Mitchell Reel Forum

Since the 'first version' was made in such small numbers I can well imagine that the earliest 'second versions' had the same spool. Just how many firsts are out there? About 50 I think. Carpano et Pons didn't compile any production records until 1948 and the changes they made, as production continue...

Oh, nice to see your clicker spring intact on that spool, Rockape. Usually one arm is broken off. I'd say I've had to repair more of those springs than I have found intact.

I have a couple of 'unridged' spool backs like that which came with my second version. I did once wind on some line to an old Mitchell spool very tightly indeed and the spool back buckled backwards. I imagine this is why ridged spool backs, which appear stronger, were offered at the same time as the...

Like you John, I associate the 'upside down' Mitchell 301 with an earlier year and the yellow and black 'rocker' Garcia sticker with 1955 and a 6 digit serial number.

Thank-you gentlemen you've pretty much wrapped it up now. We now know for certain that they didn't start at A10000 and that all A,B and C reels used the full 99999 numbers that were available to them. Incidentally, I only recently learned that some half bail reels were made with the later six-number...

I am in contact with a gentleman who hopes to soon publish a book on the Mitchell reel, which I think will be quite something! It would help if anyone with a half bail reel bearing a serial number, with an A or B prefix to the number, could just let me what know that serial number is please. This wi...

It was the 440 that first appeared in black I think.

Just from memory, but I believe the hole for the oscillating slide's peg is in a slightly different position on the auto bail models.

I imagine I found that out the hard way.......

I'm not familiar with the 308A..does it have M8 gears anyone? You might look at the axle, polishing it and the bush it runs through, this often helps on many reels. Were you able to access the rotating head bearing OK? on the 308 these are notorious for rust pitting and there are no more spares for ...

The 314 spool has an arbour the same diameter as the 300 one, but narrower front to back. It's the spool back that is the giveaway, it's a few millimetres wider than the 300 one. If you put the two spools next to one another, back to back, the 314 has a greater diameter on the back but a shorter rea...

In this case the ejector pin has rotated and mis-aligned the foundry mark. Other dies had the foundry mark smaller and the ejector pins elsewhere. I have an image of two first version side covers, one appears to have 4, the other 6 ejector marks...and both are different to yours as neither have the ...

Full bails were on sale in the US in late 1953 it would appear. A patent granted to Hardy Brothers in the UK kept them out until it expired in September 1954. The UK maker JW Young tried to get a two-piece bail arm, called a flexible pick-up, past the patent but Hardy objected. Garcia must have seen...

Not wishing to be argumentative, but one can see the crystalline structure in the slot I believe is a pilot for cutting a rotor for right hand wind. I think that shows us it is cast in, not machined out....though it could be that it is stamped in I admit I can't see that it could serve any other pur...

I'm with you Alan, the quality of those Fifties reels is outstanding. When I first started restoring and selling on early Mitchell ( 300) reels, everyone wanted a reel from their birth year......including me! Last year one of my reels 'came home'. It was one I had done up and sold on about ten years...

I've not heard the 'pyramid' name for the indentation by the bail arm before, but I concluded years ago that it was a pilot to guide the cutting gear in if the reel was to be made as a right hand wind one. There are at least fourteen first versions in the UK that I know of, I've held four for examin...

I am told that a recent translation of factory production documents suggest the third version half bail was first made in 1951 and it is well documented that they gained serial numbers in 1952, so that would appear to date your reel quite precisely.

Great post Bill, thanks for all that effort. I see the image has a bail arm with a notch rather than a slot and has a serrated bail release so it's certainly an early one, but then both Garcia and Carpano et Pons often used old images from earlier times ( They probably never guessed anyone would be ...

If the spring is bent it can cause the arm that is struck as it rotates, thus closing the bail, to not sit correctly.

I've had this on a lot of 308 reels so I think it must be a common fault.

I took this image and added the text to help others:

: Mitchell 308 & 408 bail rotor small.jpg (57.55 KiB) Viewed 3822 times

From 1971 Mitchell used a system that gave every reel made on a given day the same serial number. Yours would be 1981and this should explain the system: mitchell dating.JPG According to this your reels were made on the 20th October 1981 on Production Line One. https://www.epochconverter.com/days/1981

I'm told the 300A gears are called M8 gears but I have never actually seen that written anywhere! They are less fussy about shimming and tended to run a good deal quieter. They were later fitted to all 300 reels but I don't know from just when, certainly all Taiwan-made reels have them. The 300A bai...

As Bill has said, a fourth version reel from before the 300 identification was given to it. These are the first full bail production reels with just some pilot or prototype reels preceding them. I would expect it to have a notch on the bail arm, not a slot, and a serrated bail release/ lock to engag...

A blue 400 would be an earlier one.

Nor sure when black came in, but the last ones made in Taiwan were black.

This is exactly the sort of information the original site had...a huge body of work by Wallace.

I hope we can get it back one day.

Ha...not so rare after all then Chris! I've not seen one before and presumed it to be a rare error, but it seems there are a few about then? I wish now that I'd kept a record of the reels I have stripped, repaired or serviced and sold on. It must be about 250 by now and I have never seen another mal...

I bought an old 300 to do up and was surprised to find this oscillating slide guide inside. It slipped through the manufacturing process and got fitted in the assembly room. I don't think such errors happened often. On an unrelated note this was the hardest reel ever to shim correctly...it easily to...

So that's how they did it!. Thanks for posting those images Wallace.

I wonder if any of those are pilot reels?

With those serial numbers they might all be!

One of the first places I 'fettled' a Mitchell reel was the coarse fly cutting of the flat on the axle. It made a huge difference. One doesn't need to remove the deep grooves so much as the flatten off the ridges either side of them that the human eye doesn't really see. But the fingertip can feel t...

I'm confused, Wallace.

Your own first paragraph in your original post says the Lenk presentation 20,000,000 reel is gold plated. The Mitchell reel collector's guide you illustrated uses the words 'coating' and 'plated'.

Do you now believe it is sold gold?

The best thing I ever found for lubricating the 300 reel was Reel X Soft Grease. I was never able to establish just where it was made; there were websites suggesting it was both American and German. It was based upon the lubricants used in wind turbines the sites said. However, it's probably moot as...

82 424.

Are there any left anywhere? I'm told there are none in Europe at all!

Perhaps some of the old hands could chime in here, but I think that oval sticker is from before '57...maybe '55? They also tended to fall off in use so finding one is not so easy.

As you said, a special 300.

I am by no means certain, but some of the parts in an 808 conversion kit had France stamped on them. Simplex, might your rotor marked 'France' perhaps be from one of those kits? This is the kit made for Garcia and the US market that converted a half-bail reel to a full bail reel for those who haven'...

What excellent workmanship.

I saved a couple of Wallace's images of the 'pilot' reels when the old site was still up. It had an image of the unique baffle plate these reels had, with a strange off-set hole: pilot baffle, note handle knob.JPG And if you do, at any time, dismantle the reel the pilots have this unusual rotor head...

It was indeed me but I was unable to reduce all the images it really needed to make any sense. Unfortunately the UK site I mentioned is largely members only and only two ( that I know of) US members managed to get membership before US bot attacks caused the site owner to block the US from his site o...

In the images of the dismantled reel I see no under rotor shims. Part No. 81024.
I think I would next assemble the reel with no rotor, transfer gear or axle and see if the problem is resolved.

I suspect it won't be and the pinion gear/ rotor gear interface is the problem.

When you say 'main drive gear' do you mean the gear with the shaft that takes the handle? There were optional shims available to stop the gear teeth of that gear rubbing on the side cover which were available as a spare part but were very rarely fitted by Carpano et Pons themselves. It would be most...

Thanks for uploading those, they'll be handy to show new members who are struggling with the part names.

If you tear up an old shirt or T shirt for rags the seams where the section of cloth were joined make really good polishing strips with a little polishing paste added. Treat the 'string of seam' with a little polish, wrap it around your workpiece held in the soft jaws of a bench vice and you will be...

Lovely Simone, and SO rare!

I always wanted the side cover from one to build the 'ultimate' Mitchell reel, but I've got completely used to the rotor going around the way it does now and no longer notice it.

I believe the php bb hosts have a default setting that only lets you edit or delete a post for...maybe 24 hours.

It can be changed to leave that option permanent. Wallace will know......

Formidable collections there, gentlemen!

Hi Mike, the broken transfer gear you show was a short-lived version put in the last half bail reels around 1953 I think. Fortunately it can be replaced by any transfer gear in metal from a similar time period or even several years late. I would have a good look at the smaller gear on the main gear ...

Congratulations Simone, you have yourself one of the first full bails made, definitely! On the old MRM Site US Mates referred to these as 'pilot reels, I think perhaps 'prototype' is what we in Europe might have called them. Unusually heavy stamping of the serial number there....there's no mistaking...

Ah, if you're in the UK you want Metal Mickey on eBay, actually match angler Mike Traynor. He has stripped thousands of Mitchells for their parts and is probably the main man to speak to about a Match reel. Scroll down a listing to seller's details...., select 'complete information' and you have his...

I'm afraid there isn't a starting place really. The manufacturing tolerances of the reel body and rotor mean that 'some' will be required, but one can never be sure which ones will be needed. I tend to shim the little pinion gear first to get a quiet and smooth reel just facing upwards with no axle,...

Thank-you for the translation Johnny, patent lawyer is a language all of its own! I can help with regard to anti-reverses.....I don't think many reels had them apart from the CAP I don't know for sure of any others. Chris might be able to help as to when the CAP got one...? JW Youngs and Hardy both ...

Just a thought....it's very rare for a reel to have only one 'under rotor' shim. Usually several shims are needed to get the correct clearance between pinion gear and rotor gear. I've serviced about 300 reels now and I don't recall one having a single shim, though I may have simply forgotten if one ...

There was something out there under the name 'ourboard' I was told Wallace had set this up for us whilst the main site was being worked on. It seems this is not in the least true and it was a huge copy and paste theft! This has now been shut down following a request from Wallace. I don't know who th...

The Match bail closing failure is pretty common as some parts wear...it's as though a 'knee joint' doesn't fully lock out. First parts to replace are the baffle with its nylon cam on the inside and the arm that contains the cam follower. Incidentally if the cam is white you need to replace it with t...

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