Reel Repair by Alan Tani

Quote from: alantani on June 05, 2024, 08:37:31 PMyeah, i hear ya!  sort of like, it's so easy to go broke in the restaurant business serving the best food in town!

Interestingly the best restaurants don't tend to have 600 item menus. Often it's more like maybe 20 really good things.

The counter argument is people don't collect food.

...back on subject. If Penn had all stainless parts on their reels, the reels would likely cost more, but more importantly they might also last much longer, so they'd eventually be selling less reels.

 Light bulbs are made to eventually fail, but there is technology to make a light bulb that lasts 120 years. Much more profit in selling a sub par light bulb

Interesting. What, in anyone's opinion is the most common failure point in a Penn conventional. All I've ever experienced are ball bearings stuck in cups and stripped or broken screws in posts—-these were reels that came to me like that.
Then there was a Sailfisher with spool to ring rub that I could not figure-out; like it would work without the rub, then just start to rub for unknown reasons. At least 20 dis/reassemblies, no fix.

I would have to say the weakest link is the gear sleeve, which can be corrected with a SS gear sleeve.  Bill

Quote from: Bill B on June 09, 2024, 04:31:46 AMI would have to say the weakest link is the gear sleeve, which can be corrected with a SS gear sleeve.  Bill

 A steel gear sleeve is a worthy upgrade, but if the gear sleeve is steel, the dog should also be upgraded to steel. CortezConversions sell both items

Whether stainless steel is magnetic or not and just how stainless stainless steel is is a rabbit hole leading to a warren of great complexity.

Long, long discussions on knife websites on this. Province of metalurgists...

In essence, yes and no, sometimes maybe, and it all depends...

 

Chris

Monel. I want monel. Damn the cost! Better yet K500 monel. LOL

Besides material cost, back when these reels were designed, the cost of working stainless steel relative to brass was substantially higher.  Factory  equipment was less capable and more expensive, plus  manufacturing was much more labor intensive by today's standards.  Plus the cost of swapping out some of the equipment and all of the tooling to go from brass to stainless. Reels were expensive to make back then.  Making mass market reels more expensive probably did not make much business sense at the time.

Whenever I see an old reel price, I like to plug it into an inflation calculator.  Recently Ted noted that the 1940 list price for a Surfmaster was $USD 10.  That's north of $200 today when adjusted for inflation. 

Even getting into the Seventies where the manufacturing cost curve started changing rapidly, if Penn offered a stainless option on the Jigmaster for (let's  say) 25 or 30 percent more, do you really think it would have sold well?

-J

Overall, no. But definitely I'd buy one or two.