Sam Stoner

I would cut it off with a dremel. If you apply enough heat to release the fighting butt won't you also cause damage to the bond the reelseat has?

Easy thing would be cut it off at the seat, close then either make a new one or drill into the seat and butt and insert a scrap blank of size and reglue.

Thanks to all who replied...I actually took Bill's suggestion and simply covered the butt in a ziploc and immersed it in boiling water. Came off in about two minutes, no damage.

Thanks again guys!

Bryon