As in previously posted I removed the fighting butt and aluminum reel seat off my Winston project rod. Ended up cutting and boiling and all came out fine. Am installing new wood seat with N/S hardware and nice 1" fighting butt. My question is how do I remove about 1/4 - 3/8 " from the butt of the blank. In the past I have used a triangular file carefully rotating the blank and slowly cutting the blank but not sure if this is safe with a graphite blank. The new hardware is just a little bit shorter than the old stuff. I don't have a chop saw. Thanks for any suggestion.

If you can get access to an "arrow saw" - maybe at your local archery shop - you can cut off your blank with no fear and at little cost. Fighting butts are usually fixtures of salt water rods, as are wooden reel seats, and salt water will flat out dissolve Nickel Silver. What weight rod are you building, and where will it be used to catch what?

This is a 6 wt GVX that came from the factory with a large aluminum seat and 1" fighting butt. I will be using the rod for large trout in Montana. The original seat and fighting butt have been removed and the new seat and butt end up being 1/4" too short hence the need to trim the butt.

Your file will be fine for trimming the blank butt.

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Thanks Tom this rod is going to look great and it is one of the best casting rods I've owned in the last 30 years and I've owned a lot of high end fly rods.

I think I've also heard of using an abrasive cutting disk (on anything from a dremel tool to an angle grinder to the chop saw you mentioned)

The triangle file works great. Go slow and take your time. A dremel tool with a reinforced cut off wheel will also do the trick. Good idea to wrap a piece of tape around the blank to keep the cut straight.

Terry