Duco Dinosaur

[Delaminated]

I won this little Duco reel last year from that auction site.
It has a couple of features that are( for me anyway ) a tad arcane.
It needed a service and a replacement spool, the spool available was in brown Ambidex livery.


The anti-reverse lever is a metal arm that comes from a slot to the rear of the reel.

The full bale arm is a real example of Youngs improvisation.



The recess on the head has not been machined for the tags of any bale arm return spring, though there is a tiny ball race to ease the arms passage.This is fitted between the reel head and the larger screw locating the bale arm.

The motive power to close the arm is by “torque” loaded into the flexible pick up wire when the bale is opened.

It sounds silly and looks worse, but works perfectly on the turn of the handle!

Regards Tom.

[Nobby]

I think that a/r lever dates to the first reels to have one..there aren't many out there.

The thinner wire of the FP looks 'wrong' from memory...shouldn't it have a round loop at the mounting end?




That reel had the usual black plastic a/r lever btw.


I wonder if your f/p is a conversion from a half bail?

[Delaminated]

Hi Nobby,
I am pretty sure that this Duco reel bail arm is a factory job as supplied.

If you follow the wire part of the bail arm on my pic, it disappears through a tiny hole in the rotor and goes under the counterweight and is secured by a screw on the far side of the rotor.
This hole just accepts the flexible wire, it has never been moulded and machined for the bail wire loop and retaining screw as the in Duco B. in your picture.

It is the twisting of this section of wire across the rotor floor that returns the bail.

I think my Duco could be a step between the half bail Duco and the Duco B. allowing that many similar parts are used in different models.

In the months before Christmas , a chap was selling a set of four Ambidex reels on eBay.

One of the reels was identical to my Duco, bail wire and lever a/r ect, but in all brown Ambidex livery.
Needles to say that while I dithered in bidding, a faster thinker snaffled up the lever Ambidex from under my nose with a sneaky offer.

Regards Tom.

[Nobby]

That does rather sound as though it's genuine then.