The 349 Project

[Rothmar2]

After a long time boxed up and waiting for the Jigmasters to be finished I have finally started on a 349 Project. I have actually been chipping away at it bit by bit for some time.
I have a stock 349H which I bought a while ago from a local trading website, which Mike (mhc) sent me, but the clicker plate was cracked. Randy Pauly came through with a replacement all the way from the States, and sent me a near mint spool to complement it. This stock reel will make a nice comparison against what is to come.
Mike then went on to send me some Black two lever plates, with most of the internals needed to make a second beefed up 349, of which this thread will be the subject. First up was to remove the brass sleeve from the bridge, and replace with a stainless one. It's been that long, I actually can't remember where the SS sleeve came from. (Mike if you remember please chip in). So straight up I have a problem, the sleeve pin is jamming on the bridge shaft due to the hole height being too high from the A/R ratchet end. So I measured the pin heights with the verniers to see the height difference. First up the brass sleeve and pin



Compared to the SS sleeve



If you look closely, you can see the difference is 0.3mm too high on the SS sleeve.
So having a faceplate for the mini-lathe, meant I could mount the bridge plate on the lathe to skim the bridge shaft groove out ever so slightly to allow the pin through, and if done accurately, would negate the need for a shim under the sleeve.
I had a sleeve which would slip in under the bridge to space the bridge off the plate to negate the need for shimming the bridge to take out the bump from the peened shaft end. The bridge shaft was held in a Jacobs chuck mounted in the tailstock while to bridge was roughly clamped to the faceplate.



The bridge was carefully bumped and checked with a Dial gauge to get the shaft running as true as possible to the axis of the lathe.



Once this was achieved, I then set a small parting off tool into the tool-post to skim the upper edge of the shaft groove.



The tool edge was touched against the upper edge of the groove and wound out. I then set the dial gauge to the tool holder, and wound the tool back 0.33mm from the edge to set the skim cut depth. The saddle was then locked so only the cross feed would move. The edge was then skimmed to widen out the shaft groove to clear the sleeve pin.



The SS sleeve was fitted and has no perceptible axial drift, and spins beautifully.
I decided I wanted to go with Mike's "Versa Dog" system as per his thread
http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=14113.0
He messaged me some rough dimensions for locations of the extra dog and spring posts. These were duly added to the bridge by machining the posts and peening them in. The short synchro'd SS dogs were made by myself, and Mike had also sent me a couple of surplus Keta 349 dogs of various runs for the long dog. The theory being that the short dogs are synchro'd for high drag applications (the reel has Adam's drag insert kit) and the long Keta dog gets switched in/out with the second eccentric/lever, to reduce the handle back-play (for "lighter" drag settings).





I did however have some problems with this set-up (more on that later).
Somewhere down the track, Mike messaged me he had seen a Newell 349 spool on the auction site going "cheap". It was cheap as the spool shaft was bent, which was in the description. Mike asked if I wanted it, and I thought "Why not, I have a lathe and Dial Gauge, I should be able to correct it". Well, I managed to, sort of. It proved to be more difficult than first thought, and the result isn't perfect, but good enough for me.
Tom Hryniuk actually mentioned somewhere he would show us the machinists process for straightening a spool shaft, but I imagine he has more pressing things on his mind, and fair enough too. So the following is how I went about it, although this may be a little agricultural!
So here is what the clicker end of the spool shaft looked like when it arrived, yep its bent alright!



I drilled a hole ever so slightly oversized from the spool shaft end diameter, in a very long coach bolt to act as a bending lever.



This could then be used to tweak the bent stub



Then it was a case of chucking the handle end of the spool shaft into the lathe chuck. I had to grind the jaws of the 3 jaw chuck with a grinding tool set-up to ensure the jaws were running true with the axis of the lathe before I commenced. There is plenty of demos of this on Youtube, so I won't go into that process here. But it must be done to make sure repeatability of the spool shaft chucking is as accurate as possible. Once the spool is chucked, mark the spool rim and the chuck to make sure the spool is orientated in the same place every time the spool is re-chucked. I also measured the run out of the spool rim at this end with the dial gauge to check the spool was running true (not shown).



Set the dial gauge to measure the run-out of the clicker end of the shaft



Then mark the point of maximum deflection as measured by the dial gauge on the spool side with a fine paint pen, so that when the spool is moved to the vice, use the lever to bend in the opposite direction. Note that I have used copper soft jaws, and clamped the clicker sprocket to hold the spool



Then make a small bend using the lever, and go and mount the spool back in the reel and see how true it spins. If not happy, I'd try and spot where the maximum run out was while the spool was in the reel, and make a mark on the working face of the spool. Re chuck, re-measure, and repeat all steps until you are happy with the spool spinning in the reel. This took me quite a bit of time, over several days, just doing an hour or two here and there until I was happy. It is not perfectly true, but near enough for me. All up, including grinding the lathe jaws (and making a tool holder for my Dremel to do the chuck grind) I would have put around 20 hours into getting the spool sorted.
Getting back to the Versa-dog problem. I had a lot of trouble with long dog slipping off the A/R ratchet. I thought it might have been due to using a leaf spring on this long dog and it didn't have enough spring force to push the dog all the way onto the sleeve. So I modified the dog to take a post for a coil spring, and wound a spring to suit.





But still the problem persisted, even though I had also filed the rake on the dog faces so that there was the slightest clearance, so the dog was engaging at the root of the ratchet only. The way I ended up solving the problem was to file a slight undercut into the ratchet faces on the sleeve. Had to go around all teeth, with a triangular sectioned needle-file to achieve this. You can just make it out in this pic.....



This solved the problem once and for all. The completed Versa-dog bridge.



I know this set-up will not be every-ones cup of tea, but for what I want this reel for, it will work perfectly.
So this is how it looks for now, with Adam's Star and drag kit, Tom's 349 frame, and a BP 501 SS cross bar at the top.



Compared with the near mint "Stockie" mentioned earlier. Completely different beasts already!



I will eventually get to making a set of SS rings , dual Maxed out style wide levers in SS, SS lugs, redo the clicker as I have done on the 6/0 and Jigmaster builds, and a custom crank and acrylic handle. I will add to this as I get it done, although probably most of this will be done on "rainy days" for now, so probably a year or so until I get it finished in full!

[Darin Crofton]

Looking good, love the dog work you've done! I love my two 349's I just built, taking them out very soon . . . 

[Alto Mare]

The master at work!...that's what I call fine-tuning

Nice job Chris!

Sal

[Dominick]

The master at work!...that's what I call fine-tuning

Nice job Chris!

Sal

X2 on the nice job.  I wish I knew how to use a lathe.  Dominick

[vilters]

very nice build! i have really come to appreciate the 349. liking the coil spring for the long dog.

[Reel 224]

Nice! Because you can project.

Joe

[Tiddlerbasher]

Chris- lovely engineering - applause

[Swami805]

Love it,looking forward to the next installment.

[mhc]

Chris, I'm pretty sure the sleeve is one of Alan's early 113H gen II sleeves. You've got a lot of patience and skill to get everything working as it should and thanks for a great write up explaining how you did it. It's still got me stumped why that dog was slipping though - I've used the same dog and sleeve and haven't noticed a problem. Maybe I should test mine again?

Mike

[Gfish]

Dude! You're able to overcome all fit and function impediments! Serious engineering skills. I can tweak some stuff sometimes, but it is never a perfect tweak...

[Rothmar2]

Watching others posting details of their projects inspired me to at least update one of mine. I've had another tough year finding time to put into reel projects, but have been able to get a little done on this one, with thanks to a couple of fine people....

I have made a handle/crank assembly this year, and while I had made a Stainless crank, when Mike sent me one of Ted's designed cranks (all the way from US), and Anodised by Mike (in Qld. Australia), it was a no-brainer to use this piece. It absolutely "pops"!! Thank you so much to both of you!

Inspired by Sal and Striper Lou's numerous posts, I fabricated the handle from the last piece of black/white acrylic swirl I had. I machined all the shaft/sleeve/lock nuts and handle bearing as I have showed in other threads.









I really love the tuna engraved into the crank. Adds class to an already well designed piece.
Maybe this winter I might get around to (nearly) finishing this reel, although it's very fishable as it is now.

[xjchad]

Looks like your missing a couple screws there Chris 

Just kidding, great build!  I love those handle arms too!  And the knob turned out great!

[Maxed Out]

 Form and function is what it's all about !!

Great work and love the triple dog.

That black knob turned out sweet and finishes off the sinister all black look

Also Mike did great job anodizing the blade and the shine on that custom knob is amazing

[Rothmar2]

Form and function is what it's all about !!

Great work and love the triple dog.

That black knob turned out sweet and finishes off the sinister all black look

Also Mike did great job anodizing the blade

He sure did Ted, the anodising is fault-less, as is the machining of the crank. Big-ups to both of you and your machinist.

[mo65]

   Sweet...love the classic black/chrome look...fantastic work!