TackleTour

Could you guys expand on grinding or sanding down a reel seat? Belt sander, dremel, how do you do it? Anybody have pictures?

Okiekev,
After cutting the “trigger” end from the reel seat, I use a sanding disc and burr tools w electric drill motor (clamped in vise) to do the sculpting and sanding. I shorten the mortised end, hog out the cavity, remove material from the outside contours and thin the trigger blade. I know a picture is worth a thousand words, but I have no idea how to post pics on this site. If you’ll send me a PM and include your email address, I’ll send you pics. Or, maybe you can tell me how to post pics here.

Phenix has really good blanks, cheers

cuke wrote:My k2 ended up at 2.1 ounces

Amazing! I need to try and build such a rod

For those of you building sub 5 oz rods could you share the build specs..

My k2 764 weighs in at 2.4 ounces. Thanks to Jim and cuker

I've build several 90-110g rods. MHX and NFC mostly. HM series blanks are very light. Never built Phenix K2 (yet!!!).

Guides doesn't save weight so much, when you use less than 6 sized guides. Here's my own NFC MB 705 HM's guides. American Tackle size 3# micros as runners.


Wraps + coating doesnt affect much either. All wraps w/o decoration wraps + epoxy adds only 1-2g, depending how much you use epoxy.

Handles and reelseat makes most weight after blank itself.

Heres weighted gripmaterials. EVA has little bigger id hole, so it isnt 100% proof, but carbon grip is so light. Composite cork then weights 4x more than normal cork.


This rod weights 104g, cause i want use Alps Textouch/MVT/AGC reelseat, because its BEST! MVT weights 29g w nut+screws.

Nice job that's a beautiful stick. Just curious what did the 705 weigh?

Blank 49g, reelseat 29g, guides 1g, thread + epoxy + hook keeper 2g, handles 23g.

104g final. Composite cork is heavy as wood.

thanks for the info 1.72 ounces works for me as I just sent for a hm 704 and 705 and heard conflicting weights of the blanks. Like I said before that rods a beauty and can't stop looking at that "heavy cork" I used to use 5 pieces for the rear grip but will try less now.

glad to see some guys weighing components and realizing where you can loose weight the easiest.

Seats, handles and grips. A split ECSM seat is still the lightest casting setup out there.

the advice on the lightest reel is also solid. It is much easier to loose weight cost effectively in a blank by pairing with a good lightweight reel

The most weight could be saved by minimizing the grip material, because duplon weighs round about 2 to 3g per cm (depending of the ID).

But in my opinion the balance is much more important than the total weight and therefore I prefer a fullgrip with duplon.

the balance vs weight argument is still around? I still call BS on it.

However, i dont think anyone will argue that you should build as light as you can then it wont take as much weight to "balance"

If rod weights less than 110g and it's shorter than 7'6" balance isn't important.
Balance point is so near reel, that anyone could handle that couple grams. "tipweight" doesnt matter.

Go to gym, if you cannot hold less than 300g set couple hours.

That is a beautiful rod. Now after seeing the grip weights, i want to build one with those carbon grips!