Ultimate Centrepin Bearings

[Plumtart]

Here's a link to a chap talking about his lathe. For anyone into machine tools that's interesting in itself, but just wait until you get to the example he shows of an AIR BEARING.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFrVdoO ... gs=pl%2Cwn

I'd never heard of an air bearing, but just LOOK at the way it spins - virtually nil friction.

My centrepin reels are all plain bearing types - pre-war Aerials, and they work beautifully in practical fishing situations. Obviously, more recent reels from the few top makers are as good - maybe better. A few (I'm thinking Witchers) have the potential to age and improve with the grace like the old Allcocks Aerials, but that's a subject for discussion in a different thread.

I've never liked pins with ball-bearings because they make a gritty sound I don't like, and they are slower to start than plain bearings when casting off the reel (Wallis casting). Just imagine a reel as perfect as a Witcher but equipped with ONE MICRON air bearings. In fact, just imagine a Witcher made completely on such a lathe. There would be nil chance of line going between backplate and spool, although any water between them might act as a brake.

Perhaps it would be as difficult to start, like a BB reel.

Perhaps there is a professional machinist angler reading this who has access to such a machine, and whose employer would look kindly upon his making two such reels - one for him and one for me.

Musing on possibilities can be SO disturbing of a good night's sleep.

W.

[Phil Arnott]

In my engineering days in the seventies, the research guys in our factory tested some PTFE impregnated phosphor bronze. The guys who tested It stated that if it was run without any lubrication in the main bearings of a car engine it would outlast the rest of the engine!

Many centrepins have appear to have plain brass bearing but I don't know if phosphor bronze, which is a superior bearing material, was ever used.

It should be possible to use jewel bearings which provided the eventual answer to the accurate timepiece.

[ReelMaker]

In my experience bronze bearings seem to have a slight drag and I decided to make my last reel with brass bearing and a stainless shaft ,but cleaning and oiling after each trip to the river.Reelmaker

[Plumtart]

Witcher reels have phosphor bronze bearings. I've used that stuff on other jobs and it's a) an absolute pig to turn, and b) an absolute pig on which to achieve a mirror finish. I don't know what hardness rating it has, but in my limited experience turning 316 stainless is a doddle by comparison. I also tried to hand thread a piece of 5mm stock, held in the lathe chuck, and had a hell of a job getting it started, even when giving the die a helping shove with the lathe tailstock - and eventually bent the 5mm too much to use.

Phil's report is very interesting. If it proved to be that wonderful then, it's odd that it wasn't employed more widely. Perhaps it is. And I wonder how they incorporated PTFE into a bearing material matrix. Perhaps it was a surface treatment on an etched or microgrooved surface - but 'impregnated'?

Plain brass bearings have a variable wear record in pins. The worst examples I've seen were on Speedias, in which almost all wore very quickly.

Air Bearings don't seem to actually touch at all. Anyone with information or experience? Doesn't that working example in the video suggest pins would be the perfect recipients?

W.

[Plumtart]

This is a very old thread, but it may be that a knowing technocrat has since joined this august forum. Any new information?

[Barbelseeker]

Most of the "oilite" bearing are made of sintered products which introduces the oil or PTFE within the structure and they require no lubrication.

A very precise rundown on these can be found here. We used these in my apprenticeship days along with Phosphor bronze special machined bearing. They are still a main stay of many applications today

https://www.bowman.co.uk/news/a-brief-o ... e-bearings