1959 Mitchell 300 with 330 spindle
Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2023 12:42 pm
Hi everyone,
I was taking some group photos of my small Mitchell 300 based reel collection the other day, and one of my nicest examples (though they are all great shape I'm pleased to add), is a 1959 Mitchell 300.
In packing them away again, I gave the 59 handle a good winding, and I noticed a slight regular glitch in it's operation.
It was only very slight and most would probably have left it as is, but it bugged my OCD too much to leave it (that inability to leave stuff alone has caused me some real problems in the past). I grabbed some spares from my similarly aged spares reels and went about changing each gear in turn, and the adding and removing shims; it was then I noticed it had 'OTO' stamped on the tail of the spool spindle; ah!, I thought; I know this to be from a 330 Otomatic model, and the oscilator plate holes on these are drilled slightly off from a 300, so I swapped it out with the correct standard 300 spindle, and voila' perfect operation!
Does anyone here know if there have been any original factory models that have been fitted with parts from other models? Everything else ties in with the time, so I wondered if it was a mistake at the factory; can't think why someone would need to change the spindle? I suppose if it were dropped maybe, but this reel is virtually mint?
I was taking some group photos of my small Mitchell 300 based reel collection the other day, and one of my nicest examples (though they are all great shape I'm pleased to add), is a 1959 Mitchell 300.
In packing them away again, I gave the 59 handle a good winding, and I noticed a slight regular glitch in it's operation.
It was only very slight and most would probably have left it as is, but it bugged my OCD too much to leave it (that inability to leave stuff alone has caused me some real problems in the past). I grabbed some spares from my similarly aged spares reels and went about changing each gear in turn, and the adding and removing shims; it was then I noticed it had 'OTO' stamped on the tail of the spool spindle; ah!, I thought; I know this to be from a 330 Otomatic model, and the oscilator plate holes on these are drilled slightly off from a 300, so I swapped it out with the correct standard 300 spindle, and voila' perfect operation!
Does anyone here know if there have been any original factory models that have been fitted with parts from other models? Everything else ties in with the time, so I wondered if it was a mistake at the factory; can't think why someone would need to change the spindle? I suppose if it were dropped maybe, but this reel is virtually mint?