Help im going down the rabbit hole. working on building 9/0 tank.
should i polish on flat surface the metal drag washers to a mirror finish (lapping) or leave them as supplied?
thanks ll for starting me on this journey down the rabbit hole any advice gladly taken
Bill
I would say make them "flat" but not necessarily shiny.
I usually do it using 600 grit waterpaper.
Grinding them flat will greatly increase the contact surface with the drag material which will increase your reel's drag pressure.
I lap them until they are flat - 400/600 grit wet/dry on a glass sheet. When drag washers are stamped they have a slightly convex side and a concave side. I.e. one side will have a pronounced 'bump' in the middle while the other side has a pronounced raised 'edge'. Just lap them enough so that you get an even matt finish across each surface - you don't have to polish them. When they are laser (or water cut) - you don't have to do so much (any?) work. But it's still worth rubbing them over some fine wet/dry to check flatness. Just don't get too anal with them - drag systems tend to bed themselves in.
If you don't polish them flat just assemble them with all the metal washers curved the same direction. Curve up or curve down, either way works. I put them in with the curve down myself. On top of the drag stack you usually have a wavy washer that isn't flat anyway so I personally don't find any real difference. Rudy
I've had reels with below average drag power come to life by lapping the metal drag washers. A much more painless way to get there is to just buy ground flat washers from Smooth Drag or Mystic. 8)
Yup - totally agree Mo.
While Rudy does have a point regarding the curvature of the drag washers all being orientated the same way, for most people, trying to find out which way that curve is, you'd have to rub the washers over a flat abrasive to see which way the curve is. The engineer in me, says if you are going to go to this length, you might as well lap them all flat.
I have three grades of lapping paste, coarse medium and fine, and lap on sheets of glass, circular and figure of eight motions, and frequent changing of your contact point on the washer while grinding it in. Don't use too much paste at a single time, and clean the glass surface frequently. Don't lap over one small area on the glass surface, as it will get "dished out" pretty quick, and it won't help what you are trying to achieve, flat metal washers. I rarely polish the washers to a high shine, the dulled surface after the fine grit lap is fine (in star drags at least). I sometimes will polish a lever drag plate if I feel it needs it, but this is very occasional.
This process is messy, time consuming, and alas, sometimes doesn't make a perceivable improvement. Buying quality flat ones does sound more appealing....
just how much material does this process remove?
i.e., how quickly does it reduce washer thickness?
would it be ridiculous to try intentional "over-lapping", to turn a spinner 6-stack into a 10-stack?
...assuming that I also gain 2-3mm, by switching from plush felt (>>1mm) to to thinnest CF (0.5?)
Quote from: philaroman on April 14, 2019, 11:52:33 PM
just how much material does this process remove?
i.e., how quickly does it reduce washer thickness?
would it be ridiculous to try intentional "over-lapping", to turn a spinner 6-stack into a 10-stack?
...assuming that I also gain 2-3mm, by switching from plush felt (>>1mm) to to thinnest CF (0.5?)
You are looking at an awful lot of work to remove much more than 0.1mm, which is sometimes all you need, but usually its much less. How much you need to remove to achieve a (near) perfectly flat surface all depends on how your washers were stamped, and to the quality/condition of the punch used (assuming this is the process used to produce the washers in the first place, which would be MOST of the time).
Absolutely ridiculous to "overlap" to squeeze more washers into a stack. You'd have no skin left on the tips of your fingers! If you want to upgrade a complete stack, support the vendors here, and purchase their upgrade kits. The reason to go through all the trouble of lapping your stack is largely up to the individual. Felt/leather washers have a certain degree of "sponginess" (for want of a better term) even when under compression. Carbon fibre washers I find are a lot less forgiving, paticularly those laminated over a composite inner core. I have found that when exchanging washers there can be a resultant loss of uniformity of the drag tension as it is slipping. This can sometimes be put down to the meshing of the gears (in a star drag) or the metal drag surface(s) are not perfectly flat. It would only take a minute of rubbing your metals over a flat surface with an abrasive compound to reveal just how warped your metals really are. Try it sometime. You might be shocked to discover just how far out of being truly flat your metal drag washers really are. Even in lever drags, with lovely shiny surfaces on the metal drag plates. The vast majority of reels sold, do not have; even close to; flat metal drag washers.
It really comes down to the individual. Some can live with a certain amount of non uniformity of their drag pressure while it is slipping. Others can't. Personally I have it each way depending on the reel and what I am using it for. But when it comes to fast running fish on medium to high drags, I go for the smoothest drag I can possibly get, and I am prepared to do the extra work to get it. Same can also be said for ultra-light tackle, I go for the smoothest drag I can get. I have a number of clients, who fish light tackle, that send their reels to me to hone their drags to be the best they can be, before they put line on their reels.
Sorry for the long post, but this is the way I think about this situation with reel drags.
Also if you want a precision surface you can get a precision grinder for $800.00-$10,000.00 and really be sure you have 0.0001" of perfection.
Just joking. ;) ;D ;D
Joe
To somewhat echo what Chris said - Most of my fishing these days is freshwater fly fishing i.e. fairly light stuff. For this I use disc drag reels, both Orvis Battenkill and Kastking Katmai (sadly no longer produced). The Battenkill already has a cf drag which I grease. For the Katmai I swop out the originals for greased cf. Both of them get there discs lapped. If I'm playing an 8lb trout on a 4lb tippet I wan't the smooothest drag possible. For me the lapping is essential.
thanks everyone for the guidance.. looks like i will be spending some time with 4 grades of emery cloth super glued to some plate glass. while not true lapping gives a real quality uniform surface. but wont be going all the way to mirror polish. For the drag im going to use, ground washers are not available (i think) so do it myself or forget it. not gonna try to thin them enough to get another one into the stack, just make them smooth and flat, get rid of concave/convex and and burrs from stamping.
a project to keep me off the streets at night so time doesnt matter.
i lap on 600 w/d dry paper also and use a squirt of oil on it. Mostly on used washers that have been neglected: i just pop new ones in and grease the CF. i hope i see the day when non-lapped new drags is what actually causes me to lose a fish. It's prolly 20th down the list of other silly things I might do to lose one myself. lol
If you really go after it, you can end up with two sides that are perfectly flat, but not parallel with each other. It seems like one lop-sided washer could throw off the whole drag stack.
-steve
And after all that work of polishing & everything is square you will need a spacer sleeve that the base is the same diameter as the top keyed washer that is machined perfectly flat and the bore is perfectly 90 degrees to it's base. Any difference in the diameter of the sleeve base will put uneven pressure across the upper keyed washer which can multiply downward to the rest of the drag pack. Especially under heavy drag.
Quote from: bill19803 on April 15, 2019, 10:20:13 AM
Not gonna try to thin them enough to get another one into the stack, just make them smooth and flat, get rid of concave/convex and and burrs from stamping.
Exactly...that's all we're intending to do anyway. I've never even polished any long enough to get them completely perfect, but they sure worked better afterwards. 8)
If looking for flat and perfect, Bryan has come up with one of the best kits available.
Me personally wouldn't even waste my time and just go with those, but I understand if one has to use the older washers and try to make them better.
Sal
So my drag insert kit came, I got out the metals and gave then a quick trip across 4 grades of emery cloth glued to plate glass first observation of polishing pattern showed no significant distortion on any of the metals on either side, so just did a polish and called it a day. Polishing patterns showed no surface irregularities, no distortion. Cant check parallelism of sides but it really shouldn't matter.
way back, someone here suggested coloring the steel discs w/ permanent marker, first, so you could see otherwise undetectable deformities disappear as you polish