CLEANING YOUR CENTRE-PINS

You know how it is You've been out all day flinging your little float accross the river perfecting your wallis casting doing a bit of totting without a care in the world,eventually you wonder off home having caught a few fish feeling content with yourself,and whilst your packing your tackle away you notice that your centre-pin is looking a bit worst for ware and you decide to clean it and fit some new line.so just Take one used slightly grubby Centre-pin covered in angling debris with line thats seen better days.

Start by removing the old line by standing the centre-pin on its own foot plate and wind the old line onto your fingers then throw it away in the bin.

Now inspect your reel to see just how filthy and stained it can get,covered in bits of casters and maggot juice and caked in dirt spots and such like

its going to take some cleaning isn't it,so its time to gather up the essential tools

CLEANING TOOLS REQUIRED

A lint free rag
A cup or pot of hot soapy water
A old tooth brush (and not the wife's)
A solvant cleaning agent (any degreasing cleaner)
Some vinager
A tool for scraping with (not a butter knife!)
An old cloth
Some alloy wheel polish
A screwdriver for dissmantling the reel

Take your reel apart in order to clean out the spool and to get access to the inner parts and to clean the back plate of any debris that may of found its way under the spool.some reels will have a button release or catch whilst ones like mine (hand built at rolls royce factory) need a screwdriver to undue the screw that holds it all together.

inspect the inner side of the backplate for debris and give a quick squirt with wd40 and a general whipe over with a cloth and grease where necessary

Next turn your attention to the spool taking care to remove any big bits of debris that has encrusted onto the insides and onto the spokes & casing pick of realy stubborn bits with a flat bladed screwdriver gentley so as not to scratch the surface then gather all your cleaning tools together

a beaker with warm soapy water in it and a toothbrush (not your partners !!) and a lint free cloth,use the toothbrush to give the spool a good scrubbing all over

Once you've got your reels spool nice and clean you'll have to dry it off , its best to use a lint free cloth so you don't leave any little fluff bunnys behind and to avoid any corrosion due to oxidisation (we'll deal with that later)

If when you gave your reel a visual inspection you saw evidence of oxidisation(white powdery substance)on the surface of the alluminium face plates or drum of the spool or on the backplate then you can use either some WD40 or vinegar

Put a drop of WD40 or vineger onto the affected area and leave for 5 min then rub in with a cloth to remove the oxidisation particles from the surface

Making sure you do the same on the insides and on the backplate

Having removed all the contaminations from your very precious centre pin reel you may want to think about protecting it from corrosion in the future

this all depends on whether your reel is of a painted finnishor bare alluminium if its painted then you will have to match the colour of your paint to the reels colour you can then paint out any scratshes with a fine paint brush or if the overall paint finnish is oxidised and gone faintly dull then you may need to use something like T-cut to restore the paintwork to its former wonderfull glory

then use a car polish to seal in the shine this would require two clothes one to apply and another to remove the residue of the polish and to buff it up to a shine,for the alluminium reels simple use a motor car propriety alloy wheel polish and buff it to a nice shiny finnish

when you have finnished cleaning and refurbishing the reels looks and applied copious amounts of elbowgrease to put a shine on its face ,you should now have a shiny gleaming reel with which to fish with

Just like mine !!

acknowledgements

these pictures will be changed for better quallity ones when i get my new digital camera