Broke 5:1 Jigmaster gears

[Decker]

Feel like a kid that has just learned a hard lesson - stupid and regretful.   I was getting ready for a cod trip, and wanted to transfer braid from another reel, to my 99 Jigmaster with 5:1 gears.   The braid on the other reel was like cotton candy - not put on tightly and very fluffy.   I was determined to wind it onto my 99 tightly, so was pulling it against the other reel's drag.  The braid would bind up occasionally.  Looking back, I the 99 gears seemed to mesh a little roughly under the strain, but I thought nothing of it, until there was a sound and a skip in the cranking.   Oh crap.  

I haven't disassembled the reel yet, but judging by the revolutions and the apparent "miss" when cranking, the pinion has a broken tooth (or two).   The gears are older Pro Challenger 5:1.   Of course, both main and pinion would need to be inspected for damage and wear.  

Assuming the main is salvageable, is it possible to find/buy just the pinion somewhere?  

I've heard that the Penn 505/506 gears were vulnerable, but didn't expect this.   Are other Jigmaster 5:1 gear sets stronger?

Luckily, I have a pile of standard steel-toothed Jigmaster head plates available for my trip. I was hoping to have the 5:1 ratio for fishing up to 300 feet deep, but will just have to put in the extra work  

[Bryan Young]

I suspect that your main gear went first.  In either case, yes, you will need a new gear set.

[Gfish]

I've heard that the 505/506 5:1 gears(ss pinion + brass main?) shred easier than the standard 4:1. Not heard bout the PC gears doing that. Oh-oh, got one set in a 501.
4:1 gives you better torque. Maybe the amount of work done will be equal, just be more time to put in cranking-up.

[Decker]

Don't make a judgement about the PC gears.  They came to me 2nd hand so, who knows.  Maybe they were already worn.  The guy who sold me the reel said they were of an older generation.  I'll take it apart and post pics next week.

[mo65]

It's hard to believe the gears would bust just by cranking line on against the other reel's drag, but stranger things have happened. I'll go with this just being a freak accident. The 5:1 gears probably would shred before the 4:1 set, but looking at this realistically, even the 5:1 Jiggy gear teeth are way more robust than say Ambassadeur gear teeth, and those things survive very well at pressures equal to Jigmaster power. I don't have any 5:1 sets around Joe...like you I have 4:1 parts...I'd slap one of those sets in and see if it really slows the reel all that much. Anxious to see under the hood...holler if ya need any help.

[Rancanfish]

There was another gear maker selling stuff on ebay that were pretty low quality SS. Could this be a set of those?  I have never shredded a gear set and I do lots of dumb stuff.  I dumped the low quality gear set.

[jurelometer]

Cranking hard on the handle moves the shafts out of alignment.  Helical gears will ride away from each other transferring somewhere between 7-10% of the radial load to axial (thrust).  Higher gear ratios with these reels requiuires  smaller teeth, smaller teeth mean less tooth overlap and thinner teeth.  Put it all together and you end up with just the corner  of one tooth of the main gear digging Ito the middle of the pinion under high high load.   Helical gears are supposed to spread the load across multiple sets of teeth, but that only works when the shafts are  well aligned, which is never the case with a classic gear sleeve design under load.

Harder gears only buys you a little protection.  Alignment is what is most important.  By using lower gear ratios, and with a lower max drag, the stock reels didn't shred gears too much  despite the poor shaft support on the gear sleeve.

So if you want 5:1 gears in your jigmaster, any gear set will be at risks of shredding.  Hardened gears will do a bit better. I don't see this necessarily being a bad gear set.  It is sort of like putting a supercharger on your Chevy, taking it to the drag strip.  The blower manufacturer imay not be responsible for your engine blowing up 


We went through this in excruciating detail here:   http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=31537.0 the details start about page three or four.   

Lots of good comments from Sal on testing these gear sets.   He found that damage mostly occurs from winding.

-J

[jurelometer]

In regards to packing braid, I am  in the camp that more tension is not always better.   

1.  (Gel spun polyethylene) braid has very little stretch.  Extra tension doe not decrease the diameter.

2. What you do manage to stretch into to the braid turns into creep over time, decreasing the diameter of the the filaments, making the  line weaker.

3. You won't be able to repack under that heavy a tension when fishing, so at least the top half is going to end up being be packed looser anyways.

4. The reason  a levelwind doesn't dig in or birds nest braid, even though you don't tension it when winding is that the line is packed with an agressive cross hatch by the  levelwind.  I have found that it was not hard to train myself  to do something similar when fishing jigmaster sized reels.  I also do the same when loading reels. 

With my tall narrow fly reels on the  bottom side of the rod, I find  impossible to cross hatch effectively when fighting a fish , These reels get some digging in of the braided backing if I lose a big fish and wind in the backing without enough load.  The next big fish will dig in a little.  But it doesn't matter how tight the backing was originally packed at home...

I know that this contradicts what many folks here think is best practice.  It is possible that hard packing may make sense for your cow tuna reels, but for an classic pen star drag, you might just be wearing out your reel faster for little benefit.  Dunno....

-J

[Decker]

Cranking hard on the handle moves the shafts out of alignment.  Helical gears will ride away from each other transferring somewhere between 7-10% of the radial load to axial (thrust).  Higher gear ratios with these reels requiuires  smaller teeth, smaller teeth mean less tooth overlap and thinner teeth.  Put it all together and you end up with just the corner  of one tooth of the main gear digging Ito the middle of the pinion under high high load.   Helical gears are supposed to spread the load across multiple sets of teeth, but that only works when the shafts are  well aligned, which is never the case with a classic gear sleeve design under load.

Harder gears only buys you a little protection.  Alignment is what is most important.  By using lower gear ratios, and with a lower max drag, the stock reels didn't shred gears too much  despite the poor shaft support on the gear sleeve.

So if you want 5:1 gears in your jigmaster, any gear set will be at risks of shredding.  Hardened gears will do a bit better. I don't see this necessarily being a bad gear set.  It is sort of like putting a supercharger on your Chevy, taking it to the drag strip.  The blower manufacturer imay not be responsible for your engine blowing up 


We went through this in excruciating detail here:   http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=31537.0 the details start about page three or four.   

Lots of good comments from Sal on testing these gear sets.   He found that damage mostly occurs from winding.

-J

This makes a lot of sense.  I could tell something was going wrong before it happened; gears were turning but started to sound a little rough.   Bad alignment.  Wondering how that gets cured.  Guess I have some reading to do. 

[PacRat]

Most likely one of the cheap ebay gear sets. I never heard anything good about those.

I would send a photo to Alan (PC) and see if he recognizes them. I seem to remember that he may have had a bad heat-treat on one of the first batches. It wouldn't hurt to show them to Alan.

[Decker]

On the lighter side...   I should have at least gotten a bluefin tuna out of the deal.  I'll check the gears, but am almost sure that misalignment was the cause. I had a T-bar handle on it, and was packing the braid tight (in order to weaken it per Dave ).  Maybe this is why guys pay so much for SS internals and metal side plates.  No cod would have ever put up that fight   Can I buy a replacement plan on the the next set of gears?

[Gfish]

Agree; Dave's points make alota sense.
May not be relevant, but I've noticed that older Penn's, mostly non-ball bearing Senators and Long Beach's with the lower gear ratios, seem to be smooth and solid feeling no matter how old they are. Also, they usually don't have what I call "pinion rub"( turn handle in free spool and spool starts to spin too). This could be a function of those head-plate bushings made to extend part-way into the pinion, perhaps better keeping them in alignment.

[jurelometer]

Most likely one of the cheap ebay gear sets. I never heard anything good about those.

I would send a photo to Alan (PC) and see if he recognizes them. I seem to remember that he may have had a bad heat-treat on one of the first batches. It wouldn't hurt to show them to Alan.

As mentioned in my post, it is really hard to break gears that are not kept well aligned, and pretty easy to break any that aren't, especially shallow toothed helical gears.   Even the well-regarded Pro-Challenger 5:1s are not recommended in a 112H, which is the same guts as the Jigmaster, but with some additional load/leverage from the taller spool.  Take a stock Jigmaster, switch to 5:1 gears, add a longer handle arm and a bigger knob, crank down the drag, and you are up against the limits.  Improved materials just don't buy as much as we would think, because there is not much material holding the load.  While softer bronze or untempered stainless may fail slightly sooner, the hardened gears are going to keep driving themselves father apart until there is so little load bearing material bearing that a failure will still occur.   Kind of hard to stay on the safe side, unless you don't wind under heavy load.     Even the best made gears get shredded this way.

On the lighter side...   I should have at least gotten a bluefin tuna out of the deal.  I'll check the gears, but am almost sure that misalignment was the cause. I had a T-bar handle on it, and was packing the braid tight (in order to weaken it per Dave ).  Maybe this is why guys pay so much for SS internals and metal side plates.  No cod would have ever put up that fight  Can I buy a replacement plan on the the next set of gears?

Yeah, packing the line for a cod trip is not exactly going out in a blaze of glory

4:1 gears are your friend.  I suspect that the reel would be stronger for winding with a stock 4:1 bronze main gear than the best 5:1 stainless.   The stainless gear sleeve is nice to prevent the handle from getting loose, but I am skeptical that the stainless bridge plate would help much.  The problem is the sleeve design.  It  results in a long thin shaft supported only on one side.  Once the shaft flexes from winding load, the problems start.

Folks load up their reels with stainless parts because they like stainless parts. Some help a lot, some help a little, some are a step backwards.

You can still get by with 5:1, extra drag and a long handle arm if you baby it like a Stella on the pump and wind.   Once the reel is hotrodded for a specific purpose, you have to use it a bit differently.  That Chevy with a blower gets a great 1/4 mile time, but you can't treat it like your daily driver any more.

-J.

[Tiddlerbasher]

When Jerry Brown recommended 8-10lbs of drag for spooling braid I don't know how he came to that figure. Perhaps it was heuristic, if it was science based I'd like to see the test method and results.
When I built my line spooling machine I spent lots of hours playing with various levels of drag during spooling. I did notice very marginal differences in stretch factor for diffent braids (I mean REALLY marginal). Once you remove that stretch factor there is nothing to be gained from applying more drag. I do not have the equipment to measure the tiny amount of stretch in braid. I would really love to know the minimum drag level required to do the job. I have spooled reels with as little as 3 or 4 lbs of drag and the reels held as much line as when spooled at 10 lbs. I assume from this that the stretch has been eliminated at 3/4lbs
I do not sea fish anymore (at least not from a boat) but I will still spool the occasional reel for friends. No one has reported 'digging in' issues or anything else.
My personal use is mainly fly fishing. I do use hollow braid for backing - though I rarely see it
Braid for backing is spooled under firm finger pressure only. After a few trips I do strip off some of the backing, check it and rewind under firm finger pressure. It's not possible to do this while fishing.
I am sure many of us have 'stressed' our reels perhaps unnecessarily.
If someone has access to stress/stretch test equipment it would be reel cool to measure some samples of braid and determine what the actual stretch factor is.

[Ron Jones]

As much as I am a science and numbers man, I have to say that you would need to show me a LOT of data to convince me that Jerry Brown's heuristic conclusions were not valid. I was always under the impression that the tension is part of ensuring the line doesn't slip on the spool? Other than getting a few more yards on the spool I really can't see any other possible benefit. Any line will dig in to the lower layers if you don't do your job, at least it always has for me for the last 40 years. Dacron, mano, floro, braid, doesn't matter. Even level wind bass reels will do it if you don't do your part.

The Man