I would like to know if any Rodmaker Magazines have covered custom fighting butts for fly rods. Additionally, I am also interested in creating reel seats, however less so due to the majority of the flyrods I make I would rather just have all aluminum seat....

Please let me know any info....I can see how I could take a few pieces of cork on a manrel and turn the cork then bore to fit around the seat....However with the eva or whatever material I use for the butts bottom would need to be put on after than shaped I believe that means I would need to shape on a power wrapper or by hand....

Lately seems like a lot of the things I want to do require a power wrapper...Last week, I was swelling a butt and I had to sand the swell by hand it took hours...Would have been great if I had a power wrapper. Looks like this one will too...Regards jeffrey

The rod maker issue you want is vol.6 issue #3. Its best to oversleeve the original butt section , with a blank segment, extending no more than 4 or 5"
and overlaping the length of the reel seat. Note this will void the blanks warranty, but if you buy a store bought MFG made removable butt extention it will not void the blanks warranty. I use an EVA foam bumper end cap and shape it right along with the cork rings I glue up at the same time.(see pic for EVA bumper endcap detail) I can spin the fighting butts on a drill, via the overlapping exposed segment of the added blank adapted and reinforeced to fit the drill. I can also spin it on my make shift lathe set up. pics below.


Ext. Fixed Fighting Butt detail
[www.rodbuilding.org]
Drill Lathe
[www.rodbuilding.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2007 02:19PM by Chris Karp.

Yes, we've had articles on just that. Volume 5 #5 has got it.

................