Has anyone ever attempted this? I'm considering trying this on a Seeker Black Steel 870 model. The reason is that it's the only 7 foot rod in my collection and I'd hate to drag a 7 ft tube to Mexico if I can get away with something shorter than 6 feet.

My initial thoughts are to hack off the lower handle below the reelseat. Next using a cutting wheel (or dremel) to cut the reelseat longitudinally on two sides. What happens next depends what's between the reelseat and the blank. Certainly there is epoxy. But what's the medium, masking tape? Mesh tape? I'm thinking heat gun, scraping tools, sand paper - basically applying lots of abrasion with hand tools.

The last thing I want to do is ruin a perfectly good rod. I also don't want to get bogged down trying to match the diameter to the uni-butt ferrule. Again, anyone ever attempt this?

I cut the butts off three solid glass rods and stuck the resulting tips in a ferrules for aftco unibutts.

I cut the reel seat in half, removed the remaining piece of reelseat, then carefully trimmed the remaining blank stub until it fit in the ferrule. I recall this mod clearly since the first rod I did I made the classic mistake of installing the ferrule without the knurled nut in place. Fortunately I caught the mistake 12 hours later when the paste epoxy had already setup, but it softened enough with heat to remove the ferrule, I then repeated the process this time with the nut in place.

Under the reel seat I found masking tape arbors which I simply peeled away. The remaining epoxy I sanded down until the ferrule with fit, then used paste epoxy to mount the new ferrule. No matter what is under the reel seat being used as a ferrule I would consider this no factor - unless its something off the wall. Graphite or fiberglass tape, masking tape, thread, cardboard, etc - it all grinds off easily.

Lou

Lou, awesome then, that's the information I was hoping to hear. Thanks for the rookie hint, as well. I've never worked with any of the offshore handles of this type.