$10 reel or $1500 reel

[ReelFishingProblems]

I keep thinking about the reels those scraps came from that got swept off the floor. Can we name them all?
Monofil 26
Rose 109?
Brown 85
What does the cream color come from?

It's a beautiful reel

[Maxed Out]

 Hard to say Jason, but it may be scraps from sideplates, or knobs, or both. Up thru early 50's, knobs were all turned on a lathe, by a woman affectionately referred to as the handle lady.

[jurelometer]

Bakelite is a thermoset plastic, so reuse of the final product is not possible.  It won't remelt, it will just burn. 

Bakelite is made by mixing formaldehyde with a couple other liquid chemicals and then adding heat. Eventually, it will boil up into a hard foam, but if you  turn off the heat prematurely, you end up with a brittle plastic that is usually ground into a powder.

At this point, the dyes and asbestos or wood fillers are added. And at this point(pre-polymerization) it can still be remelted into a nice gooey substance good for final molding. The mold is pressurized for the final heating, which  suppresses the foaming- and presto, you have a Bakelite part.

I guess that the well known blending effects used in Bakelite jewelry like faux marbling and tortoiseshell must be happening during this remelt-injection step.  I think that it is plausible that the Penn factory workers would have a bit of fun with  this technique  with the materials at hand. And you have to have a plan and some skill to get a nice even distribution without too much blending of colors.

Better/cheaper parts are made nowadays with fully automated injection molding, but this little slice of artistic expression from folk working the factory floor is no longer an option.

I think that this is what makes pieces like this valuable, and not just in the monetary sense. I can totally picture these factory folk gathering around the to see how the parts looked as they popped out of the mold. They must have been very pleased with this reel.

-J

[oc1]

Ocean City also made colored Bakelite side plates but they didn't make colored knobs and they didn't do the color swirl thing.

Who knows.  If Penn had made more of them and given them more exposure, they might have caught on.  But, then again, it was a different time with different fashion tastes. Penn's psychedelic patterns were a few decades ahead of their time.

[oldmanjoe]

    And all this started , because the new guy swept the floor and cross contaminated some material !!!

[Leonardo]

Did Penn Make that Reel with that ODD Colored Spool ?
I have  seen a few of the Marbled Side Plates but not an odd color Spool like that . Is it Painted or REALLY that Color .
If it is Real and came that way it may well bring a Kings Ransom .
Duck Tape a small piece of Fruit to it and Get MILLIONS .
Banana Art

Nothing fake about this reel. It is 100% made at the Penn reel facility. Penn motto was to not waste anything useable, including sweeping up scraps to mold into sideplates, as Jason mentioned.

 This particular reel has much more vivid coloring than any that I've seen in over 2 decades of pursuing factory anomalies.

Here's a couple more pics. Brighter lighting or direct sunlight makes the colors much more vivid. The textured sideplates makes the center portion of the sideplates look foggy.

Thanks for the info .Just did not know that Spool came on that Reel from The Factory
Has to be one of a kind I would bet .
Good Luck on the Sale .

[jurelometer]

BTW, I would be surprised if the knobs are Bakelite. Cured Bakelite has a dark reddish cast that prevented from being dyed in bright colors, especially light colors. This is why Penn sideplates are various flavors of not-too vivid greens, browns, burgundies, blacks.  There are a couple Bakelite-like plastics that are more clear and be dyed to brighter colors. Collectors often refer to these as Bakelite, but it is not accurate. I never read up on these and have no idea how similar the manufacturing process is.

I also have no idea what the knobs are made out of, but they look way too bright to be true Bakelite.

-J

[oc1]

I also have no idea what the knobs are made out of, but they look way too bright to be true Bakelite.

Probably Catalim which was a phenolic resin developed after the Bakelite patent expired.  It does not contain the powdered wood filler so it can be translucent for things like reel knobs and jewelry.