I've recently experienced two cases of loss of adhesive bond between wood inserts and nickle sliver reel seat parts. Both times it's been the butt cap on uplocking fly reel seats. The epoxy is very much bonded to the wood, but breaks cleanly from the nickle silver part. I use Scotchbrite (gray color) pads to clean the metal parts, mix the epoxy correctly, assemble and don't mess with things for 24 hours. Anybody have a suggestion on what I might be doing wrong here. Is there a better adhesive for this, for example 3M Scotch Weld?

Thanks for the help.

John Gertz

NIckel Silver is hard for epoxy to bond to. The surface must be "primed." Try this, prepare a water break free surface as usual, then apply a very thin coat of CA adhesive to the surface. Let set for a few hours. Then apply epoxy and assemble as usual. This usually does the trick.

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Thanks for the help Tom. Is CA the same as Super Glue?

Yes.

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Drill a few small blind holes at various angles to the inside of the cap. The epoxy will flow into the holes and harden. Because the holes are at various angles, a mechanical attachment is made. The butt cap cannot move in any direction, even if there is no adhesion. (This assumes that the epoxy does adhere to something on the inside of the reel seat.)

Try a rougher scotch pad or sand paper.

Bill - willierods.com

Hi Sir, I use a needle file to mark up the inside of all nickel silver and on most of my seats I also pin the butt caps with nickle silver wire as was done on a lot of older fly rods God Bless Jeff Rhonda and Kaya

John,

What you are doing and all of the advice previously given is great but no one stated you also needed to DE-GREASE THE METAL PARTS of all manufacturing residues and fingerprints after the roughing up process. Use electrical contact cleaner or a "brake parts cleaner" that does not contain petroleum distillates. The cleaning process must not leave a film of its own.

After cleaning, then epoxy the parts.

Charlie