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Terry McGee
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Re: reaming

Post by Terry McGee »

To those above thanking me for putting up the link to the Hammy video, the thanks should go to my co-conspirator, who presumably will out himself when the climate is right. I imagine like me, few were aware of this video. I suspect from the fact that the earliest comments were from only 5 months ago that it has only recently been made public, despite being shot 42 years ago! The contributor's title - CR's Video Vaults - probably confirms that it's been in solitary confinement for most of those 42 years....

Heh heh, just for fun I looked up my CV to see what I was doing in 1980. "Exhibition of musical instruments, Berrima Gallery" was the big ticket item. This was from before the Internet. Making flutes wasn't the big challenge then - I'd been doing it for 4 or 5 years. The big challenge was finding anyone who wanted to buy one. How times have changed!

There's another PhD topic - "How the Internet has impacted on Irish Music, and relevant musical instrument making".

Oh and yes, the musical input from the presenter on the spanners (US: wrenches). And from the bodhran coming in before it, which seemed to have quite a different rhythm in mind to the polka Hammy had introduced. I thought Hammy and the young whistle player did well to battle on, in the teeth of the percussive gale.
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Re: reaming

Post by Loren »

paddler wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 3:14 am As far as I know, the main purpose of spiral fluted reamers is to help with chip clearing.
Depending on the relative direction of the spiral vs the rotation they either push the chips
forward (through the pilot hole) or evacuate them back up the reamer. Straight fluted
reamers don't encourage the chips to move along the reamer in either direction.
I do understand the purpose and intended function of the flutes ( Manual Machine Tooling 101 at a technical college did teach me that much :wink: ) , however my thoughts and comments, questions on the subject are more about how spiral vs straight flutes may react differently in wood with regards to stability (and therefore accuracy), and the final finishing action by means of cutting vs. scraping.

I suspect that when most machine shops make a spiral multi-flute reamer for a woodwind maker, they are simply making a metal working reamer to the conical profile specs one supplies, unless very specific technical specs are given for all aspects of the reamer. I mean, how will a machine shop know what works best when reaming a conical wood bore? How many new flute makers will, for that matter to even be able to give specs other than bore profile?

IME, when machine tooling wood, one can often get better results and significantly better efficiency with cutting and scraping tools designed specifically for wood, and the specific task. For example, one can certainly use a stock cutting bit for multiple lathe tasks, but custom shape (hand ground) cutting bits for different actions can work better and faster - boat shaped bit for rough and final turning allows you to use higher speed and feed rates while also leaving a smoother finish at a given speeds/feeds. Having separate left and right hand flat sided long bits for cutting tenons and some facing operations can save time and make the tasks a little easier.

Getting back to stability during reaming, I do wonder if the design of the reamer - number of flutes, type of flutes, size of flutes affects the stability of a reamer, and in what ways. I suspect a spiral fluted reamer in wood might have more of a tendency to wander and vibrate/chatter, but I simply don’t know.

Then there’s the issue of cutting vs scraping, or perhaps planing vs. scraping would be more accurate. Obviously one doesn’t want to try to hog out a ton of wood during rough reaming by scraping. But scraping wood to final finish has advantages over cutting/planing to a final finish. I learned this from the legendary master woodworker Philip Lowe, who tragically passed away last April, RIP. Spiral flutes, as I think about it would have more of a cutting/planing action and that’s what I was asking about specifically in my previous post. Of course I realize the height and angle of the cutting edges play a role as well.


But no matter what configuration you have, the flutes are going to clog with chips quite frequently when reaming flute sections .... especially long sections.
Sounds like a statement of fact my friend :poke: so maybe you can guess what comes next :P

Nope, not my experience, didn’t have those problems.
In my experience, chip clearance is one of the key challenges when reaming flute bores.
It needn’t be. I’d have probably quit after my first day faced with the usual 60+ pieces to ream in a single sitting if it was that much hassle. OK, I wouldn’t have quit, but I sure would have liked my job a whole lot less.
The more cutting edges you have, the smaller the flutes tend to be, and they tend to clog more easily. In part this is also because more cutting edges remove material faster.
“One giant scoop shaped flute for rough reaming GOOOD, many small flutes BAAAAD! Say Grok”

Likewise, 2-3 deep wide grooves are plenty for final reaming. At least when they are straight flutes, don’t know about spirals because we didn’t use any that I recall.
I have found that the reamer needs to be removed from the billet and the chips hand-cleared from the flutes many times during the reaming of a single flute section. If you don't do this the reamer quickly clogs, screams at you, and ultimately binds in the hole.
Again, not my experience, so I’d suggest better tools and processes could save you a lot of time and aggravation. I typically would have to sometimes clear chips once, occasionally twice. Often, no chip clearing needed at all.

Now I will grant you this: I was primarily reaming recorder sections (but there were some flutes) so the dimensions of bore length and diameter were not identical to what you are working with, but close enough that I can’t imagine there being a significant difference. Won’t state it as fact though, since I haven’t run the experiment :wink:

The high frequency of reamer removal and chip clearance is one reason why I don't like to clamp the reamer
in the tailstock. That really complicates the process of removing the reamer from the hole
entirely. If either reamer or wood billet is held by hand it is easy to quickly
extract the reamer from the hole (or take the hole off the reamer), clear chips, reinsert
and continue reaming.
Agree 1000% on this: The tailstock feed method is a PITA when you need to back out and then re engage, particularly if that needs to be done repeatedly. This can also markedly speed up the wear on your tailstock parts and lathe ways, especially if they are not of the hardened variety. And if you are using an older lathe that already has wear and runout from end to end, you really shouldn’t be aggravating the problem if you care about accuracy for operations like making precision jigs/tooling, or reamers of any length. That runout is going to affect your reaming as well, I suspect, if you’re feeding the reamer from the back side. Which is causing more wear and greater runout, which is negatively impacting your reaming, which is putting more force on those already worn parts, which is…….

Not really something to worry about when you’re making your first few flutes, but if you get set in your processes early on, next thing you know you’ve reamed hundreds or thousands of pieces and you lathe parts are starting to wear and you’ve got little motivation to change your process because orders need to be filled, the waitlist is growing, and it’s easier to say well, I’ll just have the ways ground or buy a new lathe when the time comes. Of course if you a just using the lathe for rough turning, it doesn’t matter, but these ideas were drilled into my head by the few more experienced machinists I’ve been exposed to, take it FWIW Charlie.

Paddler’s additional comments on accuracy sort of overlap my own, so need to comment on any of that, plus I think that’s about enough out of me for one morning.
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Re: reaming

Post by Steve Bliven »

Loren wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:29 am Now I will grant you this: I was primarily reaming recorder sections (but there were some flutes) so the dimensions of bore length and diameter were not identical to what you are working with, but close enough that I can’t imagine there being a significant difference. Won’t state it as fact though, since I haven’t run the experiment :wink:
Loren: Were you working primarily boxwood or pear or something other than blackwood for the recorders? And if Paddler is referring to blackwood, would that make a difference in the approaches/results? Asking out of ignorance having never turned anything on a lathe (or ever intending to).

Best wishes.

Steve
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Re: reaming

Post by Loren »

Steve Bliven wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:36 am
Loren: Were you working primarily boxwood or pear or something other than blackwood for the recorders? And if Paddler is referring to blackwood, would that make a difference in the approaches/results? Asking out of ignorance having never turned anything on a lathe (or ever intending to).

Best wishes.

Steve
Good point to bring up Steve.

Yes, the majority of our instruments were made from Boxwood, however since we had so many different instrument models we made, we typically did most of the early and middle stages of production, including all reaming procedures, in large batches to save time with regards to machine set-up/reconfiguration. That being the case, it was not uncommon for me to be turning, reaming, etc. some blackwood or various other woods right along with the Box, no change in tooling for the different woods.

Do the different woods ream differently? Yes, a bit. Let’s be honest, Boxwood is a dream to work. Blackwood and the other rosewoods I worked with did mostly require more forward pressure during the reaming process.

Some woods can be more grabby in the rotational direction, depending on the hardness and grain of the wood, but thankfully my reaming co-worker Mr. Chainwhip didn’t seem to notice or care.

Chatter/vibration can be more of an issue with certain woods but I do think the specific reamer design can alleviate problems to a large degree and then it’s up to the tool operator to pay attention to what they are seeing, hearing, and feeling ……then adjust your technique accordingly. I mean don’t try to ram a piece of Blackwood onto the reamer at the same speed and force you’d comfortably use with a section of Box, right? All that chatter is speaking to you, trying to inform you. How’s that walking on rice paper coming along Grasshopper? Sorry, for some that classic TV show just popped in my head :lol:

Regarding chips and clogging, I really don’t recall any significant differences, and I usually remember things that make my life more difficult :swear:

I feel like I’m maybe forgetting to mention something here, but I’ve been typing between weight lifting sets, so shifting focus back and forth, maybe isn’t helping, but hey, I gotta keep the biological machine well maintained too! Probably fair to say my ways are a bit worn at this point, but what are ya gonna do? Time and wear catches up with us all. Anyway, let me know if there is something I haven’t answered Steve.
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Re: reaming

Post by paddler »

I suspect that the different experiences Loren and I have, regarding reamers clogging with chips, is due to the
amount of material being removed. I don't do much in the way of step drilling prior to reaming. Instead, I have
a roughing reamer and a finish reamer. The roughing reamer turns a non-stepped, cylindrical, pilot hole into a
conical hole slightly smaller than the finish bore. The finish reamer produces the final shape. Given the small
scale of my operation it is just more efficient for me to do it this way. There is a lot of set-up work (and risk)
involved in step drilling billets in my workshop, so I use reamers, fed by hand, to make my life easier. It is quite
quick and easy the way I do it, but I would probably change my process a bit if I were part of a large scale
operation like Loren was.

I totally agree that cutting edge geometry should be material specific. That makes a big difference in my experience.

I didn't answer Loren's specific question about cutting vs scraping with spiral reamers because I have not done
that experiment myself. I would guess that the cutting edge on a spiral reamer would work more like a planing
action and produce a smoother surface, but I haven't done a side-by-side test of this.

I have reamed a few different wood types, including blackwood, fruitwoods, boxwood, and some delrin. I just have
one set of reamers, so I use the same reamers for all of them.
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Re: reaming

Post by Loren »

paddler wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:38 am I suspect that the different experiences Loren and I have, regarding reamers clogging with chips, is due to the
amount of material being removed. I don't do much in the way of step drilling prior to reaming. Instead, I have
a roughing reamer and a finish reamer. The roughing reamer turns a non-stepped, cylindrical, pilot hole into a
conical hole slightly smaller than the finish bore. The finish reamer produces the final shape. Given the small
scale of my operation it is just more efficient for me to do it this way. There is a lot of set-up work (and risk)
involved in step drilling billets in my workshop, so I use reamers, fed by hand, to make my life easier. It is quite
quick and easy the way I do it, but I would probably change my process a bit if I were part of a large scale
operation like Loren was.
Sounds like we used essentially the same process: Spoon shaped roughing reamer, then final reamer, with me feeding the pieces onto the reamer by hand.

I am guessing the design of the reamers largely accounts for our differing experiences. I mean to be fair, by the time I got there they’d had 40+ years to perfect their tools and techniques. Plus they had a former GE engineer in the family, who was also a machinist, designing and producing most of the custom tooling. And, well, they are Germans after all, so rather particular about precision, function, quality, etc.


I didn't answer Loren's specific question about cutting vs scraping with spiral reamers because I have not done
that experiment myself.


Get busy man, someone needs to do it! :lol:
I would guess that the cutting edge on a spiral reamer would work more like a planing
action and produce a smoother surface, but I haven't done a side-by-side test of this.
I was surprised to learn from the aforementioned Phil Lowe that a properly prepared and used scraper can produce a finish equal to or even smoother than a well planed surface, hence my curiosity.

The VH final reamers definitely appeared to be scraping, not cutting, and on most woods these reamers left a very smooth finish indeed. Considering that they designed and made these rather complicated reamers in house (who else has reamers that also cut sockets and face the end all in one go?), I figure they settled on the straight fluted reamer design for a reason, since they could have made them any way they wanted to.

Shame we can’t get everyone and their reamers together and try them side by side! That would be fun. Guess I’m a bit of a tool geek for even thinking that.
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Re: reaming

Post by Steve Bliven »

Loren wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:13 am How’s that walking on rice paper coming along Grasshopper? ... Anyway, let me know if there is something I haven’t answered Steve.
I'd been meaning to ask, how come Master Po had to wear those white things in his eyes. Why not just wear sunglasses?

Best wishes.

Steve
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Re: reaming

Post by Loren »

Steve Bliven wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:06 pm
I'd been meaning to ask, how come Master Po had to wear those white things in his eyes. Why not just wear sunglasses?

Best wishes.

Steve


Those white things are like a finger pointing to the moon…… (SLAP!) Don’t concentrate on the white things or you will miss all that heavenly glory!
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Re: reaming

Post by paddler »

Loren wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 1:20 pm Sounds like we used essentially the same process: Spoon shaped roughing reamer, then final reamer, with me feeding the pieces onto the reamer by hand.

I am guessing the design of the reamers largely accounts for our differing experiences. I mean to be fair, by the time I got there they’d had 40+ years to perfect their tools and techniques. Plus they had a former GE engineer in the family, who was also a machinist, designing and producing most of the custom tooling. And, well, they are Germans after all, so rather particular about precision, function, quality, etc.
The reamers I make myself have a scooped out, spoon shaped cross section. I settled on this design because it seems to clear chips the best. I suspect this is why your machinists used this design for the roughing reamers you used.
The difference, though, is that I use this shape reamer for my finish reamer. I originally intended to only use a single reamer, but I became concerned about wearing it out. At about that time I found out that I could buy a 5-blade,
Chinese, HSS, oboe reamer fairly inexpensively on eBay, which had just the right dimensions to work as a roughing reamer for several of the flute designs I was making. So I just bought a couple of those rather than spend a lot of time
making additional reamers myself. The idea being to simply save wear and tear on my carefully constructed finish reamers.

For this reason, I ended up using a 5-blade, 5 fluted, straight reamer for roughing, and a spoon shaped, single bladed (well, two really, but only one cuts for any given direction of rotation) for finishing.
This is not ideal, and is the reverse of the way you described using your reamers. So, I think you are right, this difference in use of reamers probably accounts for the different experiences with clogging.
The multi-bladed roughing reamer clogs much faster than the spoon-shaped one because it is removing more material and has less space in the flutes for the chips to accumulate before they fill up.
Fortunately, I do not have to achieve the efficiencies of a large-scale production operation, so I can get away with this non-ideal way of doing things. For my small-scale, diverse, prototyping operation it works out
quite well, aside from having to extract the roughing reamer periodically to prevent clogging. But that is relatively easy to do when feeding by hand. In an ideal world, I would have people who could
make me inexpensive, high speed steel, spoon-shaped, roughing reamers. :lol:
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Re: reaming

Post by waltsweet »

For years, I've been buying reamers from Gammons in Manchester, CT*. The cost has been well-worth the experience it gave me. My preferred design has a right-hand cut and left-hand spiral (RHC, LHS). Cobalt-steel costs a little more (and takes a little longer to deliver) but it lasts much longer; for all the trouble and expense, I want it to last longer than HSS. I request TiN coating to reduce friction. Step-drilling relieves some of the wear on the expensive reamers. I know that the simple, homemade reamers can work, but I got tired of fighting with them. When I'm considering a new bore, I prototype it by making a smooth core and molding resin around it.
I use a LeBlond machine lathe because it can develop the torque and it has a large spindle bore so I can put the workpiece deep inside the headstock. For reaming, I have a rotary union at the far left end; a plug in the spindle has a conical seat at the workpiece for a rudimentary seal. Thru the hole in the plug, compressed air drives the chips out of the reamer flutes. In this arrangement, reamer flutes of perhaps 1/8" deep are desirable to maintain pressure differential. Also, with shallow flutes, the core has a larger diameter to resist torsional flexing. Such twisting can ruin the smoothness of a deep hole. I don't design the reamer around the idea of deep flutes to hold chips; quite the opposite. The spiral can reduce chatter but has no value in removing chips,
Many of my reamers have six flutes, but my latest have 5. With five flutes, the "tooth load" increases, which means that more of the force results in cutting, rather than just overcoming friction. More flutes (more cutting edges) means the tool will stay sharp longer, but the driving force increases. As mentioned, the machinist's principle is this: if you have more tool engaged in the work, you're going to need more torque, more horsepower, and you'll have less control. A metal workpiece doesn't flex much, but wood does, so the extra force compounds the problem. In the past, I specified reamers ground with "chipbreakers" as on some milling cutters. The point is to increase tooth load, but designing is tricky and the resulting surface is not as smooth. For small and simple reamers, I specify "blank back" which means a six-flute pattern where 4 are cutting edges and 2 flutes are not there (the tool has a smooth arc instead). More affordable and quicker delivery.
* Of course, Paul S. is in no position to advise you on acoustic considerations. The standard machine tapers (morse tapers) are of limited use. Paul knows metalworking and can suggest these ideas plus whatever has been successful for others who make woodwinds (bagpipes and clarinets).
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Re: reaming

Post by Loren »

Thanks for sharing that Walt, very interesting.
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Re: reaming

Post by Narzog »

Loads of good info here. I primarily try to make whistles but a lot of the same concepts get used. I only use Delrin and not wood (and aluminum but I dont need to drill that). But I have big issues with the drilling part. After drilling only like 2 inches in any chip evacuation goes down the toilet, and it starts getting really hot. Then I haev to drill liek 1/4 in, stop, pull out chips, try to cool it, repeat. Takes literally forever.

And another issue, is I have to use spade bits. Normal spiral bits after drilling in an inch or 2 get so much friction from the sides rubbing that it gets super hot and can stop spinning. Spade bits fix this issue because the area that can rub is much smaller because its a skinny long shaft. Also much cheaper. I find they also give a decent finish. But the fail miserably at chip ejection. I've seen videos with special gun drills that use air or somethign to blow chips out. I'm wondering if theres any budget solutions for this. At my level buying custom tools definitely isnt an option.
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Re: reaming

Post by Geoffrey Ellis »

Narzog wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 12:55 pm Loads of good info here. I primarily try to make whistles but a lot of the same concepts get used. I only use Delrin and not wood (and aluminum but I dont need to drill that). But I have big issues with the drilling part. After drilling only like 2 inches in any chip evacuation goes down the toilet, and it starts getting really hot. Then I haev to drill liek 1/4 in, stop, pull out chips, try to cool it, repeat. Takes literally forever.

And another issue, is I have to use spade bits. Normal spiral bits after drilling in an inch or 2 get so much friction from the sides rubbing that it gets super hot and can stop spinning. Spade bits fix this issue because the area that can rub is much smaller because its a skinny long shaft. Also much cheaper. I find they also give a decent finish. But the fail miserably at chip ejection. I've seen videos with special gun drills that use air or somethign to blow chips out. I'm wondering if theres any budget solutions for this. At my level buying custom tools definitely isnt an option.
Gun drills are the solution to your problem, but they might create other problems (set-up and cost). If you make any quantity of flutes or whistles, they are worth the investment and will give you much better results.
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Re: reaming

Post by Narzog »

Geoffrey Ellis wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:07 pm Gun drills are the solution to your problem, but they might create other problems (set-up and cost). If you make any quantity of flutes or whistles, they are worth the investment and will give you much better results.
Thanks for the reply. You are right, I should just do some research and see if theres a reasonable way for me to get a gun drill setup. My current issues with my tool setup is I have a mix of tools that can do some jobs but not all. I kidna cheaped out. I have a midi wood lathe (which I got first and realized was the wrong tool for most of my work) and a taig micro metal lathe. So I have to base my designs around what my tools can make. No cool internal tuning slides for me haha. So now I just work with metal tubes because I dont need to drill them. And I can at least bore them if its a small piece. But unless I ever pull off making something worth selling its feels kidna bad buying more tools. But it is really tempting, there's always more tools I could get haha. If I get a gun drill setup I can at least make use of my wood lathe again.
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Re: reaming

Post by chas »

paddler wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 3:14 am As far as I know, the main purpose of spiral fluted reamers is to help with chip clearing.

I have found that the reamer needs to be removed from the billet and the chips hand-cleared
from the flutes many times during the reaming of a single flute section.

The other reason I like one or other to be free floating is for accuracy. If both reamer and
wood are clamped in place, then you require perfect concentricity and alignment of both to get
a bore that accurately replicates the dimensions of the reamer.
The guy from the reamer company said the spiral flutes also help with chattering. With the work piece held in the chuck, I put a vacuum nozzle in the thru hole, which cleared chips and helped cool the piece and the reamer.

The free-floating work piece makes so much sense to the mechanical engineer in me now. You never clamp a lead screw at both ends to give it a little transverse wiggle room.
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