Does anyone know how to prep a rubber vinyl butt cap to get epoxy finish such as Flex Coat to adhere to the surface? I would like to try to add a wrap over the seam between the cap and a slick butt. I think that it would help to secure the cap to the rod. The customer did not want gimbals and the caps are not a real close fit to the butt.
Thank you, Larry

I would use the brick foam or urethane arbors as a mounting piece for the butt cap. Ream them to fit the blank and turn them to fit the cap (most 3/4 inch caps fit the size 20 brick or urethane foam arbors almost perfectly). Clean the inside with alcohol, scour with sandpaper and adhere.

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Tom,
The problem is not the inside. I used foam arbors. The problem is the OD. The butt caps are larger than the OD of the butt by about 1/8 of an inch. What I want to do is build a ramp with Rod Bond from the butt to the cap and wrap over it. The caps get knocked off by fishermen not being careful removing the rods from the tubes they are held in while not in use. The ramp should do away with the sharp edge that catches on the tube and knocks off the cap.
Larry

Okay, I understand. Best you can do is the same - clean with alcohol and scour the area you want bonded with sandpaper, but even so, this type material doesn't like to adhere to much of anything.

What about a ramp made from EVA, a thick ring slid over what you have now and tapered to a similar "ramp" pushed up and adhered next to the butt cap.

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Larry, I think your best bet is to fit the butt cap onto a bit of wood or something to serve as a mandrel, lightly glue it, then carefully sand that lip down a fraction. When you install it to the rod butt, by all means make up a nit of an epoxy ramp, but then wrap thread up over the ramp and onto the lip of the butt cap. Finish over that.

Larry - I'm not sure which size butt cap you have but they make several sizes. How about tring the next smallest size?

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods

What is the OD of the slickbutt? If it is 1 1/8 using the screw in bumper from my balance kit would work. It gives you a nice slightly domed rubber bumper on the end that is guaranteed not to come off. I have looked into getting different diameter bumpers, but for now 1 1/8 is all I can get.

Thanks for all the ideas guys. Built a EVA ring and glued up on one rod. Sanded and cleaned butt cap with laquer thinner and wrapped and applied finish to another. Both look great. Finish seems to be sticking to cap well. Maybe thinner is solution? Will see which one holds up.

Mike, ID of slick butt is 1.170 so bumper would be too small, but great idea. Next time will try to use a gimbal cut off at the 1.125 diameter and install your bumper. That should look good and work great.

Thanks again,
Larry

Larry,
I used to use butt caps as you have described all of the time.
Most of the time today, I have gone to a piece of solid cork - turned down to the diameter of the butt for a butt cap.

However, the very simple solution to your problem is to put the butt cap in a lathe and turn it down so it is about .020 SMALLER than the butt.
That way, the butt cap will never catch on the rod holder.

In former years, I would always use rubber chair leg caps from the hardware store for all of my rod butt caps.
They make excellent butt caps.
I would select a cap that had an ID that was about 1/8 or so smaller than the finished size of the rod butt.
Then, I would chuck a piece of solid stock in my turning motor. I would then build up the solid stock so that the rubber cap was a tight fit on the solid stock.
Then, starting with coarse sandpaper - working down to fine paper, I would shape the rubber cap to the shape and size desired for a perfect fit on the end of the rod butt.
Finally, I would use a sharp knife to cut the rubber cap to the desired length. I typically would make my butt caps 1/2 to 3/4 inch finished length.
The key to making this cut, would be to angle the knife slightly toward the end of the cap as the cut is made on the spinning turning motor.
This way, there is a slight inward taper on the end of the cap as it is glued onto the butt section of the rod. That way, there is never any gap to see or worry about filling.

Try it and I suspect that you will find that you can forget about needing to do any type filling of gaps at the butt of the rod.

Take care
Roger