Handmade Fly Fishing Reels
New Products
I
designed and developed my own range of five sizes of handmade fly-fishing
reels during the mid 1990's. I didn't realise at the time that its so
obvious I'm Hardy trained! All are specified as size of drum back
flange diameter. The little silver novelty I'll describe later. This
project consumed two thousand hours spread over three years. A lot of
the manhours went into tooling up so as to achieve interchangeable
manufacture and the quality I demand, yet they still incorporate a high
degree of craft manufacture. The reel illustrated is my 2-3/4 inch
(rear flange) fly reel, serial number 98/13, the thirteenth reel of 1998,
gross weight 200 grams. My old boss at Hardys would have criticised me for producing such a heavy reel, yet it balances fine with a cane
rod, in my humble opinion. There are so many unique points of workmanship and design to these
reels that they have to be seen to be appreciated. Jim Williams of 'Just
Reels' [Wisconsin] when he offered his 'Richard Kell 4-1/2 inch
Spey Reel' for sale recently, described my reel as probably the best
to ever come out of the UK; I'm not sure I'd go that far, yet its one
heck of a compliment. The stainless steel spindle is diamond lapped to
within a two tenths of a thou inch total tolerance, the up tolerance
spindles going into the larger diameter reels. I use engineers slip gauges
to verify dimensions such as this. Handles are of graphite impregnated
ptfe at £80 a metre. The reel drum incorporates a custom shouldered
bronze bush which locates the nickel silver latch cover in its own recess
and provides an excellent bearing combination with the diamond lapped
spindle. The reels were unique at the time for their special surface
treatment which is an advanced process beyond straightforward anodising,
resistant to a Stanley knife and incredibly corrosion resistant. I was told there
are only one or two specialists in the world that can perform such work.
I've a unique regulation indicating feature incorporated into all my
fly reels, I call it the blindmans indicator as it does just that.
Again uniquely, my reels are probably the only reels in the world that
are designed to accept an enclosed rim or exposed rim drum on the same
frame. The reel foot or back is cast gunmetal, as is the spring keeper,
I make all my own brass patterns to send to the foundry. All my nickel
silver countersunk screws are made to the old Hardy pre-war standard
of increasing the angle to 60 degrees from the universal 90 degrees;
this increases their strength as well as providing better locking. As
with all my work the real quality is hidden, such as the attention to
geometrical tolerances, something the layman would not immediately perceive. The big 4-1/2 inch Spey (back /inner flange diameter) is a
real beauty, very difficult to put down. I even experimented how to produce thick section agate jasper lineguards.
Finally the little solid silver reel, which is fully working, has a 0.75 in drum, hallmarked for Edinburgh, where 
I registered my mark. Internally
the reel has a hardened and tempered to blue C spring as
in vintage reels. The real work in this item was designing and making
the multi-part brass moulds to produce the waxes to send to the lost
wax casting specialists. I also made the tooling for matching silver rod joints and handle fittings including a tiny
ebony pommel. I do not make these reels currently, it was too intense, I sickened myself. Considering the
intensity and manhours involved to make these reels and my endless pursuit of better... its ridiculous anyone can expect these reels to be priced anywhere near a quantity made product, but nowadays I've neither the energy nor enthusiasm, its called getting older.
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Est 1983.