I could use some advice/opinion…a friend brought me his Sage SP for repair of the reel seat, and he doesn’t want to send it back to Sage - he’s convinced it’ll take too long to fix & get back, and Hendricksons are bustin’ around here right now.
In the first photo, you can see that the threaded part has slid backward away from the grip on his rod, exposing some of the unfinished barrel. I could fix that easy enuff, but the reel he uses is a CFO Disc, with what I call “fat feet”. On his rod, the forward reel foot barely goes into the hooded retainer (no more than 1/8"). Also, it appears that the finished portion of the reel seat (a Struble, I believe) seems unusually short.
By comparison, I compared his rod to one of mine - I’d installed the same model reel seat on my Gatti (see top rod in pic below), and the same reel foot goes into the retainer at least 3/8". Also, you can see that the finished portion of the wood reel seat is longer on my rod (the darker insert). On his rod the majority of the rear reel foot will rest on the threads if I just reposition the threaded piece.
So, what would you do? I have no suitable seats in my stash, and there’s nowhere locally to buy a reel seat. Can the recessed retainer be “opened up” at all? Thanks for your help!
Well…want the “easy” fix or the harder fix? lol. Far as opening up the front hood you cant really do that at all. If you want the easy fix then just epoxy the barrel back in place and take a little off the front foot of the reel with a dremel tool and a sanding drum. Those CFO’s have thick feet to begin with so your not gonna hurt the reel at all by doing that, I’ve done that on a couple of my own personal reels before. The other fix would be to try to get the insert off (boiling in water method) to replace it with a slightly less OD insert to give a tiny bit more room in the front hood, but there’s a pretty good chance it’s not gonna come off from the front hood/ blank cleanly so that’s a bit of a dicey chance there. Honestly if it were me…I would just taper the from of the foot a bit with a dremel.
Having had this same problem back when with some of my rods, my fix was to do as Steve suggests, only I took the feet off the reels and took them to a fine-grained bench grinder and then finished them with some sandpaper. Worked like a charm! And there was no damage to the reels themselves.
I think there are a few differences between the Sage seat assembly and a standard Struble reel seat of what may only ‘appear’ to be the same model reel seat. That said, i’d do like everyone else and shape the front hood end of the reel foot.
I have no suitable seats in my stash, and there’s nowhere locally to buy a reel seat. Can the recessed retainer be “opened up” at all? Thanks for your help!