I'm beginning to build my first saltwater fly rod, but am at my home away from home with no directions or similar resources. I have a PacBay RS8A machined aluminum reel seat and an AmTak F2M fighting butt with a plug that fits nicely into the end of the reel seat. However, I'm at a loss as to how to get these pieces together when the reel seat is installed over the blank? The smaller diameter extension of the fighting butt plug that fits into the reel seat is too large to fit inside the butt of the blank I have, so it seems as though I need to leave some space inside the back end of tthe reel seat for it to fit. However, this would give less contact between the blank and the reel seat -- in other words, the blank wouldn't go all the way through the reel seat. So, when putting the reel seat over the blank using arbors, do I just leave it short so there's enough space for the fighting butt plug to fit inside? Or is there some other option? Or am I off base? Or do I simply have the wrong components? I hope I've explained the problem. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. The Spanish are on the beach and I'd love to get a fly to them!

Bilgee

Someone will probably tell me that I'm doing it wrong, Bil, but I've run across the exact situation you're describing a couple of times, and what I've done is:

1) Epoxy fighting butt to the reel seat
2) After that's dry, apply the whole thing (reel seat / fighting butt) to the rod.

I do think it's a bit better when you can fit the fighting butt stem inside the blank, but if the components don't allow me to do so, I just put the stem against the end of the blank rather than inside it. I've done this on a few saltwater fly rods without a problem. The reel seat does come into contact with the blank less this way, but you're only sacrificing about an inch of a 4-inch reel seat, and if you're using good epoxy (which you should be doing), the 3 inches or so that's left is plenty of area to secure a good bond.

This is one of those issues, by the way (this is the editorial portion of this post) that seems much, much more important when you're building the rod than it really is. Just put the thing together, wrap it, and go fishing with it. Once the epoxy has dried, you'll never think about this again.

I do the same Chris but I would add this suggestion:

Make sure you slap a piece of tape over the end of the threaded hole so that when you glue the seat to the blank the glue cant go into the threads and cause you some grief.

Karry Batson
Batson Enterprises Inc.
Ph: (877) 875-2381
Fax: (360) 683-3579
karry@batsonenterprises.com
www.batsonenterprises.com

Bil,
That is the way it is suppsed to be. In addition to the above - make sure you "cut" a channel parallel to the seat in the bushing to alow the excess epoxy AND AIR to flow out. Otherwise you will develop an "air-lock" and your seat will want to "oooze" off of the bushing backwards. I us vasoline to keep the threads from gluing.

Herb

Thanks for the help, fellas. Glad to hear I was going in the right direction. But I didn't realize that the threads on the fighting butt stem went right through the plug and there was a chance of bunging things up by letting epoxy get onto the threads of the plug -- so thanks for this info and ways around it. Additionally though, it struck me when thinking about the construction that I could also put an arbor around the butt plug extension, helping to stabilize the installation a little more when the plug is epoxied into the reel seat. This sound OK?

Bilgee

Bill

I don't think an arbor would be necessary. That's just one more thing that would have to be epoxied in place and thus one more place for a point of failure.. The fighting butt should self centre on the end of your reel seat, if that is your concern. Karry and Herb's suggestions are right on the money. I didn't tape the end of the plug on the first one I did, and sure enough some epoxy got into the plug. No big deal though, in this case all I did was grind off a couple threads on the fighting butt section itself, and that solved it. Since then though, I use the tape.

Harold