Blueprints for flyfishing reels?

[Bluegillman]

Lookin in LL Bean catalog and see those flywheels and notice them being made out of alum and machined. I wonder if there is a blueprint on those?

[jsage]

bluegillman,

I took some pics of a disassembled Abel Super 12 reel I have but the light wasn't great. This reel is probably a bit more than you want. It can handle blue"fin" ; ) tuna but components are similar and it is big enough to see the details.

I can take some better pics in daylight if you want. The better ones are milled rather than cast. The Abel is one of the highest precision reels but there is a lot of room for compromise. This one is well balanced and has a great drag. If you don't need perfection you could probably do without lathe type milling. This reel is simple but has quite a bit of machining involved. Basically this is 100% machined for this purpose.

jsage

[joecnc1234]

I worked for a company that wanted to get into building reels spent big bucks on engineering no products came out of the shop it is a little more complicated than you would think.

[jsage]

Joe,

I'm with you. Abel Automatics made heart valves at one point so they had a bit of experience with complex precision machining. I'd question for commercial purposes how cost effective it is to mill reels. The original retail was about $800 but I had a wholesale connection.

The most basic concept of a line holder and a take up reel is a bit more simple. However, you have to remove a lot of material and the spool would require lathe type functionality if it was milled out a solid piece of billet.

You would have to love what you are doing which was the case for Steve Abel. There were a handful of others who did milled rather than cast versions.

jsage

[markhas]

Yes, there is a blue print for those fly reels and all of the other ones ! The trouble is getting the manufacturer to cough them up!
I used to work at the company that owned Spider, Mitchell and Johnson before they were sold to Berkely. Let me know what you are interested in doing. I might be able to help. Fly reels are fairly simple. And if you had lots of time, you could definitely make one with a good mill and lathe. We used to do prototypes for Mitchell France all the time on our BP CNC.

Mark

[9 1/2]

this is some thing I've always wanted to do as well. If for no other reason than to combine two things I'm Passionate about.

[sluggo]

I've thought about it too. I started to design my own, if I can find the drawings maybe I will post them. I would be interested in any idea that other people have.

[Klox]

It's really interesting to read this thread. The questions are: what type of fly reel do you want to manufacture, what segment of the market would be your clients, how much money do you have to throw at the design obstacles, how much money do you have to market your product, what quantities are you looking at, what would make your design better than those already in existence etc, etc?
I can go on and on with lots more questions, the thing is i went along this path about a decade ago. It nearly bankrupted me, i know that i have a very good quality reel to show at the end of the day, but is does not mean s**t .....

go visit a site www.just-reels.com or www.exclusivereels.com you'll see that the competition is fierce and nobody takes hostages....

Cheers,
Klox

[g-codeguy]

Our head tool room guy made one out of Titanium. No idea what it cost in materials and time, but bet it wasn't cheap. Don't know what he used for a blueprint. Probably took one he liked and made it the same size.

[Bluegillman]

Looked in those two sites....wow the price of those toys! Just wanted to make only one for myself.