One thing leads to another

ORCA Online Forum - Feel free to talk or ask about ALL kinds of old tackle here, with an emphasis on old reels!
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Eric J
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One thing leads to another

Post by Eric J »

I’m sure everyone here has experienced that too, where a small project just kinda grows.
An odd-ball reel that I’ve had for nearly sixty years is a Shakespeare Auto fly reel that was in Mr. Shakespeare’s canvas L.L. Bean duffle bag. It is a Tru-arT 1805 Model 32 that when I first got it had a top cover nut that was green like the trigger button. It was inlaid like terrazzo or mosaic, and whatever the binder was over the years had shrunk, crystalized, and fallen out. I’ve never seen another like it. I left it for decades and finally decided to “fix” it, not to deceive anyone, but since I’m the only living human being that knows what it originally looked like I felt restorative measures were called for. I took an old green plastic Shakespeare bait casting handle from the same vintage and ground it up in a blender, added epoxy, and grouted it in. After it hardened I carefully turned the aggregate down to the same surface as the nickel silver nut. I’m very pleased with the results and it looks exactly like it did when I first saw it in the early 1960’s.
So I took it apart and compared it to his other 1805 Model 32……



A separate cover over the gear works.


A different brake arm, and the main gear has a pawl and spring that engages the big coil drive spring. The typical 1805 Model 32 has the coil drive spring engagement tab on the gear, not the spring.



The earlier Automatics from the 1920’s had a top hat shaped spring cover, and these newer 1930 Autos had a lower profile cover allowing for a longer, narrower drive spring which made for easier winding and helped reduced the weight from 10 ounces to 8 ounces, but replacing the nickel silver headplate with an aluminum one was the real weight saver.
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