I saw some of these fly grips at goldenwitch. The half wells (not reversed) looks particularly nice. The odd thing is that they are only 5.75" long. It seems like that would make at least the back 1/2" of my hand overlap the real seat. How well does that work, and why would they do it?

Many of the older bamboo rods, particularly in the shorter lengths, had very, very short grips. I suspect Russ has decided to emulate these traditional shapes and sizes.

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That could be a cool setup on an ultralight rod with a cork and ring reel seat. The ring would slide back out of the way, and the seat would just be a continuation of the grip. Hmm...

I looked at their grips & deminsions and build my own from rings I put a 6in. cigar, thick like the center part of a full wells with a cap & ring w/cork insert and a 1/8in. Copano ring spacer between the grip & reelseat. No, I didn't quite use their deminsions. IMO the short grip works in it's place.

If at first you don't succeed, go fishing, then try, try again.

Rule of thumb in the bamboo rods,,, the shorter the grip,, the older the rod. Maybe he made them up for restorations of older rods.

I think Arcane makes them in that length because that's all that's really needed. I have pretty big hands and I never make a fly rod grip longer than 6" unless a customer insists.
john

Arcane components is geared towards the traditional bamboo components. Hence the smaller grip sizes, agate guides, etc