how to get the best free spool and smooth reeling(conventional reel

Started by pcde123, June 22, 2013, 04:26:28 AM

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Sudsy

Also, polishing any parts that move in contact with each other, using either a buffing wheel or dremel until you have a near mirror finish, makes a larger difference then you would expect.

And on a levelwind Abu, changing the cog in the levelwind assemble to a ball bearing cog is well worth the few dollars.

otghoyt

Sudsy......You can get cheap PURE SILICONE from a hobby shop specializing in R/C trucks and buggies.  They use it for shock absorber control with different viscosity weights.  They have a zero weight, 5,10,20,30.......  costs about 8 buck for 2 ounces.  Super slippery!!

otghoyt

Another thing came to mind when I was doing my Frankenstein 500 with a double ring 259 tail plate.  I blue printed the reel with all kinds of great parts from this site.  Like Sudsy and TTR said, I found polishing every rotating friction point was a great help.  Afterwards I burnished the mating surfaces with a dry lube product called Gear Kote. What I found during my blueprint was I got 30% better freespool time by omitting the spring under the bushing on the tail plate.  I just used blue lock-tight dried on the threads to keep the bushing from backing out.

Any thought about the spring causing a bias load on the threads and introducing a bushing angle to the spool shaft?  I know the spring has flats ground into the mating surfaces but it worked for me.  Give it a try and see.  Then tell me what you found.  Maybe I missed something.

H

Gfish

Definitly somethin' to try H. Got to get some locktite(blue?) n' try it. My 500 came with an aftermarket L-side bushing where if you bumped it while casting or handling the reel, it'ed dampen the spool spin dramatically. I can see where that spring(which functions to keep the bushing knob from unscrewing, I think)might push the bushing off-center.
I think relative to the original post question, almost as important as bearing and pinion friction reduction, would be cast control ability of the reel. Magnetic, centrifical, n' whatever else's avalible. In real world fishing situations, I think I can cast further and more accurately with an adjusted(for lure weight) control mechanism, beyond what thumb pressure can do. Without that "backlash worry" I can put some "ummmph" into the forecast and concentrate more on accuracy.
Gfish
Fishing tackle is an art form and all fish caught on the right tackle are"Gfish"!

wideopenoutdoors

Quote from: alantani on June 22, 2013, 09:25:05 PM
there are two parts to this, and i think they are both worthy of discussion.  it's something most of us know already, but probably haven't thought through in a systematic way.  so let's to that now.....

freespool is the first question.  if you take a bare spool filled with line up into outer space and make it spin, it will spin forever.  there is no friction.  in an air-filled zero gravity environment, it will eventually stop spinning because of friction with air.  but what slows down a spool even more is friction of the spool shaft against bearing, end caps and pinion gears.  

lever drag reels tend to have the best freespool because the spool is rubbing only against two spool bearings. clean those out, lube them with tsi 301 and then give them a spin and they will spin for a very long timed.  star drag reels with a disengaging spool will also spin just as well as lever drag reels.  these reels also have spools that are only spinning on a pair of spool bearings.  clean these bearings out, lube them with tsi and these spools will also spin very well.

most star drag reels, however, have a spool shaft that runs the entire width of the reel.  now you have a spool (or more accurately, a spool shaft) that has multiple contacts.  the spool shaft rubs against the right and left side plates.  to adjust the amount of endplay, you have adjustable caps on either the left side or on the right side.  you also have a left side plate /spool bearing, a right side plate bearing, and sometimes even right spool bearing.  and then the last point of friction that everyone overlooks is the pinion gear.  yup, the spool shaft passes through the pinion gear rubs like crazy.  so you have to clean out the pinion gear.  what ever you do, don't go in with a piece of sand paper.  you will roughen up the surface so much that the freespool will drop to zero.  

to get the maximum amount of freespool from a star drag reel with a full length spool shaft, start by cleaning out the bearings and lubing them with tsi 301.  then look at the pinion gear.  just run a q-tip through the pinion gear and clean out the gunk, then dip the pinion gear in tsi 301.  if that does the trick, you're done.  if not, take a q-tip and snip off one end, then put the stick end in a drill. now add a little toothpast to the q-tip and slide the pinion gear onto the q-tip.  now very carefully make sure the q-tip does not snag on the pinion gear and get it SLOWLY and carefully spinning.  keep spinning the q-tip until the inside of the pinion gear is nice and polished inside.  then clean off all the toothpaste and lube it with tsi 301.  don't forget to clean up the spool shaft.  polishing is ok, but no sand paper.  

and lastly, if the reel has a levelwind assembly, you will have to take apart the entire levelwind, clean all the parts, dip them in tsi301 and put them back together.  the only problem you should have now is the backlash!

as far as lubes go, i like tsi 301 best for these freespool applications.  tsi 321 is fine as well.  the other lubes are also all fine.  i would normally default to corrosion x if i am not using tsi 301.  hope this helps.  



So to bring this post back from the dead so to speak.
Has anyone tried a really fine lapping compound instead of the toothpaste? I wonder if a lapper was made if it would be more efficient than a q-tip?
"your not on a fishing show, reel it in!"

johndtuttle

Quote from: AllenW on November 03, 2013, 03:06:11 PM

Little confused, do you use 301 for both bearing and gears?

And, does a lightweight (?) lube like that offer the wear resistance that a heavier lube might?

TIA

Al

No, Alan is saying that he uses it **inside** the pinion where the spool shaft runs for max speed.

Grease on the outside gear surfaces for protection from wear and corrosion always.

johndtuttle

Quote from: wideopenoutdoors on July 01, 2020, 03:16:19 PM

So to bring this post back from the dead so to speak.
Has anyone tried a really fine lapping compound instead of the toothpaste? I wonder if a lapper was made if it would be more efficient than a q-tip?

Toothpaste is generally a fine lapping compound...it just tastes better lol.

Frankly, I'm amazed that anyone other than some Olympic Casting champ would worry about it.

I HAVE used fine steel wool to remove some built up patina on the inside of a pinion for a quick and dirty job for my purposes. But I personally don't take this sort of hot rodding very seriously. It really won't make a difference fishing, imo.

More power to you though, my friend. Whatever floats your boat.

Gfish

I liked Allen's post because most folks have Q-tips and toothpaste around the house. Good to practice and see if there is an improvement, before one spends $ on better stuff. But, yeah, once you adjust a conventional for an ounce or more, you've added a good bit of friction on purpose.
I measure the pinion rub by turning the crank while in freespool—if the spool turns, I godda go in and get rid a that. Just don't like the thought of the pinion being pushed out of alignment. That's a good method for me too, polishing the pinion hole; fine steel wool wound on a Dremel shaft. I polish the spool shaft using a Dremel buffing wheel/compound.
Fishing tackle is an art form and all fish caught on the right tackle are"Gfish"!

Donnyboat

Well Greg, know matter how fine steel wool is it is still abrasive, maybe after using very fine steel wool, then use a piece of doule, spit the end of it, then slip some very very fine wet  dry, maybe 3500, give that a few spins with the drill, then cotton buds & tooth past, your lube needs to be very thin or for the want of a better word, light.
     all lubes although they reduce wear & tare, they do slow bearings down.
     So maybe dry ceramic bearings, would work better, mind you you would have to, spray them with alcohol, every time after you use them, now that has the brain spinning ay,
      find out what the long distance casters do, cheers Don.
Don, or donnyboat

otghoyt

Jumping back into the fray here.... I have used and preached "Lapping Compound" to builders here several times.  A tube of Permatex "Valve Lapping Compound" is seven bucks and will last you a lifetime.

Noisy, ringing, rhythmically whirring and howling Stainless Steel gears purrrr like a old fat cat after a couple dots of lapping compound and 10 turns on the crank.  You can hear it happening.

Make triple sure you get it all off because it keeps cutting for a long, long time.

Never tried it on a pinion but I have used toothpaste many times.  It works fine.

Hoyt


PacRat

Free-spool and smooth reeling are completely unrelated.

Smooth reeling is the easy one. The best way to get smooth is a brass or marine bronze main-gear...but we like stainless so it gets tricky. Stainless on stainless and be harsh with all but the best gears. The Pro Challenger gears I have used are very smooth. Like Hoyt says,"Get out the lapping compound." This will add some wear to the gear but it will be a 'smoothing wear' rather than a 'heavy load wear'. Only the luckiest among us ever wear out stainless gears anyway. I like to give them a whirl with lapping compound, clean them, and then give them another whirl with Flitz or toothpaste...then clean them again. then go fish them hard...and then clean them again just to make certain every last grain of abrasive is gone. Hopefully do all this before puting new bearings in.

Now for the free-spool. Sal and I talked about this at length. There are several thins that affect free-spool. There's the mass of the spool. A heavier, well balanced spool will spin longer once started. I'm only mentioning this because it is a variable that you should be aware of.

Then there's friction and drag. I grouped these because I'm talking about grease and oil viscosity and side-to-side adjustment of bearing and/or bushings...AND any possible contact due to bent or ratty spool rims of frame rings. So this is how I optimize free-spool up to this point: I assemble the reel without the bridge. This removes the pinion (to be discussed later) from the equation. At this point you can give it a nice spin and feel and listen for anything that may be contacting, out of balance, or just plain dragging. Fix anything you don't like. Smooth the spool rim, smooth the frame/rings, tweak the frame (if it isn't square). You can do this by twisting the side-plates in opposite directions with the spool spinning. Tilt the reel end-to-end with the spool spinning and center the spool if required. Also clean or replace your bearings. At this point you should have a very good base-line of how much free-spool you can achieve (without the bridge).

Now put the bridge back in and give it a whirl. You likely lost all that good free-spool that made you so happy a minute ago. This is where Sal taught me a lot. You can polish the inside of the pinion gear. Depending on your particular pinion and how rough it may be inside of the bore, you may want to start with sandpaper. Start fairly course and work your way to a fine wet and dry. Then polish this. I like to use a cut off Q-tip with Flitz. You can also polish the spool shaft where the pinion rides on it. Sal taught me to make a small make-shift vertical lathe with my drill-press and a piece of wood clamped to the table with a small hole to accept the bottom end of the spool shaft. You need to be very careful doing this because if your spool comes loose you will likely ruin it. With the spool spinning in your new 'lathe' polish the shaft with narrow strips of wet and dry sand paper. Your just polishing so 600-1000 should work fine. Then use a narrow strip of cloth and some Flitz and put a final polish on it.

No re-assemble your reel. You can run the spool shaft to pinion dry or just use one drop of 321. By now your free-spool should be very nice.

There are still a couple of related factors that will influence free-spool. I call this 'pinion tilt'. This is when the pinion gear tilts slightly while disengaged from cog at the drive end of the spool. This causes the inside corner of the pinion bore to contact the spool shaft while in free-spool. Almost all reels have this to some degree but the contact area is minute and is only an issue if you are trying to set a free-spool record. You can check for this by cranking your reel while if free-spool. If the spool turns it's due to the pinion lightly touching the spool shaft even though the cog is disengaged from the spool. Penn solved this issue with the original Jigmaster 500. That's what that little counter-bore is for on the outboard end of the pinion gear. It engages with the little step-down on the tip of the drive-side bushing. This keeps the pinion gear perfectly aligned on axis while disengaged from the spool in free-spool mode. Bearing reels don't have this feature so the pinion tilts while disengaged. The trade-off is probably less friction with bearings but a good polished Jigmaster can spin a long time when tuned.

With bearing reels you can do all sorts of extra tweaks like messing with the jack and yoke to try to lessen the pinion tilt but this can sometimes make things worse. Never ending free-spool is more for bragging rights and isn't really practical (except when trying to cast pin-head anchovies). So get out the sandpaper and polish and have fun with it. At the very least you will better understand your reel and what makes it tick.

-Mike

oc1

I'm sort of with John on this.  The more freespool you have the more braking you will need in order to control it.   

However, centrifugal braking and magnetic braking are proportional to the spool speed.  This is what you want.
Friction braking through use of a cast control knob or just general friction in the moving parts (resulting in poor freespool) is not proportional and generally exerts more effect at start-up and less at high speed; the opposite of what you want.

So, freespool is desirable only to the extent that proportional braking is better than friction braking.  The difference between the two is not huge and will often be missed all together.

pointbob

Quote from: Sudsy on October 27, 2014, 05:52:29 AM
Also, polishing any parts that move in contact with each other, using either a buffing wheel or dremel until you have a near mirror finish, makes a larger difference then you would expect.

And on a levelwind Abu, changing the cog in the levelwind assemble to a ball bearing cog is well worth the few dollars.

you mean the worm gear assembly?

• Kit includes set of 4x10x4 abec 5 ceramic hybrid bearings
• Kit includes ball bearing worm gear shaft, line pawl, worm gear shaft cover and worm gear ball bearing ??
Patience comes to those who wait

Breadfan

Quote from: oc1 on September 18, 2021, 07:23:07 AM
I'm sort of with John on this.  The more freespool you have the more braking you will need in order to control it.    

However, centrifugal braking and magnetic braking are proportional to the spool speed.  This is what you want.
Friction braking through use of a cast control knob or just general friction in the moving parts (resulting in poor freespool) is not proportional and generally exerts more effect at start-up and less at high speed; the opposite of what you want.

So, freespool is desirable only to the extent that proportional braking is better than friction braking.  The difference between the two is not huge and will often be missed all together.

So, lets revive this a little. I use to question the whole freespool thing myself and this is the best answer I have heard and it's what I practice, it makes perfect sense, especially to the long casters out there. I fish the beach and there are times when I want to cast as far as I can to get to where the fish are. I've been putting this to the test lately and I am getting great results. I have about 7 reels I fish the beach with and I have maximized the freespool in all of them. Some think too much freespool can be a bad thing and too hard to control, so what's the point? But I beg to differ on that. The best thing you could possibly to is to get the very best freespool, no friction, no nothing, just a spool that spins as long as possible. You now have a spool that spins without any effort, it's not touching anything and the bearings are free to to what they do best, which is spin. I've seen a lot of talk about using this oil or that oil in your bearings. To me (and a few others) there is no such oil that is the best oil, there is only the best oil for you and for the reel you are using at the time. After you get everything tuned perfectly, you then will want to SLOW down the reel according to your casting ability. At first, that seems to make no sense. Maybe the reel you had was already slow enough for the way you cast. Maybe. But is it consistent? does it spin perfectly free every cast? if you haven't cleaned your bearings, pinions, ect, then that'd be a big no. But you have cleaned up everything and now it's too fast, even with the mags full on or all the brake blocks in place. This is where the viscosity of all those different oils come into play. With the correct mag settings or the correct brakes in place, you simply start sampling different oils, and they are all different. Red Rocket fuel is thicker than yellow rocket fuel, and for that very reason. 3and1 oil is different from Hoppes gun oil. Find the right oil for you and your reel will then cast most effectively. With my Daiwa 6H reels, I can run Rem-oil. Its viscosity is almost like water at 3. I can wing it as hard as I can and it cast a mile. If I put that same oil in my Fathom 15, it is uncontrollable, even with full mags on! Bigger reel, bigger spool, more inertia. The fathom takes 3and1, and runs perfectly with that oil. My Rocket Reel? Red rocket fuel. You can play around with those oils to get the most out of your reels. More mag and a less viscosity oil could be the best for you and any given reel. Or, less mag and more viscosity oil could work out for you. I know this sounds like nitty gritty, but it really makes a difference. I have many different oils and I let the reel dictate what oil I will use to make the bearings run their best, not just use that or this oil because its a good oil. Most of them are good and it's what is best for you and your reel. Of course, when you are repairing a reel for someone, you don't know whats best, you just know what oil will keep the bearings from corrosion and that is about all you can do. But, for your own reels, the oil choices can make a huge difference. One thing I have really learned about is inertia. The long distance casters seem to have their reels set up to cast with full mags (or a heavy mag setting) on and that is what they tune everything to. A full hard cast with a lot of inertia on the spool and it's tuned so that doesn't cause backlash at the beginning of the cast. But after the initial inertia, the mag setting is now slowing down the spool and distance begins to suffer. That is where the knobby mag comes into play over brakes. In mid flight, they simply back off the mags and watch the spool for that little bit of "fluff", to where the spool is running as fast as it can go and therefore making the cast as far as it could go. That's a little extreme but you get the idea. When we fish, we try to get the best of both worlds, the right cast, mag settings, we don't want to fool around with the mag mid-flight, but it's a good example of just how much the long casters have tuned the reel to be it's best.

oc1

I've never had a reel with factory mags that were not strong enough to control it.  If that happned I would say that either the reel has a design flaw or it is not being used for the intended purpose.

I like the full ceramic bearings that can be run without oil.  They are noisy and super expensive but work well.  If you are not using oil then you do not have to worry so much about water getting into the bearings.  An oiled bearing that gets a drop of water on it will whip the oil and water into a grey mayonnaise-like emulsion.  I don't understand exactly how it happens, but the emulsion will really slow down the bearing.... a lot.  A drop of water on a dry full ceramic bearing will just be slung off in a few casts and you are back to normal.

Getting a little water inside a conventional reel is difficult to prevent.  The spinning spool slings water off the wet line and the water goes through the little crack between spool and frame.  There is no such thing as a sealed conventional casting reel.