Paul wasn't claiming they were a great reel, only that they were usable off the clutch if you set them right.
You must also remember Paul that as a nipper the only reels there were available to us were centrepins, which you gained by swapping, trading for some item your mate wanted off you. Split the kipper knife comes to mind for one trade I made
Flying goggles were always a good trade for good tackle of the day. These being liberated from Clayton Vale Aeroplane Dump if you had the bottle to brave the guard dogs and the mad bloke who owned it.
How and why there was such a place in Clayton Vale is to this day a mystery to me, but there was. And it was full of stuff post war kids wanted, and if you had it, it fetched the best trades.
A bomb-sight quite easily would get you a near new air rifle off somebody. What the crates of brand new Rolls Royce Merlin Spitfire engines would have got us is anybody's guess....probably a tackle shop! But despite our cunning and ingenuity such thoughts never occurred to us!
But when the BP came on the market it was for us kids, a step into the space age, as they could cast a float right across the canal with ease without having to pull line from every eye and every finger you had on your free hand.