Alright, so I only pretty much work on torium/trinidad 30's size reels and above and have been having a heck of a time trying to find an off the shelf tool that works right out of the box for these larger reels.
Here are two off the shelf tools that were too small to fit on/around the spool:
1) Boca Spool Pin Pliers - $40.00
2) Hedgehog Studio Spool Pin Tool - $60.00
Here are two tools that I hoped I could modify to make work.
1) Watch Band Link Pin Remover - $7.00
2) Stainless Steel Hook and Eye Turnbuckle with Alumninum Body $7.00
The watch band link pin remover was also too small to work with these reels but I am pretty sure will work on smaller reels when you remove the adjustable base. The Turnbuckle required me fabricating some parts but havent had the time to make this happen.
After researching some other forums, I read about modifying a panavise with interchangeable jaws to create a tool to safely remove spool pins. This is what I ended up buying:
1. Panavise 381 with a vacuum base - $60.00
2. Spare set up of nylon jaws - $3.00
3. Set up steel jaws - $9.00 (didnt buy these yet)
4. Mini Steel Dowel 3/32 by one inch - .23 cents
Things to do:
I used a cutoff wheel to create notches in one side of the interchangeable nylon jaws. Remove both jaws from the vise (two screws hold each jaw in place) and measure out where we are going to drill a hole into face of the nylon jaw. This is where the dowel will sit. The dowel will be used to push the spool pin through the spool after making it sit flush with the spool. I used a 3/32 drill bit and only drill about a 1/4 deep, just deep enough to hold the steel dowel in place.
So here are the steps to remove a spool pin (using a trinidad 50 as an example)
Step 1. Rest the spool on top of the vise making sure the pin drops into one of the notches.
Step 2. When it sits flush in the notch, we can now slowly tighten the vise until the pin gets compressed by the closing of the vise and pushes the pin flush with the spool itself.
Step 3. Once the pin sits flush with the spool, we can loosen the vise and it should look like this:
Step 4. Place the steel dowel into the hole we made on the inside face of the vise and rest the spool again into the other notch in the vise so that the dowel lines up with the spool pin. It should look like this:
Step 5. When we compress the vise this time, the dowel finishes pushing the spool pin through the spool. When we open up the vise this time, its should look like this:
Step 6. Pretty straight forward what to do at this point in time
After cleaning and re-greasing/lubing your spool bearing, we pretty much just place the pin back into the hole in the spool and use the vise to make it sit even on both sides. The cool thing about this is works great on larger reels but can be easily modified to work on smaller reels as well. Also, the vise itself can be used for other things we end up tinkering with. Hope this helps...
