North Branch Reels | Machining of classic style fly reels

Time 2020-12-30 20:03:54

Web Name: North Branch Reels | Machining of classic style fly reels

WebSite: http://northbranchreels.com

ID:151232

Keywords:

Reels,Machining,North,

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Another reel by Terry from Idaho. He has been busy designing and making one-off reels for his own use. I think this one is just slightly larger than his first reel. Pictures and captions below by Terry.Here a 1-1/4” long piece of aluminum is being cut off of a 12” long billet of 3.5” diameter 6061 aluminum in my horizontal band saw.Editor s comment: For someone just starting out in reel making, a metal cutting bandsaw does not have to be at the top of your tool list. Vendors like Online Metals will cut bar stock to custom lengths.This is the reel frame mounted in the rotary table set vertically on on my milling machine.Now about ½ of the sides are cut out of the reel frame. Note the 2 holes drilled in the top of the reel frame to the right of the area that has already been cut out. These holes are the alignment for the milling cutter to start to cut out the right side of the reel frame.Photo of the side of the reel standing on the reel foot. Inside of the reel frame showing the Delrin pawl and spring.The reel spool. You can just barely see the Delrin clicker gear on the right side of the spool. The reel frame and cap screw are in the background.The brass cap screw.Interface of the reel foot and frame. On this reel, I cut a radius in the bottom of the reel foot that fits the outside radius of the reel frame. I think this makes the reel slightly stronger since I did not remove any material from the outside of the reel frame so the reel foot could fit in a slot. This just leaves a little more depth of aluminum material where the screws that hold the reel seat in place pass through the frame.Editor comment: This is a small but important detail. The securing screws need to have about 3 threads engagement into the reel frame, and making the interface curved helps. It is also possible to turn the screws around, threading into the foot from inside the frame. I did this on my Reel 37 . Had to fabricate a long countersink to reach across the frame.The reel with a machinists scale laying across the top to give you some reference as to the actual size of the reel (3.25” diameter).Here all 4 of the reels I have completed so far. The newest reel is at the bottom right of the photo. In two earlier posts, I have shown tool rests that I made for my 6 inch grinder to help with lathe bit grinding. These have been satisfactory for grinding the end and side cutting edges, but are inadequate support for grinding the top rake angles (side rake, back rake). I have been influenced by an article that shows how to take advantage of the slightly concave surface that a 6 inch wheel makes on bit surfaces. When this concave surface is stoned, the stone touches just at the top and bottom of the surface, making a cutting edges at the median angle of the ground surface. View the article to see some excellent pictures of the effect of stoning.Here is my new setup. The grinder tool rest is replaced by a guide for tool holders.Note the catch pan for grinding debris, a big help in clean-up.During grind, bits are carried by holders that are guided by the base. Here is a protractor holder for end and side cutting edges and two other holders for the top surface (side rake and back rake).The protractor makes end and side relief angles of about 9 degrees and adjustable side and end cutting angles. The other two holders make 15 degree back rakes and 15 degree side rakes, one holder for right cutting bits and the other for left cutting.This is the back of the protractor showing the step that keeps it at constant distance from the wheel.Here the protractor is used for an end grind.And here it is used for side grind. For a shallow angle, this must be done with some care as it is possible to wedge the bit and stall the grinder motor.The two holders for top surface grind have grooves to position the cutter for the compound angle (side rake and back rake) that is needed.At first thought, it seems that the right cutter and left cutter top surface guides should be mirror images. But my grinder motor interfered with any approach to the wheel from its right side so both of these work from the left side of the wheel.These sketches help to explain the side rake grinds.Here the right cutter guide is being used to make the side and back rake angles.And here the left cutter guide finishes a top surface.Finally, two newly ground tools.Yet to be made are two more holders for aluminum cutting bits that will have 35 degree back rake.Update 28 Oct 2020: Here are the four holders for grinding tool top surfaces. All are 15 degree side rake (per the sketches above). The front two are 35 degree back rake for aluminum and the back two are 15 degree back rake for steel. The notches at one corner are needed for clearance from the wheel. DIY anodizing of aluminum parts is a practical process for home shop reel makers. These earlier posts provide background:Technical Data on Anodizing.Water Cooled CathodeCool waterI anodize reel parts in a 32 ounce polypropylene jar, and the lid assembly has several features. A reel spool is suspended from the lid by an aluminum rack , which both supports the spool and provides an electrical path.Also visible here are 3 tubes: the big looped tube passes cooling water through the acid solution, an open ended tube is for bubbling air to keep the solution stirred, and a closed end tube is for temperature sensing. These three tubes are electrically connected together to serve as the cathode.Here is the acid jar with lid and an auxiliary jar for ice and cold water. A small 12 volt dc pump circulates water between the jars. Two additional connections are provided on the cold water jar, a normally plugged outlet for system drain and an overflow for excess melt water.This is the complete setup, adding a current controlled power supply, an aquarium air pump for bubbling, my new temperature controller, and an IR temperature gun for casual monitoring.Before I made the controller, I kept a glass thermometer in the closed end tube and turned on the pump when the temperature reached 21 deg C, and turned it off again at 19 deg C. This required constant vigilance during the one hour process.This is a close-up of the controller, it is just a resistor bridge (one leg is a thermistor in the closed end tube), a voltage comparator, and a power transistor to switch the pump. This automatic control makes running the process much more pleasant; I can leave my garage for a while (88 deg F in the summer) and just periodically check on whether ice should be added to the auxiliary jar.When the process is started, the acid needs to already be at 20 deg C (68 deg F). I get it there by holding it in an insulated chest with some blue ice for about an hour.Recently I had been getting some cosmetic failures of the process, dark smudges under the anodize coating. I have been able to eliminate these by switching from titanium to aluminum for the anode rack. Not sure why the smudges were developing; I was using grade 2 titanium and so not introducing rogue metals. I finally sold my Sherline lathe, my first machine tool. I could do this because I have made enough upgrades and fixtures for my newer minilathe to produce all reel parts with just it and my mill.The last consideration was making a thin (.110 inch) disk as the blank for the front end ring. To do this with the Sherline lathe I bought soft jaws for the 3 jaw chuck. The jaws step was .080 inch and that was enough to firmly hold the disk.More about soft jaws at this post: Custom Jaws.This would be a good solution for the minilathe also, but there seems to be no source for minilathe soft jaws. I found a good article on DIY soft jaws: Harold Hall s Soft Jaws. But I did not pursue this because it appears to require a surface grinder.Instead, I have made a chuck spider.This is the spider: a hockey puck with milled grooves to clear the jaws. It works with diameters from 2.25 to 3.0 inch.I had made a similar spider to use with the Sherline 3 jaw chuck, but it was a loose part in the chuck-spider-work assembly and did not work very well (i.e., disk sides did not come out as parallel as I wanted). The improvement here is a draw bolt to keep the spider firmly against the chuck face.To make the final facing cut on the spider, I removed the chuck jaws and held the spider against the chuck face with just the draw bolt.And it worked, I got a disk with sides parallel to .001 inch.The spider has a witness mark for angular positioning on the chuck. This eliminates the effect of any chuck face axial run-out. I have had reason to single-point some threads recently. This was motivation to further improve my Minilathe so that threading is easier.First, the spindle that carries the intermmediate cluster gear needs a brass shim (oblong) to bring the two meshes into axial alignment. The shim here is .062 inch thick. If this is not done, some gear arrangements are bound up with gear faces rubbing. The same axial alignment would be achieved with a simple round washer shim under the mounting plate for this spindle, but this would also reduce the space available for puller jaws.I also replaced the thin washer at the nut with a thicker one.I am not so bold as to try threading under power; there is not enough control. Fortunately, Little Machine Shop sells this spindle crank, part 3897.Pull the line cord plug while you have this installed.The plastic first gear and last gear (A and D) require a puller to remove. I bought this one at the auction site, but it was entirely unworkable.Here I have modified the puller to make it easy to use.1. Discard the two cross bolts.2. Grind the jaws at the end of the arms so they are thin enough to get behind the gears.3. Install two pins in the cross bar so the arms do not fall off.4. Cut off the flimsy tommy bar and replace it with a knob.Finally, I made my own chart of change gears.Note that there are two setups for 1 mm pitch, one if you have bought the 21 tooth gear from Little Machine Shop and a somewhat less accurate setup if you do not have it. None of the the metric pitches are exact, but close enough for most purposes. The last column of the chart shows the ratio to true pitch. When I first got a lathe, I bought a group of randomly selected turning tools from the auction site. These two were a mystery to me and I never tried to use them.This morning I was browsing through Youtube videos and I came across this one: Making Grooving Boring BarsDuh. They cut an internal groove, as you might want for an o-ring. Might be useful on a reel where the o-ring is a substitute for a tolerance ring , allowing a low precision press fit.The small one makes a 3/32 wide groove and the bigger one makes 1/8. 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