Fly Rod Reel Seat

[IPD_Mrs]

My father-in-law is huge into fly fishing and tying. He also will make his own rods ect ect...

Anyway he brought over a fiddle back maple reel seat and wanted to know if we could make it out of amboyna.

This is what the item is:

We accepted the challenge...
We made our own bushings out of the white cutting board polyethelyne stuff. Not too bad for not having a clue....

Now I wonder how it will hold up. Put a CA finish on it. Wonder if anyone has any experience with reel seats???

Mike & Linda

 

[Rifleman1776]

Pretty. That can't be reel. []

 

[TellicoTurning]

Mike,
I like to fish and someday I'm going to go fly fishing in the Tellico River.. I don't have any experience doing reel seats, but I do like what you did.

You might check out this guys's site and see his stuff... he's pretty good to respond to questions... or at least he did to me a couple of years back when I first saw his stuff and contacted him..
http://classiccustomwood.com/Handles.htm

He does some classic stuff.

 

[richstick1]

Looks good - I'm a custom rodbuilder and turn my own reelseats, handles, etc. I have never used bushings before -it's a good idea I typically just use calipers - but I may have to invest in some 1" delrin rod to make some. Nice looking reelseat - what's the ID of it? Also, I have put a CA finish on reelseats - I think it's a good one to use. Also spar urethane is good. CA is the clearest though.

 

[IPD_Mrs]

The ID is 29/64th which is what the sample he gave us to copy was.

I am not too sure how well amboyna is going to hold up, but I put a bunch of coats of CA on it.

 

[gerryr]

Very nice work. I've made quite a few fly rods and was at one time active on a rodbuilding forum, www.rodbuilding.org but haven't been there more than 2-3 times since I got serious about pens. There are a lot of people there who claim you should only use stabilized wood for reel seat inserts and their only reason is that it will be get wet. I've used CA on reel seat inserts and it works great. I would recommend sealing the entire thing in CA, just as a precaution. Just drizzle some thin CA on the interior and make sure it's well coated and wipe some on the ends if they don't already have a coat of CA. It will protect the wood, no question about it.

 

[IPD_Mrs]

Thanks for the info Gerry. I had put CA on the tenon but had not thought about the inside. My father-in-law says that the rod will be epoxyed into the wood but I think he should take a chop stick and spread some CA on the inside.

 

[richstick1]

I wouldn't worry about spreading CA on the inside - if he epoxies it properly, there won't be any place for water to penetrate. If you do choose to CA the inside - make sure you roughen up the surface of the CA before he epoxies the seat onto the blank, this will provide a better bonding surface. Stabilized woods are not necessary for reelseats/etc, and all they really do is add weight - which is the #1 enemy of the rodbuilder who is attempting to build a high performance rod.

 

[byounghusband]

I'm curious about how that reel seat goes on the Fly rod blank. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't blanks tarpered? Do you just build up a collar with tape and load up on the epoxy like you would on a spinning rod reel seat? Or is the reel seat tapered inside as well?
I have been looking into rod building since we just bought a couple of kayaks for paddling and fishing.