Hello! First time post for me. I've been building rods now for a short time (a couple years), it has been very rewarding and has brought me a few new friends. One of which has recently completed his first few rods. He tested a few of them the other day on a charter and caught a few nice fish. Unfortunately he had a few issues, which is why he came to me and, like I said am not an expert rod builder but want to help as much as I can.

The first issue, far too late now is that the first rods he built were very expensive, the blanks were nearly $200 apiece. Anyways, while fishing on one of the rods, the aluminum reel seat came loose. On the second rod, the foregrip (EVA) came loose, apparently he reamed out the EVA and epoxied it on as if it were a cork grip. Does any have some tips to fix the loose aluminum reel seat and/or loose EVA grips? I've seen some videos online but they deal pretty much only with standard graphite or cheap reel seats with cork wrap grips, definitely not a semi-heavy duty salt water rod with EVA grips. One tip I heard was to ream cut everything off (Dremel) and slide replacement parts up the butt end, but, to me that's asking for the grips to come loose again. I could strip the blank down and start all over, but there is another issue: he used flex coat to finish the thread wraps and to attach the guides (no problem), he also flex coated the portions of the blank between the guides/wraps, the entire blank is flex coated. Not only is the entire rod flex coated, it's not smooth. He used a light build formula and it did not level very nicely. Do We need to remove all of the flex coat? Will this have an effect on the action of the rod or cause other problems if we don't? I know there's a lot going on here but I haven't had this many questions/issues since I started building rods on my own. Any help/advice you could provide will be very much appreciated. Thank you

The blank shouldn't be coated with epoxy. That slows its speed through unnecessary weight that it now has to carry. The proper way to replace the seat and grip is from the tip end which necessitates removing some or all of the guides. You can install them from the rear, provided you shim/bush the forward area with something that removes the taper so the components fit properly.

As far as repairing what you have now, it can be done, sort of. There are many fixes such as drilling a hole in the seat and injecting epoxy. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. It doesn't create a great bond, just sometimes works to lock the seat from twisting. For awhile, anyway. The type fishing you do and how hard the rod is used has a lot to do with whether these type repairs are appropriate or not.

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What was installed below (butt section) of the reel seat? If it is hypalon/EVA cut it off. The reel seat is loose already which means it will back off or slide forward. Likely the distance (gap) between the rod blank and the inside of the reel seat was too large. The EVA/hypalon foregrip can also be cut off. EVA / hypalon will expand quite a bit so installing a new piece should also not present a huge problem.

1/ Cut off the lower grip
2/ Cut off the upper grip.
3/ Push a new fore grip on the rod (no glue yet) with a fairly tight fit
4/ Work the reel seat up toward the tip. Inspect how the reel seat was glued on - that is what was used to shim the reel seat between the blank and the reel seat. IF possible remove the reel seat (from the rear) & scratch the inside (water break surface) ... IF NOT still not a problem.
5/ I use fiberglas drywall tape as a shim - on a heavy duty rod I fill the entire void with tape (and smears of good two part slow cure epoxy to make sure the glue penetrates to the blank and through layers of dry wall tape. YOUR CHOICE to either over fill & let cure then sand off extra or (if you think it is sufficient) slide the reel seat back in place
6/ Smear glue above the upper (fore) grip and slide in place.
7/ Install a new rear grip - again a fairly tight fit - you can warm the EVA / hypalon in warm water if it is really tight.

Other than stripping the whole rod and starting over, Ken's advice is the most efficient way of completing this repair. I also use drywall mesh for all my reelseat installations and never had one spin loose after.

Dennis J. Danku
(Sayreville,NJ)

I appreciate the advice, I actually have some of the drywall tape, though I haven't used it yet. I'm trying to comprehend how you described using it: were you saying to epoxy the tape let it cure, then epoxy the reel set to the cured tape; similarly to using an arbor or am I misunderstanding your description?

I do believe that we will strip the rod down to bare bones and start over again, there are a lot of learning points on this rod for my friend for future builds. Does anyone have any tips for removing the flex coat? It's easy enough to do it where there are threads underneath, but along the sections of the blank where flex coat is applied directly to the blank, how do you remove that without damaging the blank?

Dane,
Although many folks use drywall tape, I along with many many other prefer to use masking tape for arbors.
When I do tape arbors, I put rows of masking tape on the blank to the size of the needed arbor. I leave about a 1/16th inch gap between each row of tape. Then, when gluing up the reel seat, put sufficient epoxy on the tape to fill the gaps between each row of tape so that you get a good seal on each end of each tape row. Also, insure that the glue gets down to the blank - to insure a good joint of the reel seat to the blank.


If you need to remove flex coat - just use heat. Use sufficient heat to slightly soften the glue so that a straight edged razor blade held at right angles to the blank may scrape the finish off of the blank.

Good luck

Once I started using dry wall tape, I have never used masking tape again. The mesh of dry wall tape allows the epoxy to flow from top to bottom giving a very strong bond. I tack the edge of the dry wall tape to the blank with superglue and as I wind the tape onto the blank I add the epoxy as I move along. This gives a solid arbor that will not fail.

Heat will soften the flex coat and make it a little easier to scrape off. However, if you use a metal scraper (I.e. razor blade) it will be very difficult to remove the flexcoat without marring the original finish. Could try a hardwood, bone, or plastic scraper that will be a little easier on the original underlying finish. If you do get marring then just ahead a scrape down the entire blank with a razor blade as Roger suggests. It works very well and will not damage the blank. When finished wet sand with a 800 to 1500 grit wet/dry paper to get a nice smooth finish.Wipe down with DNA and when dry refinish with Permagloss or some other polyurethane top coat. Should look like a new blank.
Norm

Dane -
Sorry I was away from the computer for a few days. You can either let the drywall tape / epoxy set & cure and then turn down OR you can slide the reel seat down onto a wet mix. IMO the best overall method is to allow it to set up then turn down so that you KNOW the tolerance (distance / gap) between the reel seat and the new outside diameter of the rod.

Ken

Interesting idea Ken. I cut my mesh drywall tape into 1" wide strips and then use bands, sliding the reel seat into the we mix. I was doing this on freshwater rods.

Chris Richer
Iroquois ON