Sheck Exley Reel
Aluminum and plexiglass reel of Sheck Exley's. Bought at NSSCDS gear auction after his death and donated by Michael Poucher. Don't know where or when this reel might have been used. Note it is an enclosed reel to lessen the chance of snarling the line while deploying. The downside was they were subject to jamming if too much line was on the reel or it wasn't re-wound evenly on the reel.
May be a Wilson reel?
So, I have been looking upstuff on Forrest Wilson and he developed a reel specifically for cave diving with plexiglass sides so you could monitor the line left on the reel and I believe it was fully enclosed. Forrest showed a picture of one in his NSS Luminary presentation and it looked very similar. He and Exley were friends and dove together so this might be a Wilson reel.
I think you may be right
"Not all change is improvement...but all improvement is change" Donald Berwick
If it was not made by FW, it is his design
Richard Blackburn
All comments are my own.
reel
I was fortunate to be given a similar reel by Ed Smoak. He was a cave diver in the early days. I actually found him in a group picture at Diepolder in an old issue of the NSS-CDS newsletter but I can't locate it now. Of course, Sheck was in the photo too. The reel is now a wall hanger in my man cave.
Forrest built this one (the pink one, duh!) for me out of leftover parts in his basement assembly line, long after he'd stopped making them. It's the bomb-diggity.
I
Semper Fi, Cameron David Smith, my son, my hero. 11/9/1989 - 11/13/2010
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Wow. So cool!Originally Posted by sskasser
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