Hello all,

I've recently purchased the AT Aero reel seats and really like using them. For some reason I've found that I can't seem to ream the reel seat arbor concentrically, even by hand. What kind of method do you guys use to ream these ergonomic style reel seats?

Thanks!

Lee,
The best advice that I can give anyone with respect to achieving a concentric hole is to wear a pair of cloth or jersey gloves.

The reason for this is that about every other stroke of the reamer, you need to rotate the item a bit in your item holding gloved hand.

The reason to use a glove is that if you are using a variable speed drill for your reaming, you may have an incident where the item catches and spins in your hand. The glove keeps the item from burning your hand or ripping up your hand.

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But the secret to concentric reaming is to be continuously letting the item turn a bit as you are reaming the item. By having the item turn a bit as you are reaming, the very fact of the item rotating - will tend to keep the reamed hole concentric.

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Also, if the reel seat that you are reaming is a bit oversize - either before or after reaming glue the poly arbor into the reel seat. The poly arbor is much much easier to ream than a nylon reel seat.

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For myself, I use a round file for most of my reaming chores. I chuck the file into a cordless variable speed drill and run the rile counter clockwise when reaming. You want to turn the file in the direction that is opposite from the screw direction on the file surface. If you make a mistake and have the drill turning clockwise, it is quite likely that the file will screw itself into the object being reamed and if the item does not slip - it will quite likely split open from the force of the screwed in file.

I have a variety of file sizes so that I can start small and use larger files to successfully ream and keep the holes centered in the object that I am reaming.

Best wishes

Masking tape....

_______________________________
God Bless, Don Morse

800-516-1750 ext. 1207 / don@americantackle.us

Rod Building..... It's What We Do.

Don,
Can you explain how you use masking tape to insure a concentric hole caused by a reamer?

Roger,

Thank you for the in depth response! I didn't thinking about rotating counter clockwise to keep the file from digging into the Arbor. I will try what you recommended on my next build, thank you!

Lee

Lee,
This is my set of files that I use for all of my reaming.

I am sure that I have used them for 40 years, and they are the same files that I started with.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

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To prep the files, I take my chop saw with its abrasive cut off wheel and cut the handle tang off of all of the files.

Then, I chuck the tip end of the file into a variable speed drill.

Then, with the end of the file slipped into a ball bearing, I hold the ball bearing with the spinning file on the inside against a spinning coarse grit belt sander, or a 60 grit spinning grind stone wheel.

I keep a caliper handy, and when I get the end 2- inches of the file down to a uniform 1/2 inch - i STOP.

This will give me a perfectly accurate 1/2 inch end on the file so that I can chuck the turned down file into the chuck of a 1/2 inch variable speed drill for any sort of reaming chores that I wish to ream..

Best Wishes.

If you use tape you don't need an arbor therefore you don't need to ream an arbor. Tape arbors will always be concentric.