Morning all. I was out fishing from shore yesterday and whie casting one of my baitcasters, I noticed the reel seat was slipping on the blank. I can twist it 360* around the blank and slide it up towards the first guide. This isn't an expensive rod nor does it hold significant sentimental value, making it a perfect candidate for a repair attempt by a new guy ;-) I have a seccond rod identical to this one and it hasn't started to slip... yet. I can only assume it will. So, how can I go about fixing the first rod and then ensuring it doesn't happen to the other one? Could I drill a 1/16" hole through the reel seat and blank and then use a roll pin to keep the reel seat located to the blank? It's a 7' 1" MH moderate fast 2 piece rod (a Rapala Sync, only available in Canada) so it's not flexing way down into the butt of the rod. Any other ideas? I like the way these rods cast though they are a little on the heavy side. I suppose if this one were unrepairable then I'd have to have my arm twisted to find a replacement... that would be horrible... :-D

I appreciate any help or advice you have to share. Thank you!!!

Better to drill the hole, but inject liquid epoxy into it. Be very careful not to drill into the blank. Drill it on the bottom and it will be out of sight. Be generous with the amount of epoxy; you want to get a good area of contact of epoxy/blank/seat.

Adam

If you can slide the seat up to the first guide, that means the area the seat fits on to should be exposed. Coat the area with thick epoxy and work the seat back and forth to get epoxy under the seat.
Set the seat, align with guides, clean up the area and let it sit until the epoxy cures. I don't there will be a need for a pin.

Good luck

John

Thanks for the responses guys. I just tried to move the reel seat up to expose the reel seat section of the blank but the hook keeper is in the way (I don't like it anyways, it's like the ones on a Fenwick Aetos, I'd like a Kistler-type hook keeper). The rod isn't exactly a beauy queen so I'm just going to remove the hook keeper and see how far I can slide the reel seat up along the blank. When I rotated the seat, I saw a thin layer of epoxy on the blank: can I sand that down a bit (making sure I don't sand the blank of course) to give the new epoxy something to grab on to? I'll do a search about the best way to remove the hook keeper.

Thanks!

Yes you can sand the old epoxy down. Even if you nick the blank a little in this area, it won't matter.

That's good. Judging by the seat slipping, I'm not sure how uniform an application of epoxy I'll find under there.

Will any 5 minute, 2 part epoxy be sufficient?

All you can hope for is that some of the epoxy you inject will find and seep its way into any spaces or voids between the arbors/busings and seat interior. You're really not trying to completely fill the space between seat and blank. It won't take much to refasten the reel seat. Although it's not thought of as an absolutely permanent repair, it's often more than good enough to keep you on the water for awhile. Sometimes, for a long, long while.

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What I have done on a few Ugly Sticks with graphite seats that I own is make a few holes in the reel seat under where the reel sits.....mix up a good batch of epoxy.....NOT 5 MINUTE.....and inject it in there....and rotate the seat several times to spread the adhesive. They have stood up for years after that.