Fixing Old Reels:

[Arturo]

My club owns 6 older Leon Paul reels. I was able to fix 3 of them (perfect working order)by interchanging parts. Is there anywhere that I could get replacement parts for the reels? Specificaly the springs and the wires.
How about for Uhlmann reels?
thanks
Arturo

[edew]

Try either Santelli or American Fencers Supply. They both sell the spring cassettes, as well as the wires. Uhlmann reels should probably be maintained by a capable person. I understand that the reels can come flying apart and hurt you in a bad way if you're not experienced with it.

[Arturo]

Thanks. We also have 4 reels that look like the alien ships in the original war of the worlds... any idea where I might find parts for those???

[edew]

If they're land-mine shaped, and have the wire come out of the top via a pulley, and when you open it up, you see a spinning arm rolling the wire back in, then it's a Prieur reel system. People say that the design of the Prieur is really elegant, but boy is there something about it which goes wrong when the time comes.

[neevel]

For Uhlmann reels, do you mean blue turtles or the old uprights? Blue Gauntlet can get any parts you need for Uhlmann turtles. Their reputation for being tough to work on comes not from any risk of popping apart (though any reel can do that if you open the spring case improperly) but from the fact that there are just a lot of screws and internal components you need to undo to perform many maintenance and repair tasks.

Are the land-mines fairly flat, five-footed, with plastic capstans (Prieur) or somewhat taller, 8-footed, and with metal capstans (Russian)? They both work on the same principle. American ought to be able to get parts for Prieurs, while Blade carries the Russian reels. The design allows the wires to be hard-soldered (no brushes, contact posts, etc.) which is nice, but the tight turns through the pulleys end up mandating a fairly thin (and hence none-too-robust) cable. Prieurs are rather lightly constucted in general. Russian reels have a more substantial case, but the cable is very poor quality. If you have a Russian reel with a bad cable, replace it with Prieur cable-- the stuff's still sub-optimal due to its lack of a sheath, but better than the Russian cable.


-Dave Neevel

[swordsen]

They are the old Prieur reels. I have fixed/jury rigged parts for them before. Good luck Art.