Shortening a pedestal

[done]

Hey guys,

   Got a question for ya. I have a nice custom jon 1446 I put a killer front deck on it. Got a short (12 ") pedestal I put the front seat on, MOST of my friends can use it to fish when they are not standing.

  My grandfather (who I fish with a lot) cannot. So I have to take the pedestal out completely for him and put the seat right in the deck. This is not great for his knees or when I has to get up to pee. What he wants to do it buy one of the 12" pedestals (could not find one any smaller), cut it down to 5" then just put the plug on the end like they come out of the box. It would get him off the deck and up a little bit.

   Has anyone done this? Is there a place to just buy one of these things? I have not ever seen on that short myself. (http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_-1_10001_10200538____SearchResults?ordProd=Y&CMID=BOTTOM_selectitems#itemDetail 11" is the one I got now that he wants to try to cut shorter).

[snapperd1]

Most of them are hollow it should work.  They are cheap enough if it does not work you really have not lost that much.

Tom D.

[Donkey punch]

They sell them new for around 5.00, that are around 4 inches long.

The hard thing about what you want to do is getting the plastic insert out of the tube

[Jig Man]

My B-I-L was so long legged that he had to put 2 of them together.  Then it was too tall so he cut one down and moved the teflon to the new shorter made to fit one and it worked just fine.

[Wayne P.]

If the seat mount has the spring on it, just remove the spring and put a washer in it's place.

[fishincop640]

Hello all,

I guess this is along the same question.....I had a butt seat/leaning post, whatever yall call them on the front of my boat.  The post, I guess is 3-3.5 foot tall and it is just a little too tall.   Im I able to cut them down a few inches and put the insert back inside??

[Danonboat]

Let me know how it goes I've wanted to do the same thing!

[fishincop640]

I have a set from my old boat....think i will experiment before operating on the new ones.

[done]

Let me know how it goes I've wanted to do the same thing!

Will do. Getting the fitting out is what I thought would be the tough part. My grandfather is a tinkerer though, the man finds ways to do things that you would swear would not work.

Anyway, we are going to give it a shot, will let you know how that goes.

[done]

Alright, took me a while to refind this post. My grandfather went out and bought a normal 11" post from BPS. He cut it down to 5 inches and it works great.

Couple of thoughts. He said you need to cut around the outer skim not straight through. Said there is some type of bar/thread or something in the middle that you will hose if you just cut right through. So he would cut on side, turn it, cut that side, turn it and so on until he got all the way around. He then popped out the plastic fitting the seat goes into and pounded it into the new shorter pole with a rubber mallet (and added some marine adhesive for good measure).

Took him all of about an hour. We took it out today and it worked like a charm. So YES you can shorten these just be careful on the cutting part.

[Danonboat]

Thanks for posting.  I am going to attempt this in the near future..