I recently bought a Pac Bay vented 18mm spinning reel seat and was very impressed with the beauty and light weight of it. I didn`t realize that because of the rosewood insert the I.D.was only a little over 1/2". Of course this won`t fit over the s glass Lami I wanted to use it on. I don`t know whether I want to chance reaming the hole in the rosewood or buying a thinner blank. Has anyone successfully bored out a wood insert? It looks like I have 1/8" to play with

Peter,
Put the seat in a lathe head stock and use the head stock to spin the seat.
Use a ball bearing rod support to stabilize the end of the reel seat to keep it perfectly centered.
Then, put the appropriate sized bore in the tail stock and ream it out with precision.
A trivial task if you use this method.

If you don't have the lathe, then take the reel seat over to your favorite machine shop and have them ream it to the correct size.

p.s.
If you have any doubts at all about the method used to do the boring, practice first on an inexpensive throw away reel seat.

Roger



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2012 12:37PM by roger wilson.

You didn't say if a little or a lot of wood needed to be removed from the ID of the insert. I agree with what Roger said, bit if you are only talking about a very small amount, a rat tail file will also work. I'd be lost without my rat tail files. I find them very useful.

Jerry