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Speargun Reel DIY

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
took a look at aussie reel being assembled and looks like the top washer does not spin as the bolt has a indent with a matching dent in the inside hole of the washer this means that the knob cannot spin loose as the washer does not spin
 
GRAPHITE SPEARGUNS said:
cheers for the answer Bill, one more question does the knob contain a nyloc nut or is it just a normal nut that will spin loose if the reel gets yanked?
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It's just a normal nut but there is no force trying to spin it. This is going to challenge my powers of description but in Pete's second photo notice that washer with a flat in it. There is a term for that kind of washer but I'm afraid I can't recall it. There is a flat side of the axle that the washer goes onto. When the spool spins that washer can't spin. The conventional drag washer above it doesn't spin since the flat washer below it can't spin. The knob pressing on that round washer doesn't spin because the round washer doesn't spin. This is not unique to the Aussie Reel by the way. I have two UIlusub reels and they are built the same way. And several other reels I've used over the last 25 years also have that flat washer.
 

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Many early spearfishermen just used a simple line fishing reel of the symmetrical drum style and modified the mounting arrangements. The first spearguns produced in any quantities are the compression spring guns from France followed by those from Spain and Italy. These appeared to be usually equipped with horizontal axis drum reels, some with bakelite spools and some with alloy drums as with the guns all sinkers after the shot what was a bit more weight in the reel? Only when spearguns can float after the shot do designers begin to look at much lighter reels. Plastic baitcaster reels replaced those with spools turned from wood and these were adapted by spearfishermen as their weight was greatly reduced and they could withstand continuous immersion.
 
In 1954 I don't think there were any spearfishing reels. I used a Penn Senator on my Champion Arbalete.
 

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Bill McIntyre said:
In 1954 I don't think there were any spearfishing reels. I used a Penn Senator on my Champion Arbalete.
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Well there were, you just did not see them. The Douglas spring guns had reels as can be seen here, as did the Fusil Americain models from France. Alexandre Kramarenko had a reel on his gun back in 1937, the first mechanical speargun with a patent.


Charles Henry Wilen (USA) was Alexandre Kramarenko's (Russian living in France) business partner, he patented their improved model spring gun in the USA as the bombs and bullets were flying in WWII in France in 1941.
 
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OK Pete. If you were diving, or even alive, in 1937, maybe you knew about everything going in in Europe. But as late as 1954, the spearfishing community in the Tampa Bay Area of Florida didn't know about it. Perhaps divers in New Zealand did, but I doubt it.

Anyway. I never saw a spearfishing reel then. I'm not sure when I first saw on in a shop, but it was much later. And we didn't have the internet to tell us about what was going on in Europe.
 
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Me being alive in1937 is immaterial, this is all recorded in the history books, spearfishing with mechanical spearguns starts in France and there are French books on the subject which I have read. Jack Prodanovich made his own reel out of two saucepans welded together and Wally Potts produced his own plastic body reel which is of a similar large capacity, but those guys are on the West Coast in California, so you would not know about them.

In Florida some of the first band spearguns were Florida Reef Rifles, myself and John Warren in California have made a study of this stuff for nearly twenty years. Don Clark from Florida visited Prodanovich and Potts on the West Coast, so we have seen his gun. The French Arbaletes also had reels, but were an extra, so you rarely saw them. The Cavalero "Requin Flottante" Arbalete which I was given the remains of decades ago had a reel fitted at one time became the attachment bands had left their mark on the barrel tube. The reel had been mounted not that far back from the muzzle.
 
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Sigh. You know all this history now but did you know it in real time while it was happening? I know a lot about the American Civil war now because I’ve read about it but I wasn’t alive while it was happening. In 1954 we didn’t have the internet to make it easy to know what was going on in Europe. All that mattered to me was what was available in the local dive shop and that dive shop was an Army surplus store that sold stuff left over from WWII. It sold some diving and spearfishing gear as a side line. I seriously doubt that the owner knew what Wally Potts was doing on the West Coast or what was going on in Europe. So I’ll reword what I said in a previous post. Spearfishing reels WERE NOT AVAILABLE TO ME so I had to use a Penn Senator.
 
BTW, I live about three miles from John Warren and about 4 miles from the Riffe shop. About 25 years ago I visited John’s shop on the advice of Jay. John showed me a couple of tuna guns he built and I could hardly lift them. He may know a lot of history but even then guns had progressed a lot and they have progressed even more since then.
 
So what. You could have just left it at "In 1954 I don't think there were any spearfishing reels." The sport is more than just you.
 
popgun pete said:
So what. You could have just left it at "In 1954 I don't think there were any spearfishing reels." The sport is more than just you.
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Isn't that what I said? Here it is verbatim.

"In 1954 I don't think there were any spearfishing reels. I used a Penn Senator on my Champion Arbalete."

But you couldn't leave it at that. You had to launch into a history lesson complete with engineering diagrams.
 
There are more divers reading these posts than just you and I, in fact if you have nothing to add bar that photo of yourself, which we have seen plenty of times before, why bother? This ain't your private fiefdom and some here may want to actually learn something new. I will leave that for others to judge, not you. You want respect, then give it.
 
Now back on to reel design. A few years ago Omer seemed to want to advance the state of the art in reels and produced a geared reel, their Match Race 90 model. I bought one to check it out and will discuss it next.

The Match Race 90 reel is an interesting bit of engineering, but fails the KISS principle and is just too heavy. For every turn of the crank hand it rotates the reel drum one and a half times, so two turns of the handle and the drum goes around three times. Omer tried to minimise the reel structure by using three contacts points to stabilize the lower end of the reel without having a full lower frame as the fishing reel of this type that it emulates, but still too much weight in it. Omer quit making this Match Race 90 reel, so the reels are now being sold off.

It would be OK on a timber stock gun with a bit of size to it from the weight perspective, but just how much sand and grit could get into the reel before it started having problems is anyone's guess. Boat divers have less bottom encounters and operate in cleaner water, but sooner or later a shore diver's gun hits the bottom and sand gets into it. No problem if with a couple of shakes the sand comes out again, but that is not always the case. Sometimes you need a garden hose to blast sand out, had to do so on my Metaltech and still being slightly gritty in the remote trigger I eventually had to pull that gun apart.

The Omer Match Race 90 Reel weighs 314 grams straight out of the packing box with no line fitted.
 
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popgun pete said:
Now back on to reel design. A few years ago Omer seemed to want to advance the state of the art in reels and produced a geared reel, their Match Race 90 model. I bought one to check it out and will discuss it next.
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So the guy asked about building his own reel, and that gave you an excuse to post drawings of gear from the 1930s. Now we anxiously await your discussion of an Omer reel. How does that relate? Sure, we always have subject drift, but it's a long way from building his own simple reel to analyzing a geared reel when you yourself have applauded the keep it simple principle. This site isn't just about your showing your encyclopedic knowledge of Russian pneumatic guns and early French patents. It's not all about you.

Please forgive my posting of a photo showing me actually holding a gun and a fish. You had just mentioned divers having to use fishing reels so it seemed appropriate to show that I actually did that myself. I know I've posted that before, but then there are new divers here and not everyone follows me as closely as you do. Almost all photos that I post show me holding gear that I actually own, and many of them have fish. I don't think I've ever seen a photo of you actually holding gear that you discuss, much less holding fish that you took with the gear. Do you actually spearfish, or just buy stuff to analyze?

Some of your photos of equipment are valuable- like when someone asks about some part inside a pneumatic gun. But showing the parts diagram that went with a patent application on a French gun in the 1930s is really not. But different strokes for different folks. I anxiously await your evaluation of an Omer reel from a few years ago. Is it still available? I'll skim it, but I suspect that I'll stick with my simple and dependable Aussie Reels.
 
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Give up Bill, you must be close to 90 now if you were twenty in that 1954 photo, and even if say 16 that would make you 85. You add nothing with your statements, unless you just want to big note yourself.
 
Actually I think I was 15. I'll be 85 in January. It's not getting any easier so I'm thinking I should sell the boat but it's going to be hard to decide. Most of the kids I dive with think I've experienced quite a bit of the evolution of spearfishing. My 20 years in the Marine Corps gave me to opportunity to dive all over the US and in quite a few overseas spots. But they don't realize that I don't know a thing about French patents in the 1930s or Russian pneumatics so I'm not going to tell them.

Please hurry with the evaluation of the Omer geared reel. All my diving friends are waiting with bated breath.
 
Sarcasm will get you nowhere, but maybe the moderator can have a word in your ear.
 
Here is how the reel was described.

Omer Match Race 90 for Excalibur And Cobra​

"Speargun reel featuring a gear system which allows for each turn of the handle, 1,5 turns of the reel. The retractable handle is made in stainless steel. The reel capacity is 90m of 1.5mm diameter line".

Now 90 metres is a lot of line, especially for a tube gun, although the Cobra has a timber body and would most likely be the gun that the reel was fitted to rather than the Excalibur because the Cobra would be a more buoyant gun with its shaft gone.

The Match Race 90 reel cannot be reversed, so you're stuck with the crank handle on the left hand side. The drag adjuster is on the bottom and three pillars form the body spacers so that the reel has some lateral support at the bottom of the spool. There is no drum pivot axle that could also be passed through the gun body, so you have to use the dovetail slide fitting or its equivalent, there being base adaptors for a few other gun brands to use the reel.

Photos to follow. Omer no longer makes this reel and has gone back to much simpler reels which are all a spearfisherman really needs, but it shows others had a go at doing something different.

Another attempt to bring line fishing reel technology to spearfishing is the line laying reel, I have never handled one, but I have done so with fishing reels which have a "level wind" capability. Not sure considering the amount of line stowed on most spearfishing reels whether you need a level wind, whereas a line fishing reel can have hundreds of metres of fishing line which ideally you want sprread over the length of the spool or drum.







The photo captions tell you what you are looking at, just click on the individual photo concerned..
 
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Well that was valuable. A reel that is no longer made but it doesn’t matter since I wouldn’t want one anyway and they must realize that since they discontinued it.
 
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