Reel Repair by Alan Tani

COOL!
In figure 1 "drag star increments", that's point to point on the star, right?

Quote from: Gfish on November 05, 2022, 09:56:49 PMCOOL!
In figure 1 "drag star increments", that's point to point on the star, right?

That's exactly it. Going from the drag fully backed off with a star point centered under the handle, to then tightening the drag so the next point is indexed under the handle. Or alternatively 72 degrees of rotation.

So as a quick update, I've got parts on order to rebuild both drag stacks. I'll try both a drag washer and a fiber washer beneath main gear, but expect I'll prefer the drag washer.

In the interim, thru the magic of Amazon, I was able to rig up a quick bench test of the reel, comparing compressive load on the drag stack to developed drag on the reel.

Measuring drag off the reel, 60 pounds of developed force is sufficient for my fishing. This is about 5 pounds of drag.

Taking measurements of the reel, I'm looking for a spring with an OD of 0.5", ID of 0.4", and perhaps a max height of .75". The load rate would be 480lb/in.


Unfortunately, I don't think I'll find that spring. However, this one looks promising:

Smalley Wavo Spring

It's small, fits on the gear sleeve, and deflects 0.01 in at a 35 lb. Put two of them under the spacer and that's 70 lb of load over 0.02 in. Star travels at 24 tpi, so that's half a turn to apply 70 lbf. At any rate I think it should be improvement.

Quote from: M105580 on November 07, 2022, 04:19:23 AMMeasuring drag off the reel, 60 pounds of developed force is sufficient for my fishing. This is about 5 pounds of drag.

Question from the cheap seats here.  The 209 has 3 variable adjustments that can affect spool rotation.  In this measuring exercise, how would you account for all these in the aggregate? 

It seems you would have to set up the test reel to a fixed level wind/casting tension which is typically based on the weight of terminal tackle, which can be widely variable in the field.

If you are not casting the reel, then I fully understand your approach.

Quote from: Shellbelly on November 07, 2022, 04:06:32 PM

Quote from: M105580 on November 07, 2022, 04:19:23 AMMeasuring drag off the reel, 60 pounds of developed force is sufficient for my fishing. This is about 5 pounds of drag.

Question from the cheap seats here.  The 209 has 3 variable adjustments that can affect spool rotation.  In this measuring exercise, how would you account for all these in the aggregate? 

It seems you would have to set up the test reel to a fixed level wind/casting tension which is typically based on the weight of terminal tackle, which can be widely variable in the field.

If you are not casting the reel, then I fully understand your approach.

These are salmon trolling reels, so casting isn't a concern.

As an aside, Smalley was considerate enough to ship out a pair of Wavo washers. Hopefully I'll have all parts on hand in the next few days, and will be able to make a final report.

So parts are on order to rebuild the drag stacks, and a couple of super-whamodyne springs are in the mail. But I still decided to take a trip to the hardware store.

Jurelometer astutely mentioned the threaded fastener nature of the star assembly a couple posts back. I imagine this has been discussed ad naseum on this forum. What is enlightening though is to consider effect of friction in a threaded fastener assembly.

50% of the torque is used to overcome under thread friction. As such, minimizing under thread friction is good. The star bearing directly on the metal spacer is less than ideal, given metal on metal contact, and concentrated loading.

At the hardware store I purchased a 34 cent 10mm mylar washer, and put it under the star. It was a noticeable improvement. PTFE would be better, but not bad for the cost of a stamp.

This has been fun to watch. Can't wait for all your parts to come in. 5#s of drag plus the rod should be fine, but I'd think you can get a little better if needed.

The Man

Quote from: Ron Jones on November 08, 2022, 05:01:42 AMThis has been fun to watch. Can't wait for all your parts to come in. 5#s of drag plus the rod should be fine, but I'd think you can get a little better if needed.

The Man

I'm happy to see a few other people are following this thread. While modifying an 209 probably isn't most folks' cup of tea, I think there I've stumbled upon a couple of things that might be of more general applicability.

As an aside, did you spend time in the submarine force?

Quote from: M105580 on November 08, 2022, 04:06:45 PMWhile modifying an 209 probably isn't most folks' cup of tea,

True.  These reels generally don't get as much attention even though they're still popular workhorses.  I'm staying plugged in for your bench data and field results.  I use 209 & 309 for the surf and haven't considered any modifications so this is of particular interest to me.

On the star and minimizing torque:

I don't think that the friction for turning the star is related to the problem you are trying to solve of increasing the ratio of rotation (i.e, axial travel) to clamping load. 

More friction  just means  more torque to get the same clamping force.  But clamping force is going to be a function of travel. Just takes more or less effort to get the travel.  BTW,  greasing the threads will also greatly improve the torque to clamping force ratio.

if you still want to stick any plastic washer between the the star and the spacer, you will need to address scoring, creep and heat resistance.

Scoring can be addressed by placing a thin flat metal washer on each side.  Creep (squishing in this case) and heat  is adressed by material selection.

Here is how we addressed the use of plastics in the drag stack in the past:

It is popular here to use Delrin (acetal) for an under gear washer and/or for a friction washer above the last (eared) metal washer on  many star drag stacks.  This makes for a smoother drag. Acetal has a coefficient of friction approaching Teflon (PTFE), but has the added benefit of resisting creep - so it makes a good thrust bearing. It starts getting soft somewhere shy of 200F, s  not ideal for more extreme drag usage, but many folk here use it without issue.  PTFE has a much higher operating temperature, but deforms readilyunder compression, so the next step up is Rulon, which is a fiber filled PTFE product often used for solid bearings. Rulon is more expensive, and harder to cut, so most folks stuck with acetal.

But I would personally would not try to minimize torque to clamping load conversion.  A bit of extra resistance is useful for holding the setting at lower drag, otherwise you can change the drag just by bumping the star.

Not just taking shots from the cheap seats here.  Just sharing a bit of what we have learned.  It is good  that you are following the scientific method.  I expect to learn some new stuff from your experiments.

-J

On the springs:

Hopefully the waves get you what you need, but if they don't:

That one turn wave spring is made from 1/32 round wire.  That takes some serious temper to get 35 lbs of clamping load out of three humps! Which brings me back to another point that I think that we hit on earlier.

For just about any spring, the travel to load curve is  pretty much hockey stick shaped.  Once that spring starts loading up well, a small amount of travel causes a lot more clamping load.  If the  goal is to have more overall travel and more linear load ramp-up, the trick is to use a spring that has more travel, and/or a much higher load rating than you need, and operate in low end of the curve. So ideally, you need to look at the load curve chart (but most manufacturers don't seem to share this -aargh), and select the spring that has the travel that you want for the load range that you want.

I am also a fly reel guy, and cork drag fly reels often use an old fashioned  coil spring to achieve a fine tunable load curve. Lots of travel, and the wire gauge controls the ultimate load.   Most use too feeble a spring, but Abel uses a much more beefy spring that works pretty well.

So if two of these wave springs does not get you the travel range that you are looking for, I would consider stacking a couple more, reconsider going to a belleville stack, or even going to a coil.

I don't think that wave springs are stackable without a load bearing washer in between each, which is one reason why bellevilles are nice for ad hoc situations.

It might take a bit of work to find a beefy enough  coil, and it would have to  replace the spacer, which would mean a bit more vulnerability to water, sand, etc., ingress.  It may not be worth it to hunt down that "goldilocks" coil.

-J

Quote from: M105580 on November 08, 2022, 04:06:45 PMI'm happy to see a few other people are following. While modifying an 209 probably isn't most folks' cup of tea, I think there I've stumbled upon a couple of things that might be of more general applicability.

As an aside, did you spend time in the submarine force?

21.5 years. Retired as an FTC in 18. Last boat was the Bus.

The Man

So I've done a fair bit of reading on this site over the past couple of days, and it's been enlightening (and often a bit entertaining) to say the least. It's interesting to see how some practices slowly evolve (under gear washer selection), while others stay pretty fixed. I suspect I'm not the only one here who comes from an engineering background, and that's basically what's driving my interest in understanding the loads and  deflections involved here. Additionally, I've found this site to be tremendously helpful over the years, and I'm hoping that I can perhaps make a modest addition to the corpus of knowledge in this little corner of the internet.

J again astutely mentioned that an under-star plastic washer doesn't do a thing when it comes controlling the deflection/load curve. I agree 100%.  In that vein, my ultimate aim here is to make adjustment of the star more user friendly over the range of drags I typically fish, as opposed to strictly more turns of the star. This is very qualitative, since I don't own a torque wrench, but adjusting the star under load "feels" a lot smoother and nicer with mylar washer underneath.

On Springs:

Adding a spring to the system means it needs to fit somewhere in the drag stack, or potentially in place of the spacer. When the reel is assembled, the star has a maximum amount of travel of 0.1",  develop loads up to 60 lbs, and have an OD/ID of 0.5"/0.4". Stock brass gears sleeves are 24 TPI, or .04" per revolution. As it turns out, this ideal spring has been very hard to find. It don't want to bore out the reel, or machine the gear sleeve, and I don't want to drill out a spring. The wave spring I've mentioned previously will have to do. The load characteristic is fine, although deflection is less than ideal. But it fits like a glove.

Of the off-the-shelf bellvilles I've looked at (McMaster Carr has pretty good information), loads are too high and deflections are too low. Also the ratio of ID/OD typically won't fit in the assembly. It looks like Shimano uses two stacked bellvilles under their star for the Torium-16, and Ambasseduers have a pair of stacked curved washers. So maybe they fit and have better load/deflection characteristics, but I'm not sure they'd fit.

On Bench Testing:
I'm a staunch advocate of bench testing done correctly. That being said, I'm severely limited in that capacity. Salmon fishing I always just set drag by hand. Offshore trolling I set drags straight off the reel with either a gallon of water or 10lb dumbbell. For the first test I tried (drag vs drag stack compression load), I was able to quite precisely apply load to the drag stack using a bar clamp and postal scale. My application of force to the line was not nearly as precise. The reel would tend to wobble a bit (especially at low loads, since the reel wasn't fixed), and the spring scale was awful. So I don't have a curve, but 60 lbs of force was 5 pounds of drag on the scale, which felt about right to my calibrated hand.

Moving forward I anticipate developing star increment vs drag curves for different spring arrangements.

On Plastics:
I picked up a few Mylar washers from Ace Hardware. They are available, cheap, properly sized, and exceptionally THIN (0.01"). I expect that either PTFE or delrin would be my preference. But you gotta dance with the one who brung ya. The Dupont data is below, but these washers are creep resistant, have good thermal performance, and perform adequately under compression. The highest pressures in the drag assembly are the bearing surfaces of the spacer (id/od 10/12mm). Loads shouldn't exceed 2kpsi for the drag range of this reel. Coefficient of friction is 0.3.

All that being said, this is probably a good time to remember the words of Admiral Sergey Gorshokov, and not let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

Proceeding deep.

you know, it seems like you are putting an awful lot of work into a relatively simple reel.   

Quote from: M105580 on November 04, 2022, 02:30:17 AMI have an old Penn 209 I enjoy salmon trolling with, and it's time for some well deserved maintenance and upgrades.

I put in carbon drag washers a few years ago. Now I want to modify the drag so the application is more gradual over the entire range of star travel. Right now, it is not quite one full turn of the star to go from zero drag to locked up. And the drag curve really ramps up at the end.

Is there a way to modify the drag stack, or the spacer, to make the drag curve more gradual from like 2-5 pounds of drag?

I feel like additional wavy washers in the stack, or under the spacer, would achieve what I want. But I would appreciate feedback.

What is count of washers you are working with and what material is the metal washers / finish ?