Within the past week I saw somewhere on the Internet where a guy was talking about someone taking an Abu Garcia Ambassadeur reel, coat the spindle and insides with a mixture of light oil and toothpaste, and have a motorized contraption turn the crank overnight therfore honing the inner parts, and this guy could cast lightweight lures for a city block! I don't know if it was on this forum or not (didn't see it in my search) and if it is true, what rpms would work on a contraption such as this? Thanks.

no idea but most toothpastes are abrasive

Tim, it was in an article by Gene Bullard in Rodmaker Magazine, Vol 10 issue 4.

Tim,

I haven't read the article by Gene, yet, but I do remember reading an article in either Outdoor life, or Field and Stream, about using toothpaste and a high RPM drill, to break in your new reels. This must have been about 10-15 years ago, though.

Chris

Its true thats how he sold the reels he set it up so they ast in the tp and drill overnight then showed ythe customers how far they cast and sold a ton.

The article was by a professional angler David Fritz from NC and was about 15 years ago.

He used it to tune the reels he used for fishing crank baits. It smoothes out the reels gearing system so you can feel the crank bait instead of the vibration form gears.

After applying the toothpaste, reassemble the reel. Then he would use a drill with a device that kind of looks like a tuning fork chucked in it. That he would lower over the handle to make it spin. Start out slow and increase the speed as you go. He used it on Lew’s BB1N bait casters. Be aware also that occasionally a reel will have gears that are slightly out of alignment and they can “Blow out” rendering the reel useless. When doing it under power you only want to run the drill for about 3 minutes. What you want to do is polish the gears, not wear them out.

Afterwards disassemble use a degreaser to completely clean out the toothpaste and reassemble again, your good to go




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2007 10:05PM by Steve Gardner.

Been doing that with my Penn and Abu reels for years now...Actual formulation of abrasive paste varies with the reel.


Derek L. McMaster
Rohnert Park, CA

Born to Fish, FORCED to Work

Thanks Scott, I found it as you said - duh, my Old Timer's disease is kicking in again.

Steve Gardner Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The article was by a professional angler David
> Fritz from NC and was about 15 years ago.
>


I remember this being even older it was in the boyscout handbook when I was a boy 25 years ago.

This was for the old reels when gear cutting technology wasnt so good and they were left burred and not so great. Nowadays I think even the cheap reels have way better gears and dont need this toothpaste to polish the gears up and certainly a high end reel doesnt need it. Just my opinion anyway.

Henry your most likely right. But the article that Chris was referencing was By David Fritz. He probable got the info from Gene Bullard or the Boy Scout hand book