Articles

These articles first appeared in Classic Angling Magazine

Perfecting the Perfect

Take yourself back to the late 1800’s to a time when you and your brothers are finding the brass reels you sell to go with your split cane rods are in truth letting your anglers down. The reels are so rudimentary that fish keep breaking off as they pull against their heavy checks and your anglers, especially the ladies, are finding it physically tiresome trying to crank them when under pressure from fish.

You need a better reel, but you’re going to have to develop it yourself as the rest of the fishing tackle trade seems content to endure the status quo.

And then one day, for no particular reason, your thoughts turn to ball races. Why can’t you use a ball race in a reel to make it run more smoothly?

You discuss the idea with your brothers and all of you immediately begin work on the experimental prototype. The best place to put the ball race on a fly reel would seem to be on the rim of the reel, then make a hole in the outer casing of the race through which to slip the balls in once this hole lines up with another hole on the inner casing.

It is both cumbersome and annoying setting the ball race up because whenever the two holes stay located over each other the balls begin to fall out. Even so you apply for a patent for a fly reel in which the drum revolves on a ball race.

The year of 1891 is under way when one of your brothers has a brainwave. He suggests putting the ball race inside the reel around the spindle, next to the drum.

Eureka! Or rather, Perfect!

The very first time you try it the drum turns as if gliding on lightly oiled shards fallen from silken clouds. You can hardly believe it and your excitement reaches fever pitch as the first ‘Perfect’ reel is taken to the river to make the most historic cast in the history of fly reel development.

The line pulls so easily from the reel you turn and smile with satisfaction at your brothers as you test the little gadget positioned on the reel’s rim that lets you regulate the strength for pulling the line off.

And then it happens.

A salmon (or was it a sea trout?) grabs the fly and takes off with it down the stream. The reel purrs as the line slips away, smoothly and evenly. You adjust the check with the little gadget until the right strength is found and shortly the prize is landed.

You and your brothers are ecstatic with your Perfect reel.

Little do you realise that it will swiftly become the cornerstone of your business and the most famous fly reel in the world.

All you have to do now is perfect the Perfect.

Jess Miller

Perfecting the Perfect II

Being the Hardy brothers you are something of perfectionists and your early attempts to bring your Perfect reel to the market immediately show up problems that need to be dealt with.

Something is wrong with that little gadget for adjusting the braking pressure the angler can apply to the fish. It keeps falling out. It’s a plain screw with a knurled head sticking out from the rim of the reel, which has nothing to hold it in place. It is obvious these are going to be lost at the riverside and you hasten to develop a brass band, a strap to go across the screw and hold it in place and you locate the knurled screw adjuster inside the band from where it cannot be lost. This is a great improvement.

There is also something wrong with the iron two pillar Bickerdyke style lineguard, which has immediately shown signs that it is going to easily succumb to attacks by rust. Rust on a Hardy Brothers reel? Unthinkable! The answer to this corrosion problem comes in the form of nickel silver ‘wire’, whose silvery colour also helps to enhance the reel’s appeal.

After a little more time and careful thought you realise that if you were to perforate the drum of your Perfect reel this would help to make it lighter and also assist with the partial drying of the fly line. So you drill a pattern of large and small perforations in the drum with the result that these give the reel a very distinctive look. The few reels that you have made with a solid drum are going to prove themselves rare items in the future.

Finally, as the amount of reels you are selling increases, you hear of a number of disasters from purchasers who have found that the phosphor bronze ball bearings, lying loose in their circular ball race within the reel, often spill out and becoming lost during cleaning. As reports from around the country come in of lost ball bearings with orders for replacements you swiftly make an essential refinement to your earliest reels by making the ball race enclosed, so the balls are locked in place and can never again be lost.

It is only 1893 and yet your Perfect reel’s development is well under way and it is taking the angling world by storm, ringing the death knell for the old brass wynches and heralding an unprecedented path of development for fly reels the world over.

Jess Miller

Perfecting the Perfect III

The Hardy Brothers soon found their smallest Brass Perfect, a 2 ¼”, was proving less popular, perhaps it was too small and too heavy for the dry fly outfits in demand on the southern chalk streams of England, and they made only a few as the 2 ½” seemed to be the smallest size preferred by their clients.

In the mid-1890’s they decided that making handles out of ivory was not cost efficient and they turned to man made ivorine, a perfectly acceptable substitute. Although they would continue to make a few handles from ivory upon request from clients these would become less and less and ivorine would be the only material in use by the turn of the century.

On the earliest of their Brass Perfects they had used a large brass locking screw with a fairly massive head on it. However they were finding their reels stayed together even without this locking screw and so, despite still having the reel turned inside its central well to take the big locking screw, they ceased including it in the reel’s manufacture. These large brass locking screws are extremely rare today.

The pace of change was urged ever onwards as the Hardy’s strived to make their reel better and better and soon came the first true transitional stages as the two pillar nickel silver Bickerdyke lineguard grew around the rim of the reel. First it became a three pillar, then a four pillar with a gap at the top under the reel foot and finally a five pillar with the top pillar attached to the base of the reel foot.

All along careless anglers had been damaging these fine nickel silver lineguards, which had either needed straightening out or replacing and to counter this the Hardy’s made a bold move. They made a heavy, solid nickel silver rim for their reel and attached it to the frame using heavy nickel silver pillars. This proved so much stronger that the original fine wire lineguard was gone forever.

But even this change had an extremely limited life as towards the turn of the century the Hardy’s development of their Brass Perfect took them to making the reel’s rim out of solid brass instead of nickel silver. Brass Perfects with a solid, heavy, nickel silver rim are extremely rare.

Now they had a robust, well proven reel to sell in a range of ¼” steps from 2 ¼” to 5 ¼” with a giant 6” weighing 46 ounces and year on year demand for it increased.

Jess Miller

Perfecting the Perfect IV

Immediately before 1900 the advent of alloy, as unstable as it was back then, signalled a massive change in reel making was arriving.

But before the change to alloy could take place there was one problem to overcome. The angling public were both used to and happy with brass.

When Hardy’s made their first alloy Perfects they found their models met with total resistance, hence the earliest examples (see illustration) are extremely rare with only half a dozen of these ever having been seen.

To counter this resistance a reel with an alloy frame and a brass face was tried and this the public found to be far more acceptable.

We are able to plot the history of this change, especially that of the contracted (narrow drum) trout Perfects, from some notes written by J.J.Hardy in his Director’s copy of the 1899 catalogue. These record changes in reel weights with the wide drum salmon reels getting lighter as the case was changed to alloy, but the face remained brass, and the contracted reels getting heavier as the face was changed back to brass from alloy.

With the advent of the brass face Perfects came a change in check mechanism in 1906 with a large brass piece being employed, held by four screws, to house the pawl.

Brass Faced Perfects became hugely popular as the Hardy Brothers expanded their business across the globe and were offered for the first twelve years or so of the 20th century. Still experimentation was great and we have seen brass faced Perfects in transitional stages, with similar large and small perforations in the drum to the brass Perfects and an example with a solid black ebonite drum and others with solid alloy drums.

These are the rarer models.

Diameters of five inches and larger or of two and seven eighths inches (the Houghton dry fly reels) or less are highly sought after. Six inch models in brass and brass faced exist and perhaps Hardy’s made even larger diameter reels than this as ‘one offs’ for Scandinavian salmon fishing or Mahseer fishing in India. These are extremely rare and sooner or later one or two of them are bound to surface.

Jess Miller

Perfecting the Perfect V

What makes a Brass Faced Perfect rare?

First we should look at the Transitional models, when brass was in its transitional stage as alloy came into reel production. These are reels with brass faces, brass drums and alloy reel frames, the drums usually having the large and small perforations the same as with Brass Perfects. More of these have been seen in wide drum trout sizes, such as 2 5/8” and 3”, than in salmon sizes. The salmon sizes seemed to make their transition to becoming brass faced with both an alloy reel frame and drum very quickly and are rare reels.

Salmon sizes with alloy drums with large and small perforations (the same as with most Brass Perfects) are rare and today the Contracted Brass Faced Trout Perfects, made around 1900 and during the first years of the 20th century in sizes 3 1/8”, 3 3/8”, 3 5/8” and 3 7/8” with 1896 check mechanisms are highly sought after.

In my large format Dunkeld Collection catalogue of 1987 I wrote about a mountain of old tackle lying about Britain with which dealers and collectors had been having a field day, but that all of this ‘easy to find’ tackle would come to an end as it became dissipated into collections across the world. The Contracted Brass Faced Trout Perfects were more common in the years preceding 1987, but are far rarer today with such a model in good condition commanding a price of up to £2000 or more.

Whether we are dealing with Brass, Brass Faced or alloy Perfects remember that left hand wind models are extremely uncommon, especially in Brass or Brass Faced.

Another section of rarity in Brass Faced Perfects are those with solid drums of either alloy or brass, the latter being extremely rare. Also if you come across a model with a fixed check (no rim tension adjuster) do not think someone forgot to include it in the reel’s manufacture! It was deliberate and this is a rare reel!

As I mentioned in my last column size is almost everything when it comes to rarity. Either 2 1/2” or less or examples of 5” or more are rare and we have also seen a Brass Faced Perfect with a solid ebonite drum. Experimental? A ‘one-off’? For whatever reason it was made this is a reel that is extremely rare and demonstrates the anomalies that exist even though ‘mass’ production was creeping into Hardy’s manufacturing performance more and more. These anomalies are pure gold to the serious collector and should be secured, almost at all costs. However even the standard salmon models that can still be found in mint condition, perhaps in their original Hardy block leather cases that are becoming so sought after, are becoming rarer as time goes by.

Further articles will be published here as available for your enjoyment