A Winter Project

[Tightlines667]

A cradle for a large Everol or old school FinNor big game reel would be awesome!  We appreciate you sharing your wealth of knowledge once again.  It is always tempting to keep knowledge of rare and valuable collectables to a select few of those 'in the know', but on the other hand sharing this knowledge more freely may actually help to save some of these gems.  It would be nice to think that anyone who runs across an old, rare, collectable, an valuable piece of history will exercise good judgement and do the right thing.  But unfortunately this is not always the case.  Hording treasures in secrecy, is not necessarily the wrong thing, mind you, provide the history is preserved.  The preservation us the important thing, sharing knowledge, and spreading appreciation or value can be a means to achieve the preservation. 
Just a few personal thoughts on the matter.

[fIsHsTiiCkS]

I will keep my eye out for one! What material were these made of? Also, thank you for the history you share! You definitely have come to the right place, to share your knowledge!

[Superhook]

The Neptuna cradles are cast from good quality Aluminium which are machined at the side plate faces and thread taped for the side plate screws. Not cheap bubbly dross.

[Penn Chronology]

Superhook is right. Neptuna cradles are built to aircraft casting standards. Very high grade casting. They were basically too good! I will start another post about cradle reels in a while but now::

Now I want to move to what I am doing today and make a special Thank You to some of the Good People that reside in these pages. This thread started with a good deal on some Accurate parts but that deal happened while other things were also happening. These other happenings wind up relating to a series of events that have turned into a pleasurable experience for me.
                     If I remember right, one of the people here ( I do not want to say his name is Ted, so I will not ) sends me a picture of a very mint 114HL with a Red Spool and double chrome plated cross bars. Now in my world, this is a very modern reel. Please remember anything after the 1960's is considered modern by me.

So as I am looking at this beautiful Penn reel, which is reminding me of Dom's Red 9/O, and Ted calls this model a 50th Anniversary Model. In my collector world, I do not study modern reels unless there is something special about them. Anniversary models are special but I find it curious that I do not know about this model. To me there is only one 50th Anniversary model and one of them is in my small collection.

So now I must go to the catalog to find out why I do not know about this reel. I know there a Special High Speed Senator but I did not think there were special ones. I go to the 50th Anniversary catalog
and search out the special ""Ted Reel"". There it is, in all its glory, a fancy Penn Senator High Speed reel and there is not only one like Ted's, but there are two others.
and in this catalog is another page talking about these new models
                     Now I am saying to myself. "Why don't I know about these great reels?" and then it hits me. Sure they are in the Anniversary catalog with the same very special International 50 Anniversary reel but Penn did not call them anniversary reels. Most people assume because they were introduced with special chrome bars and red spools in an Anniversary catalog that they must be Anniversary reels. Makes sense! Right?   Sure it does, so from now on, I will call them Anniversary reels and I decided to go right to my favorite online auction site and buy one.  
                          WRONG !!! These things are no where to be found. Another flash goes off in my head, these may wind up being very hard to find as time goes by and I do not have one. I suddenly realize that my life is no longer fulfilled. I must have one of these reels and I cannot find one.

What do I do now??? What is the next best thing to do when you cannot find the whole thing. I decide I am going to look for pieces of one of these reels, so I start looking through dozens of parts listings and what do you know. I find a ""Buy It Now" for $25 plus a couple of bucks shipping for a set of these;
so I jump on these bars and win them. Now I own two double chrome plated cross bars and nothing else.

As these life changing events unfold for me, a friend of mine from down in Maryland gets a great deal on some Accurate parts and he wants to include me in the deal. I happen to know that this gentleman has many old small Penn Senators. It is his hobby to find them and restore them, so when he makes me the offer about the Accurate parts, I decide to try to create a bundle deal and ask him if he has a Red Senator High Speed 113HL to go with my wonderful, not quite perfect 113HL Chrome Cross Bars.
wouldn't you know it, this guy comes up with an old dark maroon 113H that is a bit beat looking but all internals are new and he has a set of 113HL Red Side plates with very nice trim rings. So we bundle these parts into the Accurate deal and I am off to putting my 50th Anniversary 113HL reel together. Here's what I have. The time has come for me to get MODERN!!!!

and that is not all::


                The time has come for me to add this great Anniversary reel to my collection. I build it all up and wouldn't you know. Some little part is missing.

                 It sure looks pretty but I can feel something is very wrong.

                 As I sit and scratch my """HEAD""", that old flash happens again. I do not have a spool!! Sure I have the old ugly spool from the dark maroon reel but I cannot use that. Now what do I do??
                First thing that come to my mind is the guy that started me on this journey to misadventure. That guy that lives where the sun don't shine, where it is always raining but the fishing is phenomenal and that guy's name is Ted. So I email Ted and ask him to please sell me a Red 113H Aluminum spool. Wouldn't you know it, the guy that started this whole mess for me does not have the spool to sell me so I can finish my new Anniversary, not, reel..............................

                 But, in all honesty, Ted gives me a clue. He tells me that living on the side of the country that I live is a man. A very nice generous man and that man's name is Sal. He says that Sal may have a Red Spool for my reel and Ted was finally right about something. Sal did have a Red spool for my reel and Sal was more generous that I could have possibly imagined. He made me an offer that I could not refuse. ""Italians do that you know"""   and I now have what I need:


After all this I now have my almost an anniversary 113HL and I love it. It is not perfect but it runs smooth as silk and it nice enough for me. I will never sell this reel. The story that goes with it and the good people that helped me get it together make it priceless.



Thanks Ted, CT in Maryland and Sal. You guys are great.

PS--------------------Sal also helped me out with some Stainless Steel parts for my Accurate Project. Thanks Again for the Sal.

[crackerman]

I hope this works.

Here is one
http://m.ebay.com/itm/381095420023?nav=SEARCH

I have seen red spool 113's on ebay before, but merely assumed they were tiburon or accurate spools. Not knowing it would be a treasure trove of history. Thats for the lesson!!!

[Shark Hunter]

Awesome post Mike!

[Penn Chronology]

Thanks Guys............

[fIsHsTiiCkS]

What an awesome post and great read! The members of this site are always a great asset in a build like that! That definitely belongs in your collection! Only if you you were able to find those SS gears that came with that reel. I'll keep an Eye out for you!

[Penn Chronology]

What an awesome post and great read! The members of this site are always a great asset in a build like that! That definitely belongs in your collection! Only if you you were able to find those SS gears that came with that reel. I'll keep an Eye out for you!

The Stainless gears would have been nice but not necessary. The reel runs nice the way it is. If I ever run across them I will change them out but having a bronze gear instead of a stainless gear is no where as near as bad as having No Spool................<:O)

I thought it was interesting the way Penn displays the gear set in the photo with the cutaway bridge. An interesting post might have the topic of cutaway Penn reels. There have been many of them and Penn is still doing that today. They are done in very limited numbers, go to specially selected tackle shops and very likely get displayed at Trade Shows. They wind up being very interesting collectibles.

Anyways, Glad you enjoyed the story of my 113HL. I will be getting back to the Accurate 4/O.

[alantani]

Awesome post Mike!

yup!  gonna send the man a wrench!   

[Penn Chronology]

yup!  gonna send the man a wrench!   Grin

Well I do not know what I did to deserve a wrench but I sure like the idea of a nice wrench.

Thanks Alan

[Penn Chronology]

So now that I have told my 113HL Anniversary reel story, I will moving back into the Accurate 113. I have acquired a few more parts, so I am getting closer to starting to think about the assembly process but then not really.

Thanks to Sal, I now have a
Stainless Steel 4 to 1 gear set, stainless steel yoke and a Delrin washer for under the main gear. My fancy handle has arrived in the mail but my heart is still set on the double dog bridge that is still not available. I know I can do this reel with a single dog or possibly and double dog off the screws but now that I have seen the video I am sold and am willing to wait.

               I have already pictured a double dog anti-reverse from a 1920's vintage Ocean City Orlando but Ocean City was not the only double dog design. One of the most famous of all reel makers was Edward Vom Hofe. The Vom Hofe family started making fishing reels soon after the Civil War, yup, I mean the original Civil War back when our country was really confused between Right and Wrong over 150 years ago.
              So the Vom Hofe family had a lot of Reel Building Seniority. In the early days of the 20th Century, one of the son's of the company founder started getting really serious about saltwater fishing reel design and by the 1930's, was building works of art they called fishing reels. These works of art were all made by hand, one at a time. One of those Edward Vom Hofe reels was named the Commander Ross and it was a big reel.

This Edward Vom Hofe creation was sized at 14/O but was probably closer to a modern day 16/O in dimensions. Pictured here is a Super Reel restored by Superhook aka Ray from the little continent known as Australia, or fondly known to me as OZ. Ray did a meticulous job on this reel, it was a mess when he got it but Ray took this reel down to the bare bones and kept me in the loop, so well, that I wrote an article about the restoration when it was done and published that article in the ORCA publication known as the Reel News in 2011.
               Anyways, I digress, my point in bringing this reel up is that is has a very interesting main gear and anti-reverse for its age. The main gear has a drag washer on each side and a roller bearing sleeve that brings the drag pressure from the star wheel to the discs.

By the way, if you turn the reel over those little rollers will fall right out, all over the floor and cause an extremely intense head ache while you are looking all over the shop to gather up these totally impossible to replace little tiny roller bearings.
                Now, it is time to remove the main gear, under that gear are the anti-reverse dogs.

               This is early 20th Century design. So, if they could do it by hand in the 1920's and 1930's, I know I have to have it in my special Winter Project. That's why I am willing to wait.

And on that note, I have to go to sleep before I fall of my chair.

[Alto Mare]

Mike, that was fast, I'm glad it made it to you... it was my pleasure.
Good luck with that beauty, we're here if you need anything else.

Sal

[Penn Chronology]

Thank you Sal. The support here is amazing...............

[txangler81]

Wow I will definitely be following this thread. The shear wealth of knowledge and history being thrown around is mind blowing.