As cave explorations were becoming longer, deeper, and more extensive, a reel was needed that could help an explorer make some serious penetrations into a virgin cave system. Less likely to entangle than other reels on the market, Woody’s original reel was made of aluminum and a PVC spool. The side-handle style of the reel lent itself to exploration because it could easily switch from hand to hand while laying out line. Twenty years later, sidewinder-style reels were popularized in the technical diving community when DIR aficionados began using them for paying out line in deep caves at high speed on a DPV.