[www.rodbuilding.org]

How do these rings work? Do you still need to tape the reel on, or does friction prevent the reel form lossening? How secure are these in actual use?

Crossover Challenge rules.

The one problem with those slip rings is that they will not stay in place on that type of handle material, at least not what I have done with the carbon fiber tubing. What I did come up with that works very well is I put a thin piece of rubber between the ring and the handle opposite the side of the reel. This causes enough friction to hold the rings in place when they are wedged up on the reel foot.

Something has to be elastic enough for the stretch and recovery to hold things in place. Hence, aluminum rings on cork, nylon or plastic rings on graphite tubing. If you're working with graphite tubing then the rings need to have some "give" or else you need to introduce something like Mike has suggested.

There is another method and you'll see it on the cover of the RodMaker issue that mails next week. It may be the best of the lot, but is sure to generate some controversy.

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

Around here, they cut those rings off the grip and then use electrical tape to attach the reel ! ~

Fred, electrical tape is too ghetto. I really don't want to tape a reel off an on each time I use it and have nasty tape residue on cork. I've got 2 grips I can play with, so I'm gonna look into all options & learn as much as I can. Which inevitably leads to dumb questions, lol.

Billy - deep six the rings - they stink. You always need to add some sort of tape to them, or they WILL work loose. What we do around here in the ice fishing belt, where most high end ice rods have TN handles is to tape the reels on. On factory ice rods, alot of guys will dremel the rings off the handle. Lots of guys use electrical tape - it stinks. Tears the cork, leaves NTR (nasty tape residue). Go to your hardware store or bigbox store and buy some silicone self fusing tape (often called Tommy Tape) looks kind of like electrical tape, but it stretches alot and only sticks to itself. It does a great job attaching the reel. If you take your time and do it carefully, it won't look bad. Best part is when you take it off, it leaves no residue at all. You could also use the Fuji plate type reelseat, but I've always thought they look lame.

A lot of guys fishing the surf here use Tommy tape, I always assumed it left residue. I hate the plate seat for fishing, but it does work great to find where a rod balances with the reel attached without glueing anything up. Get preformed grips of various lengths, slide it onto the blank, tape the plate seat on, slide foregrip on, and see where it balances. It's also gret for test casting a bare blank - I've purchased a few different blanks and quickly taped the plate & rubber banded the guides, and determined which one I wanted to build first, or which one I would keep & eitehr send back the others or sell them.

Billy - Joe Emig posted one a while back with screws it might work for you [www.rodbuilding.org]

Billy, I have two rods with handles exactly like the one in your photo link (graphite tubing with graphite rings). They hold my spinning reels on by friction. The first time I fished them, I carried a roll of electrical tape with me, fully expecting them to loosen. After about 24 hours of fishing over two days, absolutely no loosening! I never used the tape. As Tom suggests, the graphite rings give a little and allow real gripping power. To create even more friction (even though I apparently don't need to) I can take a 2" piece of popsicle stick, put it between the reel foot and the graphite tubing, and the rings are super tight

If you make your handle out of cork, the aluminum rings work great without tape. Make sure to have a tight fit and sand a flat spot where the reel foot will be. My gripe about the graphite rings are that they don't look cool enough, we need some colors or carbon fiber?

I thought the graphite rings were too big and bulky on my ultra lite and agree that duct tape is too "ghetto" for a nice rod so I'm trying an experiment...
[www.rodbuilding.org]
I positioned the reel, wrapped it with a layer of aluminum foil, then wrapped the reel legs and handle with wrapping thread and covered with two coats of CP. After it dried I peeled off the aluminum foil, wriggled the reel out from under the wraps, and peeled the rest of the aluminum foil off the back of the wraps. I ended up with a pair of semi-cloth rings that fit the reel snugly. I've pulled the rings on and off a few dozen times to make sure they didn't fall apart too easily. I've used the rod just about every day for three weeks. The rings are holding up just fine so far but I doubt they'd last a full season. I figure I can change colors every winter :)

Jim Hicks

Heat shrink tubing.

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

Billy - we use a variety of items to hold reels on the TN handles. Some of the silicone based stretch tapes even are available in a variety of colors... the self fusing tapes as a group - whether tommy tape or silicone type leave no residue whatsoever. In fact - the reel foot can often offer the opportunity to roll the tape down a bit to pop one end of the reel foot out and then the other end can be wiggled and pulled out from under the tape - leaving the tape on the handle. Just reverse the process to replace the reel and no need to retape.

If looking to a way to avoid sticky tape residue with electrical tape try the scotch model 33 - 3M tape. It is much higher quality than cheap vinyl or generic type electrical tapes. My father uses aluminum rings on his cork TN grips I build him but still gives them one wrap of electrical tape to lock them in place. With heavy use they do dig into the cork however, over time. And in my experience all the electrical tapes will remove the filler from pits it is wrapped over...

Good luck on your experiments, Chuck Ungs