I’ve got one more installment for you on drags – pancake disc drags. These have their origin in spinning reel spools (fixed spool for the right side of the big pond).
They’re a stack of drag washers that get squeezed when you tighten the knob. In many, the spool spindle is part of the stack and rotates in pay.
These have one advantage that they can be a sealed drag, though the drag surface area is much smaller than the clamp full cork disc drags that began this thread.
Also needs some way to mesh with the spool, which is often incorporated in the clutch mechanism.
The Valentine disc drag is the simplest, the clutch is a Medalist-copy ratchet plate incorporated in the drag washer stack (in this reel, the spindle is fixed).
Ross Gunnison also has this type of drag and clutch, though in place of the spindle Gunnison has a free-spinning drum incorporating bearings for the spool.
This is my Redington RS 10-wt reel. It was made by Orvis/BFR, but Redington and Orvis had a legal falling out, and the Redington reels closed out cheaply.
In this case, the spindle is a rotating axle shaft, and spins to pay drag.
The pawl on the spool is simply a clicker, and clicks in both directions. The race for the pawl is fixed in the frame on top of the sealed drag housing.
The clutch is a roller-bearing in the spool, and you change direction using a spanner to free and flip the roller bearing.
Not a particularly great reel, functional, but the drag won’t stop a tarpon, and it did great for me catching blues and snapper at an offshore platform. It’s a good place to put that big TS-450 sinking line
The offset pancake drag is an Orvis invention, and copied on many freshwater reel designs, like this less than cheap offshore-manufactured Ross. Ross intended this for a starter reel, and they closed out quickly, because they were really bad.
I bought this reel for a loaner, and it’s not even good enough for that – on this poor reel, the drag is very uneven over its rotation, partly a design limitation, but more so poor Q/C. And whatever they have for a roller clutch drags in wind.
The tiny drag washer stack is beneath the offset drag adjustment knob, and the spool is keyed into the gear that meshes with the drag pay. Certainly Orvis makes some good reels with this design, and even the Tica copies aren’t bad in comparison to this less than starter Ross.
My ’92 Gunnison, I sold it after 20 years because I didn’t use it any more. I always called it the most reliable reel that was impossible to love. Even my last Alaska trip, left it at home in favor of a Young pattern 15a and Marquis 7.
You couldn’t pry my Valentine from my hands, and it’s perfect where I use it. The Abel I’m happy to have for its 12-wt niche.
Same goes for my Marryat from ’86, an absolutely perfect trout reel that both my daughters grew up fishing.
My Lamson LP-3.5 is here to stay, and has held up incredibly well for over 30 years in the salt (oops, that’s what I need to show, a caliper disc drag…)
But of all the drag reels I’ve handled, the subject of this thread, the CR-67, is the most impressive.
