Unusual Hendryx Reel

[reeltackle]

First off let me say that I admit that I am not that knowledgeable about Hendryx reels .... so, that being said, please forgive me if this is a common reel and I just haven't been paying as much attention as I should be.

Anywho, I recently picked up this Hendryx reel and was wondering if anyone had any information on it. The reel has a "normal" reel foot stamped 80 and not the typical "wavy" foot that I see on most all Hendryx reels. The two pillars that the reel seat is attached to are thick in the middle and taper nicely on both ends and all the pillars have shoulders.

The reel has nicely knurled coin metal inner rims along with fancy machined hard rubber outer rims. If you unscrew the jeweled bearing cap the front of the reel comes right off.

On the inside is the stamp QUADRUPLE. Now here is where it gets a bit weird. Stamped inside the reel's face-plate are Hendryx's July 10, 1888 patent and his February 7, 1905 patent. There is also a January 1889 patent which I can't account for. The day in January is obscured by the gear housing but having checked Jim Brown's patent book I can't find a Hendryx patent in January of 1889. The only two reel patents listed in Jim's book issued in January of 1889 were issued to Joseph P. Costigan of St. Paul Minn and George W. Prouty of Boston Mass. I did a Google patent search and could not find an 1889 patent granted to Hendryx. Can anyone explain?

Moving on, another cool feature of this reel is if you loosen the four screws on the inside of the face-plate you can rotate the inside metal plate with the gear and handle post around so the handle can be at any position on the clock. Also, the hard rubber rear side-plate has two sliding click buttons, one activates a drag and the other a clicker.

A pretty cool reel.

Does anyone have any information on this one?

Thank you,

Ed

[scottorock]

No help here but definitely an awesome reel. I can't even confirm its Hendryx but I have seen marked Hendryx reels with patent info similar to that stamped in tail plates. Whatever it is, it's awesome! Ive never seen that reel before. Thanks for sharing.

[BILL HOERTER]

Ed - The Pat date you can't find is probably not a fishing reel Pat. Hendryx used a lot of his Bird cage Pats on his reels & I would guess that's what it is. Nice looking little reel & it has a lot of the neat features found on a Hendryx Kettletown reel. I am still in Florida & when I get home I will look in my Hendryx catalog & get back to you. Bill

[Robin Sayler]

Is it possible that a tailplate with the patent info was re-machined to make the inner handleside plate for this reel? It seems like the patents would be in a good position to be under an endcap on a tailplate. The decorative ring that looks machined is also suspect for an inside feature. If this was the case I would suspect that no plating would be present in the holes that were added to make it an inside plate. It is certainly an old modification that I would imagine happened at the factory. I think this is certainly a great reel, very unique.

[wrong99]

Almost looks Montague-ish to me. The 1904 Hendryx catalog shows nothing like it, especially the foot, crank handle, handle nut or oil caps. Very cool reel.
Mark

[Steve]

The rivets (not screws) holding the central spool-bearing disc to the frame represent the Hendryx 2/7/1905 patent. They were used on the Kettletown, as Bill pointed out, but they were used on other reels, too. In fact, the entire headplate, disc plus ring, looks like it may have started life as the tailplate of a Kettletown or other reel. Those slots may have been put there for sliding buttons.

A bunch of Hendryx reels, notably the aluminum ones, have lists of patent dates stamped on the tailplates. Long, long ago I concluded that one of dates was probably incorrect. I think the January one is just wrong. Hendryx had a 1/27/1891 patent for his spring brake, and I've always believed that they just stamped the wrong year on those reels.

That being said, I wonder if it's a frankenreel made by Winchester or even Montague. The crank looks Winchesterian. All those holes in the headplate make me think the construction was sort of experimental.

Here are two tailplates. The left one is on a marked Kettletown, and the right one is on a similar reel with no model name. Both have a Jan. 27, 1891, date. I wonder if mismarked plates were used as interior plates instead of being tossed. Maybe some of them were buried in the parts inventory that went to Winchester.

[john elder]

What Steve said. From the pic #5, I think evidence shows that inner plate is a re-purposed tail plate from another reel. Note the machining over the patent dates and the the constellation of small holes with no mission match the rivets in Steve's pics.

[reeltackle]

I concur with your theory Mr. Vernon that the inner plate under the hard rubber cover appears to be the rear tail-plate of the Hendryx reel you pictured.

The improper patent date stamping is interesting to say the least. I would imagine this to be an early mistake that they caught and rectified sooner rather than later changing the date from January 27, 1889 to 1891. If this theory is correct, that would make the inner plate of my reel one of the earlier plates. Perhaps it is like Steve suggested, these plates were thrown into a box and then later re-purposed on Winchester reels. The one problem I have with this theory is that I find it hard to believe that Winchester would use Hendryx scrap parts on a reel that was built to be taken apart and the insides viewed so easily. Kind of out of their quality control realm to make a reel out of scrap with all the visible markings just a bearing cover screw away. I would also find it hard to believe that this reel was not made by a quality reel manufacturing company.

So where would that leave us?

Some of the parts used in its construction were definitely Hendryx.

Because of the quality of construction it may be safe to assum that it was made by a major reel company.

The reel has features that are Hendryx and some that are questionable.

Experimental reel perhaps? Made by who? Has anyone seen a reel with similar coin edged metal rims butted up against a hard rubber cover that takes-a-part by removing the bearing cap? Did Montague make a reel like this? Did Winchester?

I tried taking out the screws around the inside of the metal head-plate to see if there was any info to be gleaned by removing the spool and looking at the back of the metal section of the tail-plate. Unfortunately, the screws just turned and would not back out. Interestingly, all four screws turned in an elliptical fashion and if you did not turn them back exactly to where the heads were furthest away from the edge of the rim, the hard rubber head plate would not seat back down properly.

Oh, and for the record, the reel is a 4 to 1 multiplier. Is it just a coincidence that the inside plate is stamped quadruple?

[Steve]

I tried taking out the screws around the inside of the metal head-plate to see if there was any info to be gleaned by removing the spool and looking at the back of the metal section of the tail-plate. Unfortunately, the screws just turned and would not back out.

The rivets (not screws) holding the central spool-bearing disc to the frame represent the Hendryx 2/7/1905 patent.

Aforementioned invention

[reeltackle]

OK Vernon,

Hendryx refers to them as screws, No. 9 in Figure 4 starting on line 47. These "Screws", as he would call them, should have been referred to as "slot headed turning elliptical rivets" as they neither actually screw or unscrew from their position in the frame. That being said ..... I turned the "slot headed turning elliptical rivets (No 9)" so that the inner plate and spool might be removed from the rim and the results are pictured below.

Your thoughts? Anything recognizable?

Spool out looking into back of rear metal tail-plate with clicker and drag-


Back side of head-plate -

[Ed Clark]

I am not quite sure what to make of the reel. It looks like someone re-made a reel out of a Kettletown. I would say it was more than just the tail plate. The foot, pillars, head plate and crank could all be from the Kettletown. They may have also used the same click and drag buttons.

[reeltackle]

Here is an ad for the Hendryx Kettletown reel from a 1906 pulication. Many similarities but also many differences.

The foot in the pictures appears to be similar although the foot of my reel is not stamped Hendryx. Can someone post a photo of the foot and head-plate/handle of their Kettletown reel? Is the underside of the Kettletown foot stamped with a line capacity number? My reel is stamped 80, is nickle plated, and jeweled, just as could be ordered according to this advertisement. But the hard rubber??

[john elder]

A talented fellow like Don Champion, during a boring, cold winter weekend could turn that reel out from parts. It's a very nice Frankenreel, MHO!

[Steve]

Hendryx refers to them as screws, No. 9 in Figure 4 starting on line 47.

Okay, Pritchard, you're talking about a guy who stamps the wrong patent date on his reels. How can he or his patent lawyer be expected to get everything right? Take a Kettletown reel and remove the headcap and the plates. Add a pinion housing and gear post to the tailplate. Reverse the spool, add gears, cover what was the tailplate with a new rubber (Bakelite?) headcap. On the new tail-end of the reel, fasten a new tailplate (possibly from some other Hendryx reel), add a new rubber (Bakelite?) cover and rivet it on.

[Ed Clark]

Steve. Still cracking me up.

[reeltackle]

So my dear Vernon aka Mr. Pie, in essence, what you are saying is that on a cold New Haven night, after all the workers had departed for home, and, perhaps after a couple of stiff ones from the bottle he kept in his bottom right hand desk drawer, Andy rolled up his sleeves, reached deep within the discard box and got busy?

OK then .... I can live with that, however, because this little anomaly is not even "bigger than my fist" it must be moved along. If anyone is interested in it, PM me.

[Paul M]

This is way out of my league but I am placing my bet on US Patent 395,310 issued Jan 1, 1889. An innocuous patent titled: Device for cushioning lose joints. Curiously, the inventors were from Elyria.

Paul M

[Steve]

Andy rolled up his sleeves, reached deep within the discard box and got busy?

Alas, Anon, Andy was probably long gone by the time the reel was spawned. The perp could have been a wild-eyed gunmaker employed by Winchester or, for that matter, a wild-eyed reel collector with a Kettletown "for parts or repair" hanging around. Who knows? Almost every fisherman/collector/reelmaker/horologist/et al. figures he can build a better reel.

[Bill Muth]

Different reel but same topic. I was cleaning some reels to take to the upcoming Milwaukee NFLCC show and when I opened up this neat Hendryx Multiplier I stumbled into a gear system I had not seen before. The three face plate screws in the hard rubber fasten into a gear stand that sits on the spool spindle. The spool rotates around the gear stand on retrieve. It is incredibly smooth. The clicker is the same configuration depicted on the reel that started this thread.

[Steve]

The three face plate screws in the hard rubber fasten into a gear stand that sits on the spool spindle.

I wonder if more folks opened their Hendryx reels, we might see more like that. It's a good design if you want to decrease weight (and cost) by not using a full-diameter headplate. Whether or not the company made some reels like that or it was someone's experiment is anyone's guess at this point, IMHO. The company made lots of reels with metal-bound rubber headcaps like that, but it would take a lot of catalog searching to see if any production models had the 3 screws that anchor the rubber that way.

[Jim Schottenham]

Great find Bill,

And, that explains all the screws shown in the catalog cut of the reel below: