Hi, this is my first post. I'm trying to find out some more info on this Roddy surf casting reel I acquired.
The foot is marked Roddy but the badge is missing. The spool is machined and anodised aluminium, it's thumb screw take apart and has a very strange anti backlash system.
The only reference I could find is a couple of Ebay Australia ads which had the badge - it's a model 570.
One had the box which had a very basic Roddy label and the nane "R. Wallace Mitchell Ltd. Melbourne Austrailia" printed on it. Apparently they were a large mail order tackle company from the 1950's to early 80's.
I'm guessing the model was specific to them?
But who made it and who else sold it I've been able to find out.
The brake works really well, I can't actually get it to backlash.
Hopefully someone can tell me more.
Welcome Jay. Nice reel and looks well made. Don't know a lot about Roddy, but believe the early reels were manufactured in Japan in the early 1960s. Lots of knowledge on this site, so hopefully someone can tell you more about your find.
Welcome!! Somebody will be a long , soon, that will have an answer. Great bunch, here!
Welcome to the site . Where in the world are you ? That is a nice design setup that you have there . The old mechanical braking systems error . You maybe looking to go down a rabbit hole for the information you seek .
Looks like external drum brake , nylon brake band with no real way to fine adjust the line tension . The brake band makes me think that there is a few of these reels around , "looks injected molded "
You are most likely going to find information looking at patents . Off the top of my head , I don`t know if I have that perturicler design booked marker ,or if I even seen that exact setup .
I do have a few mechanical brake reels and went through process of information gathering .
https://alantani.com/index.php/topic,21590.0.html.
Greetings, TJ, from Minnesota USA. Nice post.
Frank
Thanks for the replies - the braking systems were really interesting, I haven't seen those before.
It occurred to me that you could apply gentle pressure to the bar mid cast to reduce braking effect and get more distance but I've not tried that yet.
I'm in England btw.
I would like to hear your results on casting . Is there a way to adjust the spring pressure on the brake mechanism ?
I've only tried it once but using my old 13 foot Zziplex rod and 5oz lead, I couldn't get more than 80 yards. Using an ABU 6500CT on the same rod I can usually cast 135+ yards with a plain lead so the braking is a bit excessive. But if I'm only using it with 25lb line over rocky ground, I rarely need to cast more than 50 yards anyway.