A while back I picked up an old raise pillar Union Hardware style fly reel from eBay. No markings on it except Made in USA, but I believe it dates to somewhere around the 1930's to 1940's. A pressed steel model, so no real value or great collectability.

As you can see, it wasn't in exactly tip top condition....













But I bought it to, (hopefully), fish with, not look at; and it ran quite smoothly on it's simple push fit bearing. So, out with the dremel, wire brush and wet & dry; let's take it down to bare metal, get rid of all that rust and see what's underneath....







Hmmmm, structurally sound and some nice brass work on here too. The click is very basic, just goes straight down and engages with the gear on the spool giving equal drag on both line in and line out - no need for conversion to left/right hand wind, it's either just as it is.

Ok, 3 coats of spray primer and 4 coats of spray gloss and it's looking much better already....













Now to load it up with some vintage fly line. I inherited a supremely supple 3 weight 'parallel' fly line from an uncle, (I posted a thread about it in the 'General' forum a while back Fly Line Identification ), which has to be more that 15 years old and yet is as good today as it was when new, floats high in the water and is way more supple than any fly line I've come across baring silk. Matches a vintage reel like this perfectly.










I'm rather pleased with the result. I decided not to paint the 3 brass pillars, (they were painted on the original), as I thought they added to the overall look; but decided to paint the brass spool spokes as they wouldn't be seen with the line on. Oh, and the reason there's two different coloured backing lines is that that's what was attached to the fly line when I took it off the old Intrepid reel it was originally on and I wanted to preserve as much of the lines originality in memory of my uncle.

The spool is 2" in diameter and 1" wide and takes the 3 weight and more backing than I'll ever need. The reel itself weighs in at 99grams (3.49 oz) which is quite light considering it's all steel and brass; and with line and backing on it comes in at 127 grams (4.48 oz), which is less than many modern 2/3 weight aluminium reels.

And best of all, it balances out the delightful little 3 weight rod I bought from Sunkistbob here on the forum perfectly and I now can't wait to test it out on the water. Maybe I'm a heretic for destroying its 'originality', but it's now back to doing what it was originally designed for..... fishing.

Splendid job, looks a beauty

Very impressive.
Almost makes me want to have a try with some of my old reels.
But tell me as I have never attempted to spray a reel how do you prevent the paint from going on such parts as the brass pillars?

Now that photo essay is just TOO COOL for words.

fae

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Thanks for the kind words guys, appreciated.


I just carefully masked the parts I wanted free from paint with masking tape before spraying. After the paint had dried I removed the masking tape then polished the brass carefully with MAAS Metal Polish which removes any paint creep and gum left behind from the masking tape, and applies a protective coating to the bare metal. Of course, I will have to keep the brass pillars regularly polished as I don't want to put any lacquer on them.

Same treatment with the central spindle. I also thought about leaving the brass pillar ends on the reel and spool, which I would have covered with a film of Vaseline, (which would have meant all I had to do was wipe them and the paint would have simply lifted off when dry). The effect would have been very nice, but it would be the very devil to have kept them polished withut catching and wearing down the adjacent paintwork. Similarly the brass counterweight and check switch.

Ta for the info
Once again well done. Very impressive.