Has anyone ever removed and replaced a reel seat while leaving the cork handle intact?

This would require removal of the hood epoxied in to the inlet of the cork handle. I have tried heat to remove seats from the blank and have always ended up using a Dremel to cut, so I am wondering if this is even possible.

Thanks,

Tony

You can also slice that last ring from the grip and remove it along with the seat. Replace the ring when you install the new seat. This will require just a bit of sanding to blend things back together, but it can be effectively done with just a bit of care.

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Tony the following will seem radical and I'm not suggesting you try it. Consider it food for thought.

In the good old days reel seats were not so great. Despite being heavy chrome plated beasts they broke. Often, even on fairly light fast taper rods, the butt end of the blank was too fat for the biggest seat to fit over it. So if you wanted to do it right you had to take off all the guides. That isn't cheap or easy or fast.

What you could do as an alternative was to cut through the reel seat and blank at a 45 degree angle. Them you would cut off the reel seat as normal. Next you would remove the gimbal and find a suitable piece from an old blank and slide it up inside the bottom section and mark its exit point. Then you would try it in the top section and see if it slide only as far as the mark, trying to match the taper of the original blank with your "repair piece". It took a little work and some sanding but a suitable match could generally be found. The entire repair piece only needed to be a few inches long. Half a foot was fine. A solid fiberglass blank was usually chosen to fashion this piece from.

A savvy guy with a good stock of material and fast set epoxy could have the job done in an hour if all went well.

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Tony,,, I do it all the time with a Dremel. It's not hard to do and you can save all the cork on the grip. Just be careful and don't nick the blank, take your time and look it over often. Totally split the seat lengthwise in two places, opposite each other. Take a flat screw driver, stick it in the cut and pop the two pieces apart. I have done dozens of them and never had a problem. I just finished cutting the seats of a St Croix and a G Loomis . Put new seats and split grip on both of them. Of course these two required cutting off all the cork also. But removing a seat without damaging the grip is not hard to do.
I learned how to do this from Tom K.

[rodbuilding.org]

Tony,
Last Winter I boiled off about a half dozen nickel silver fly rod reel seats so I could replace the wooden inserts with my own work. The upper hoods were all bonded into the cork handle. In all cases the cork stood up to the boiling water and the hoods came free. In one case the cork got a little flimsy but wasn't too misshapen. I think you'd want to concentrate on pulling the hook straight out of the cork inlet.

I should point out that there is risk of damaging both the cork handle and the rod blank using this process. If the existing reel seat has a wood insert it will be damaged. So, proceed with caution and at your own risk.

Jeff



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2010 10:46PM by Jeff Shafer.

Thanks to all who replied.

Jay, did you anything special to pull the hood out of the inlet of hte cork handle?

Thank You,

Tony

I myself would do it as Tom suggests. And if it comes off with boiling you could even save the seat

Bill - willierods.com