Rich S
Silver $$ Contributor
Well starting my winter projects and was doing a practice chamber on an old barrel. All went pretty good except the reamer appears to be mainly cutting with one flute. The flutes for the neck appear to be loading even but 1 of the shoulder/body flutes is loading up significantly more than the others. The reamer seemed to cut very smooth with no chatter. Due to the one flute loading up I had to take small cuts ~0.005" to keep from scoring the chamber. I pretty much just did this on the last 6 cuts.
For my set up I was using a Bald Eagle floating reamer. The barrel was indicated in the head stock to within 2 tenths using the Gordy method. I pre-bored (drilled followed by boring bar) ~0.7 deep and left 0.050" diameter to cut. In addition to using the floating reamer holder I tried: turn it by hand and cut ~0.010" once the chamber was 50% complete, rotated the reamer (handle on floating reamer holder) 180 deg and used a reamer wrench and a dead center in the tail stock instead of the floating reamer holder to push the reamer. These resulted in the same results with the one (same) flute loading up. The only way I was able to get the other flutes to load up was be increasing the rate the reamer was pushed in. Although the other flutes did pick up some material, the one was still loading much more.
Since it was the same flute regardless of method or orientation loading up, my assumption is the the leading edge on the shoulder of that flute is slightly proud of the others. I don't see anything obviously wrong visually, no defects felt with the fingernail, not build up on the reamer, ect... This was a used reamer given to me but should have only been used for one other reamer. My initial thought is to send it out to be re-sharpened/checked. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
For my set up I was using a Bald Eagle floating reamer. The barrel was indicated in the head stock to within 2 tenths using the Gordy method. I pre-bored (drilled followed by boring bar) ~0.7 deep and left 0.050" diameter to cut. In addition to using the floating reamer holder I tried: turn it by hand and cut ~0.010" once the chamber was 50% complete, rotated the reamer (handle on floating reamer holder) 180 deg and used a reamer wrench and a dead center in the tail stock instead of the floating reamer holder to push the reamer. These resulted in the same results with the one (same) flute loading up. The only way I was able to get the other flutes to load up was be increasing the rate the reamer was pushed in. Although the other flutes did pick up some material, the one was still loading much more.
Since it was the same flute regardless of method or orientation loading up, my assumption is the the leading edge on the shoulder of that flute is slightly proud of the others. I don't see anything obviously wrong visually, no defects felt with the fingernail, not build up on the reamer, ect... This was a used reamer given to me but should have only been used for one other reamer. My initial thought is to send it out to be re-sharpened/checked. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.