Thought I'd seen a thing or two re cleaning reels...

[Whit]

Was cleaning up an old Mitchell 440 last night in a fit of productivity.  The symptoms was hard winding: probably stiff old grease. Popped of the sideplate to put the innards into the laquer thinner jar (thanks Fred!), sure enough, someone had packed several colors of grease - yellow, brown and grey into the thing with no room left.   Then I went to pop the rotating head off and lo and behold, underneath the aluminum face plate (they are solid on the 440, unlike the inletted ones on the 300) was a hornets nest complete with dead hornet.  How in the world it got in there I have no idea, let alone come up with all the spit to assemble the nest.  And it took two turns in the sonic cleaner, plus manual scraping to get it all out.

No wonder it was stiff!

[Gfish]

Cool! That's a first, somethin organic. Think the grease got to the dead one?
Gfish

[festus]

At least it wasn't bedbugs or head lice.

[UKChris]

I had seen a barnacle and a tiny little crab inside a Penn that had spent far too long in the bilges of a boat but wasps beats that into a cocked hat!