I've got a couple of machined reels from Bass Pro that I've picked up over the years, and one of them was missing the medallion that functions as a spindle cap. I tried to see if I had any coins small enough, and looked through
other previous
threads featuring nylon hole plugs, but figured I'd try a different approach on this one.
Inspired by the wood spindle caps on some classic Abel trout reels I sourced some oak from an old pallet, then sawed and sanded it to size.
Here's the reel with the void.
And here is the source of the replacement, with the disk in progress
placed on the wood.
And here it is stained, varnished and in place, pictured next to a twin reel.
As I don't see any information on these reels here, I'll add a few notes.
They are fully machined reels, with nice wood handles, stacked offset disk drag, brass inner workings, and not bad pieces of fishing equipment. Bass Pro sold them under the White River Fly Shop name using Conservationist, CV, and Classic as the model name.
They were made in Korea.
One strike against them is that when they sold new, they cost as much as an Orvis Battenkill Bar Stock reel. Having both, I'd say the Orvis is the nicer reel as it seems to have tighter tolerances. The secondary market backs this up, with the BBS selling at or above their initial MSRP and the White River reel at about a third of the price.