Ocean Star No. 36 (Amateur Deep Clean)

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I bought this reel for the express purpose of stalking medium size game from the shores of Northwest Florida.  It cost me less than $13 off of the big auction site.  They had it advertised as a decoration, but I asked if it was free turning before purchasing. They said that it was, so I bought it not knowing what I'd find inside.  Here is my experience with this reel.

This is the reel completely unopened.  The old line is still on the spool.

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This is the reel freshly opened, and beginning to access the fasteners on the back side of the cover plate.

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I ran into my first issue here when I was attempting to remove the reel handle so that I could access the simple controls under the gear on the side plate.  The years of inattention had frozen several fasteners in place, but this was the only one that I was unable to remove. 

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I didn't let that obstacle stop me, so I just moved on and kept disassembling and cleaning.  Here is the top of the spool, and the view with the drag control removed.

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I've removed the spool here and you can see the rotting leather washer that sits above the plastic washer on the rotor.  The next shot is of the reel's internals, greased up with some gnarly old grease that luckily hadn't hardened.  The reel had sawdust inside the body, of all things.

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Beginning disassembly of the internals.  Cast parts, but definitely robustly made.

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The sideplate, which I cannot disassemble at this time because of the frozen fastener.  Also, the body of the reel with the rotor removed.  The rotor is supported very strongly by a brass tube that runs the full length of the internal cavity.

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Removing the rotor nut to expose a bearing surface underneath.

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Here is the stripped body and the sideplate broken down as far as I can get it at this point.

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The spool broken down, and then reassembled after cleaning.

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Taking apart the bail.  Notice that the gear does not detach from this assembly. 

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The horribly corroded rotor, and then it cleaned and reinserted into the body of the reel.

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The reel cleaned and ready for lubrication.  All that's left for the main body is putting back together.

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Here is the internal spring loaded bail closing mechanism.  I elected to omit it from my final setup, because it impedes the free spool feature of the reel after being installed.  I can show pictures of the chamfering that I did to the edge of the lever in order to try to make it work. However, it did not change anything and the lever continues to impede the functioning of the reel.  I am only an amateur and the proper calibration of this part is beyond my knowledge, without having any manuals to reference.

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The completed reel with the automatic bail close disconnected.  I prefer a manual bail for hard casts.  The internals of this reel are incredibly robust and I am confident that the simplicity of this reel will make disassembly and cleaning a breeze.

I apologize for using so many posts.  I could only load two pictures per post before my browser would time out.  If I made any faux pas with the thread please let me know and I will correct them to the best of my ability. I hope this helps someone down the line.