Testing star drag with luggage scale

[Decker]

A washer under the gear sleeve will not gain you any more drag. All your drag happens above the ratchet on the bottom of the gear sleeve

Ted, I wasn't looking at that for drag.  Now that I think of it, the sleeve only moves for reeling.

[jurelometer]

It appears the purpose of this acetal under-star washer is to provide an extended range of light-to-moderate drag at the lower end of the spectrum. Sure, it will bottom out eventually...but how much pressure is being exerted on the drag stack at that point, versus when a traditional all-metal spring arrangement bottoms out? More pressure? Less? Exactly the same? Be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison.

You can get stainless Belleville springs in all sorts of different strengths.  How many you use and how you orient them also affects the clamping load to travel ratio.  Stainless Bellevilles are frequently used in light drag reels.

More details:

I looked around, and couldn't find any spring load ratings for acetal bellevilles. One manufacturer stated that they were used for pre-loading (situations where you need to  maintain some minimal tension when the connection is loosened).

The clamping load to travel ratio on bellevilles ramp up quite aggressively once you get past halfway in travel, so you generally want to only lightly load the springs to get any of the so-called fine tuning effect. Properly stacking more light and thin stainless Bellevilles will give you more consistent ramp up at lower settings than a couple of chunky acetals taking up the same amount of space.

All the star drag reels with stainless bellevilles  that I have used have no problem in fine tuning at lighter settings.  Actually, the problem is usually too many turns needed, not too few.  Many of my fly reels use stainless bellevilles. I have never seen a plastic spring washer in a fly reel.    Light class tippet protection is a big deal with fly reel design.

Finally, "fine tuning" of drag settings is a bit of a fools errand unless you are working with a very short amount of line out.  Friction along and across the line and the velocity of the line can greatly  affect the load at the fishes end, and will continuously vary during the fight, not to mention the increase in drag from effective spool diameter decreasing as line goes out.

It is more important to avoid a big jump from a small adjustment at the high end than to be able to more easily make an insignificant adjustment at the low end.

Having to spin the star five or six revolutions  instead of one to go from your minimum  to maximum useful setting makes it more tricky to hit a desired setting in the heat of battle.  More and more saltwater fly reels are going to one to two revolutions from zero to max drag for this reason.


-J

[Keta]

My goal when tinkering with drag stacks was 75% smoothness, 25% increase.  A jerky drag is a bad drag.

[jurelometer]

I'm not going to invest anything into the lightweight belvilles, but I might try to find some heavy stainless steel ones to smooth out the drag adjustment later.  Seems like the springiness would be more valuable for maintaining drag pressure while loosening, but my focus right now is on tightening, looking to determine the reasonable max (but not get "maxed out" ).

The only things that springs in  the stack do is alter the number of turns it takes to achieve a certain clamping force, and how progressively the force ramps up with each revolution.

Stronger springs means the adjustment will not be too sudden at higher settings.

This is all new to me.  Although I've followed posts here about drag matters, this is my first time applying distilled AT.com knowledge. Here's what I'm thinking:

• The area of the carbontex drag disks is relatively small. They are the same size as Penn 114 (not 114H). They could be slightly bigger in the middle (around the sleeve), but I'm guessing most of the force is applied to the outside of the disk, so not much would be gained from a tighter fit.  Also, they are only .5mm thick, so there's not much room for compression.
  
  

It depends on what your goal is.  A larger surface area will generally help with smoothness and heat dissipation.

If your goal is maximum drag -  sliding friction is not a function of surface area.  What matters for the amount of work being done is the coefficient of friction (smoothness), compressive force, and distance travelled.  A greater diameter means more distance travelled per revolution.  So the larger both the OD and ID are, the  greater the average distance traveled per revolution is. A very large disk with a large inside hole actually gives you the most drag for a given clamping load.

• I'll disassemble it later and check the ears.  As I mentioned before, the ring on the inside bottom was sanded off, and the ear slots were drilled down, so the clearances should be good. Three things I'd like to check: 1) that the top eared washer is actually grabbing the top edge of the gear, not sliding,  2) that the first eared washer is getting as far down as possible, and 3) that the ears are standing up to the torque.
• My experience in hand-tightening to about 12 lbs., might mean that the belvilles have bottomed-out at that point, and that applying more torque to the star meant a small and difficult compression of the carbontex (using tools).  Might heavier belvilles be useful here? It may be working as well as it can with the current design.  There is no option that I'm aware of for a bigger star.

Stronger springs give you more travel for the same clamping load increment at higher settings.  This is mostly going to help with adjustability, but it will help a little bit with setting as you are doing less work per degree of revolution. Not sure how noticeable this will be.

• Interesting about the under-gear possibility of melting.  My target usage is for deep bottom fishing in depth of 300-600 ft on the NE US Atlantic Coast.  This reel will work well for jigging there as well.  So the Delrin is a no-no for tuna runs, but would probably work fine for deep-dropping. If I happen to hook a a bluefin or swordfish by-catch (I should be so lucky,) the reel may blow up.  Good to know.
• How does the 1:3 drag:line strength ratio apply for my intended fishing?

Same.  The safety factor needed is more a function of how much line you have out than anything else.  Plus maybe knot strength, plus maybe the actual vs. nominal breaking strength.   If you do run at higher drag settings, you also have to worry about stuff like hook strength.  All of the recommended tackle for a given line class for a given fishery is prefaced on the assumption that you are using the 1/3 line class rule for drag settings.

I routinely fish at maybe 70% of nominal breaking strength when fly fishing for grouper and snapper in shallows.  It is a short line scenario- ideally no more than 70 feet of line out if I want to have a chance.  Lots of bad stuff happens, but it is doable.

• My close friend Claude told me that the higher retrieve ratio of the reel works against drag strength.  This reel has a 4.2:1 ratio.  It would be interesting to compare this reel to one with stock gears and the same 5-stack and I may do that in the future.

Sort of.  This is only on reels where the drag is on the far end of the gearing system, which is all star drag reels, and usually not spinners or lever drags.  Gears are essentially rotating levers, so the spool has leverage against the main gear housing the drag stack.  The greater the gear ratio, the greater the leverage.

Anyway, it is fun to see how far this reel can be pushed.  I have a 400H and 600H waiting in the wings.

P.S. Does anyone put a washer between the gear sleeve and bridge? Or just heavy grease?

I think Sal was an advocate for doing some shimming here if needed to remove some extra play, but I am not sure of the value.  This is normally not a load bearing surface.  That stupid pin in the sleeve is handling the axial load - which is just from the angler moving the sleeve in and out while winding.  Works well enough I guess.

If you do shim it, leave some free play or you will accelerate wear on the pin and /or stud.

The use of a gear sleeve  is really the Achilles heel of classic star drag design.   Worked well enough until braid came along, but all of our hot rodding doesn't address this, as it pretty much requires replacing most of the design.

-J

[Decker]

Thanks again, J! Does the handle "Jurelometer" refer to the fish?

[jurelometer]

Jurel > Spanish name for yellowtail jack. My favorite target species.

ometer > refers to measurement-my obsession with a scientific approach, or according to other folk here, simply a measurement of actual fishing conditions. As in,  "Jurelometer caught one with his stupid fly rod today, eveyone else must be getting easy limits" 

-J

[Decker]

The use of a gear sleeve  is really the Achilles heel of classic star drag design.  Worked well enough until braid came along, but all of our hot rodding doesn't address this, as it pretty much requires replacing most of the design.

-J

I'd like to understand this in more detail.  Is the weakness because of the bearing surfaces of the sleeve?  If so, the amount of "heat" put on those surfaces must be limited to the cranking  "elbow grease" of the angler, right?  I guess I'd be concerned for an electric reel.  For a classic reel, would there be a heat build-up on the sleeve/spindle when cranking, say 5lbs of lead, or the same with a 50lb fish up from 600+ feet?  Just speculating... To be honest, I don't have experience doing that, but would like to be prepared for the event. Yes, I'm nutty enough to try it.

[jurelometer]

The use of a gear sleeve  is really the Achilles heel of classic star drag design.  Worked well enough until braid came along, but all of our hot rodding doesn't address this, as it pretty much requires replacing most of the design.

-J

I'd like to understand this in more detail.  Is the weakness because of the bearing surfaces of the sleeve?  If so, the amount of "heat" put on those surfaces must be limited to the cranking  "elbow grease" of the angler, right?  I guess I'd be concerned for an electric reel.  For a classic reel, would there be a heat build-up on the sleeve/spindle when cranking, say 5lbs of lead, or the same with a 50lb fish up from 600+ feet?  Just speculating... To be honest, I don't have experience doing that, but would like to be prepared for the event. Yes, I'm nutty enough to try it.

All star drags are not the best for heat transfer, with the drag washers nested inside of a gear, but with modern carbon fiber disks, they work fine for most situations heat wise. The drag usually runs for a couple minutes at most before a period of cooling. And gear sleeve vs. solid shaft does not come into play here.

The problem with the gear sleeve design is that it is a crappy gear shaft.  This part is a hand driven main gear shaft, which means that the it should have minimal radial freeplay (so that the gear teeth mesh cleanly with minimal backlash required), plus it has to stay aligned with the driven (pinion) shaft under load.  The proper way to do this is to use a solid shaft supported with bearings at both ends. Duh....

Most modern star drag reels use this solid main shaft design with some bone-headed exceptions (Hello Accurate Tern!)

Some Mechanical Design 101:

One of the worst (in terms of function) ways to design a main gear shaft is to peen a post onto a plate and stick a gear sleeve on top of it that is entirely unsupported on one side.  This is especially a problem with helical gears (pretty much all star drag gears are helical) as the curved tooth path converts a decent chunk of the radial load to axial load, eventually causing the gear teeth to climb up against each other, resulting in angular load on the shafts. The unsupported end of the sleeve/gear post gets levered out of alignment, and the teeth shred, or the dog shreds or gets under the ratchet.  We generally blow up our hot rodded gear sleeve reels by winding under load.  Why it happens from winding vs drag involves a bunch more details that is covered in a thread here somewhere.

Unless there is a good reason not to, a properly designed gear shaft isa simple axle supported on both ends, using bearings if the shaft is supposed to turn.  Not that tricky. 

So why were so many star drag reels designed with gear sleeves?  My guess is that back in the day when bearings were expensive and precision machining was not automated, a gear sleeve system was cheaper to manufacture and plenty strong enough for the pre monofilament lines of the day.  Over the years, the reel companies just added beefier gear sleeves to compensate for this weakness on some newer models (like the Penn Mag Power series).  Cheaper to beef up the existing design than start from scratch.  Eventually, one of the larger manufacturers (Shimano?) bit the bullet and went to solid shafts, and the rest had to follow suit, especially since braid got added to the equation.

-J