Well friends, I am new to the idea of collecting vintage fishing gear. My new passion was ignited by a friend who gave me a beautiful stainless version of the Shakespeare President model of the 1956 vintage. Shortly thereafter, I found a lot of seven reels for sale. I made the purchase and So far, I have been delighted. I paid $85 dollars for a bag containing seven reels. With a little research, I feel like I've done well. The standout reels I believe are a meisselbach Neptune, and a couple pflueger reels to include an early supreme, and a Norka. I also have a reel that I was calling a pennell. I understand now, that pennell was only a trademark. I do know that the reel also has a williams external drag. I would love a little help identifying the manufacturer of that reel. And, as long as I can figure out how, I'll include some pictures of that reel, and some others.

Aaaand apparently I'm a little TOO new at this. The pictures don't seem to load. I'll try try one at a time.

That seemed to work better. Here is a pic of the meisselbach. A beautiful work of mechanical art.

Welcome and congratulations! You're wallet will never be the same... i'm still new to this myself, but your Pennell could be a Montague. I believe the Pflueger Williams drag was an add on available back then. Montague made a lot of reels in the early part of last century and the free spool was a common characteristic. Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, which I very well could be.

Jaybird1973 wrote:Aaaand apparently I'm a little TOO new at this. The pictures don't seem to load. I'll try try one at a time.

You are doing just fine with the photo loads. The first one is a thumbnail, which takes up less space in the post and can be enlarged twice. Click on the pic and it enlarges, then click on the diagonal arrows (toggle size) button at the top and it will enlarge even more. Thumbnails work great for multiple photos in a post. The second photo is regular sized and can be enlarged once using the "toggle size" button.

Welcome, Jaybird! Feel free to add a first name (and last, if you wish) to your post...names just feel better! At any rate, if you keep scoring like that, you don't have to worry about your wallet! That was quite a deal! The Norka is worth twice the whole deal alone! In times past, it's been at least 3x, but things are lower at present. At any rate, you stole them

The Pennel is a Montague product and as (gasp...edit....that's why I likd to know first names!) said, the Williams drag is a later add-on. Welcome to the madhouse!

John

I thank you all, for the warm welcome. I have a few more pics to post. I apologize if the pics are kind of amateurish. [timg]http://

And another

Oh, shoot! I forgot about THAT Norka! That's not a lot of $ but you still did fine!
this is the one I was thinking of!

Maybe a couple more

I think I'm getting the hang of this. Despite one of the last ones being only a South Bend, it is the only one I have that has jeweled end caps. I am very much looking forward to restoring these reels. I realize that some purists will have a coronary over removing patina. But, I wish to display these in a custom table of my own design. I will include progress on that table if people should desire to see it. It is currently in a design stage. But I think it should work nicely. I will draft a drawing of of it to gauge support for the project. Again thank you all for the warm welcome.

Definitely want to see what you do with them! You won't find anyone that will pick on you re patina removal here. If you check posts in the restoration page, you will see lots of cleanups and tips on how best to make it happen...enjoy!

Awesome. I am a bit concerned about cleaning solutions and interactions with Bakelite and such.

Cleaning is the fun part! There is an ORCA cleaning and restoration book available from the ORCA store that will give some good tips and instructions for cleaning and repairing. It's money well spent.

-James (Sorry John, hope this helps!)