Any reason not to mount a reel seat offcenter? Other than just more difficulty to build up the blank to seat id area? Any minimum clearance recommendation between the seat and blank?

Why would you want an offset reel seat in the first place ?

To lower the reel, on a conventional

Looking around at all the numbers I can find on reel seats, sure looks like the old Lakeland trigger style brass seats are going to give me my lowest fit. Brass may be heavier, but the walls are also quite thin. Like .8mm, compared to up to 2.5mm on others

Was considering plate style, but not sure they are up to a boat rod, and don't think I want the reel clamp right on the blank either. So short of doing something very custom on the lathe, I've been pouring over all the specs I can find to see what will drop my reel height a bit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2007 01:23PM by Dave Hauser.

no reason

Start with a reel where the line is roughly 2.5" off the feet, and doing a spiral, and you have a reason. Center of gravity improvement as well I guess, but I'm not worrying on that much.
My own thoughts I guess,,,, but in general, is there any particular buffer distance to bother and retain between seat and blank?

DAve, I'm going to do exactly this on my Walleye rods I'm building. Actually I'm goign to off center ream teh arbors so teh ree seat points into teh blank so teh reel intersects teh blank closer to teh spinning guide. I see no reason you can't do it with a regular reel. TEhre is defaintely a reason, a lot of the narrow Offshore reels are quite high, adn you run into a situation where the line does not touch teh stripper guide unless you put it way out. The CAlstar 7465M is a blank which has this problem since it doesnt' bend very much on teh bottom 1/2.

So Billy, if I'm crazy, then at least I have some company :-)
I just ordered some of those Lakeland trigger seats, since I didn't see a reason not to do as I'm thinking. So will see how the Lakelands measure up in person. The specs look good to me for what I want. Wall thickness alone would seem to buy me ~1.5mm reel height reduction. Offcenter mounting and along the rod taper would yield another 1.5mm drop I think..
Working the reel foot looks worth near another 2mm on this reel (Penn 225LD) as it has a very pronounced curve and pressed dimples that raise it. Unfortunately the reel foot is riveted on with this one, so I can't use my trusty hammer quite so easily in forming :-O If I REALLY wanted to revamp the foot mount, there's at least another 5mm possible there, but that gets into more engineering than I have in mind.
So perhaps I can get 5mm or so off the height as it would have been, without much difficulty. A bit shy of a 10% reduction in line height for this particular reel.
I haven't had the problem of too low a stripper as you mention, but that's because I start with one way too tall and then shorten it to fit.

It's just this type of "outside the box" thinking that I like so much!
Looking forward to more insites and comments from others in
this thread.

Thanks Dave,

Love this site!!!!!!



Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

Check the new issue of RodMaker when it arrives in a couple weeks. I think it will open a lot of eyes on this type of seat/handle mounting.

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

Figures I have a new idea and someone beat me to it, lol. Another added bonus on a spinning reel your pointer fishign is in closer contact with the blank.