I purchased a Batson aluminum real seat and am looking for advice on the proper way to install it. Should the inside be prepared in some way? It is so slick I'm afraid the epoxy will not form a good bond with it as is. I don't think a Scotchbrite pad will do the job. Should I hit it with sandpaper to rough it up?

Steve Hartzell
Lake Conroe - Willis, Texas

G'Day Steve I always rough up the inside of a aluminium seat .I use a slotted dowel with a piece of coarse sandpaper & using a drill & hone the inside of the seat

Regards Baz

Bundeena
NSW Australia

No, use some Comet or Ajax cleanser, and with hot water and a clean cloth, scrub the inside of the reel seat. Thoroughy rinse the inside of the seat after and dry with non scented paper towels. let air dry for over night. don't touch the inside of the seat again. Then glue it up. At one of the RodCrafter seminars I put on with Dale Clemens this topic came up and some wanted to sand. I proposed the above method, and Ralph O'Quinn, said I was right. Sanding would do no good. Clean is better.

That makes sense, I have a similar tool that I use with the Scotchbrite.

Steve Hartzell
Lake Conroe - Willis, Texas

scotch Bright should do , mesure , dull it up with the scctch bright pad an go to it , just like every thing else , sand paper will also work , but you can do some dammage if yoi are not very carfull , don'tt nick the blank if you use sand[a[er use fine to dull up the gloss,
SID

William Sidney
AK

No, never do any harsh roughening of the inside surface. That actually weakens the bond. All it needs is to be deglossed. Smooth water-break-free surfaces accept epoxy better than ones that contain scratches and gouges.

Clean the inside with a solvent. Then scour with the Scotchbrite pad. Coat with adhesive and slide into place.

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Tom, why would you scour after you cleaned with solvent. That doesn't make much sense to me. What do you do to clean up after the scotch bright? More solvent?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2013 10:44PM by Randolph Ruwe.

You never use a solvent as the final step in surface prep. Never.

There is no need to clean anything after you have deglossed. If you want, you can brush off with a soft cloth, but that will reduce the static charge which you just created.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

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I WOULDN'T USE THE SOLVENT OR SCOTCHBRIGHT AT ALL. Cleaning as I described above is all you need to do. It works well on brass/chrome plated seats as well. The only time I use DNA is to clean the inside of a composite barrel seat to get rid of any release agent that was used in making it. Then clean with hot water and let dry.

For the best possible bond, you need a water-break-free surface which requires the use of Scotchbrite (or similar). If you read the article you can find the test to be performed to see how well your surfaces will accept epoxy.

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I have at least 5 different grades of Scotchbrite. From very coarse to fine/ Which do you propose to use? I might use the fine with the addition of Comet, no solvent, and clean with hot water. the solvent is only going to degrease the reel seat, not clean it like Comet and a fine grade of scotchbrite if you insist on using it. But the Comet will do the same thing. Cleaning with hot water and paper towels, then rinsing again under running hot water works best. I have never had a reel seat come loose in over 40 years. I have however had to repair many rods made by others and mainly factories that did come loose. After repairing with the above method, I never had a repair returned!!!

I don't doubt you haven't had a seat come loose - rods don't get stressed all that much, outside perhaps of the heaviest offshore trolling rods. But it only take a few seconds to prepare the surfaces correctly.

I'd still recommend reading Ralph's article. It has a lot of great information in it and includes much of what they learned while working on epoxy systems and techniques for Boeing.

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Tom, I have known Ralph for about 38 years. When this subject came up at one of the PNW RodCrafters seminars that I hosted for Dale Clemens. Ralph said that the method that I described was the best. Fred Bear of archery fame contacted me to learn how I cleaned aluminum so that fletching would adhere. He Later put those instructions in with his arrow shafts. It works.

That should have read so that fletching would adhere to aluminum arrow shafts. People were having trouble not only with feather but synthetic fletching, getting it to stay glued to the shaft.

If you look into aluminum and epoxy you will see it isn't a pretty picture. In our case, as Tom stated, we aren't stressing things much (and it is a shear load). Beoing did a lot of the work and if what he said is "good enough" for our needs I don't doubt him. Just don't think we will find aluminum boats and planes bonded together with epoxy (alone) any time soon.

Best I know is to etch, use alodine, then the right primer ...and bond while primer is still in right state. Wet sanding the epoxy in is a good idea.

Don't know but wonder if ajax passivates the aluminum to some extent.

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Odd that he would prescribe a different method to Boeing and present different material to the magazine. Perhaps he didn't want us to have the best information?

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Tom, I don't think so!! Ralph received the highest bonus award from Boeing for his development of the exterior finish, for Aircrraft which to the best of my knowledge and recollection was a variant of Perma Gloss. It was $10,000. He received a second award of the same amount for other chemicals that he developed for Boeing. The highest award they gave at the time and he received it twice.!! I don't think Ralph would try to lead anyone astray. Who said he gave different information to Boeing or to Rodmaker??

Glad you concur. The information in the article I listed above can then be safely assumed to contain the correct procedure.

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That article said exactly what I said. Comet is just about the same thing as Old dutch Cleanser, And that is what Ralph confirmed in the article. Ralph and I discussed this at length and did testing together. So, what I said is also the correct procedure.

According to Ralph, only Old Dutch Cleanser did nearly the same job as Scotchbrite which is why he specified that particular product. It's also unnecessary if you have Scotchbrite, which makes the process easier and quicker.

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Preparing The Surface
It is a simple matter for us to obtain this surface condition. We do it with an abrasive material called Scotchbrite made by the 3M company. There is no true substitute for this particular item that I am aware of. Scotchbrite comes in many grades and grits just like sandpaper. The ones we use for our rodbuilding are Type-S-7448 Grey-ultra fine and Type-S-7446 Grey-medium fine. Always use the ultra fine when you don't want any scratches to show and use the medium fine when scratches don't matter and you want faster abrasion/preparation such as on reel seats and handles.

However there is another operation seldom mentioned and hardly ever used in rod building that is far and away superior to anything except scotchbrite on fiberglass/graphite structure and that is the Alkaline/abrasive cleaners. A very long expensive test program lasting about 6 months was once conducted in the aerospace world to determine just exactly what we wanted to know - how to bond to an airframe fail safe structure consisting of epoxy-fiberglass. The program concluded that the alkaline/abrasives are the answer. I am talking about common household cleaners. A product called "Old Dutch Cleanser" was found to be the very best of the best. Another product called "Ajax" was found to be the very baddest of the bad. The difference between the two is mainly in the grit. Ajax is actually too abrasive and cut through the outer layer of resin resulting in weak bonding. "Old Dutch Cleanser" was found to be the perfect cleaner and abrasive and most of the other brands fell somewhere in between.