Sorting

I do love doing things like this, sorting, it's educational for me anyway. Not being involved in machine tools for so long, inevitably I have to look something up and have an aha moment. Then it makes sense. We should have a reamer sticky, I've already learned a bunch. I love the resources here. Made a lot of headway today, my neck is telling me tho from looking down. Sorted into groups, trash, maybe trash, 6 flute 8 flute, spiral , straight, well you get the idea. Pretty happy overall. Still have a bunch of questions tho. Gotta work cattle the next couple of days at the sale barn, so a hiatus is in order. Thanks everyone.
 
About a year or two ago I got a ton of reamers with an auction lot for a Lista or Vidmar cabinet (the cabinet is what I was after; stuff in it was just a bonus). Fractional, +/-, metric, and random sizes. At first I thought I'd get rid of them but ended up hanging on to most. Glad I did because I've used them more than I expected. Many of my projects are 1-off where I can design around what I have.

I rough-sorted mine in 0.025" or 0.050" range groups (e.g. 0.100-0.124", 0.125-0.149", etc...) so they'd be reasonably fast to find when I need them. I hear you on the sorting - grab a drink, throw on some tunes and burn a couple hours in the garage. Zen. :grin: (and tired eyes, sore neck).

Reamers.jpg

Worn ones went in a tool bit scrap bin - shafts can be useful for pins, custom tooling (d-bits), etc...
 
aliva said:
Get some of these, I used them on my taps, very inexpensive

www.mcmaster.com

McMaster-Carr

McMaster-Carr is the complete source for your plant with over 595,000 products. 98% of products ordered ship from stock and deliver same or next day.
www.mcmaster.com www.mcmaster.com
Click to expand...
Those look nice. How snug do they fit? E.g. will the size that says it fits 1/4-1/2" dia stay snugly on a 1/4" tap but still easily remove from a 1/2" tap?
Thanks
 
I would buy some Huot reamer indexes on ebay and sort them into on-size, under, over and metric, straight flute, spiral flute. They will be easy to find, easy to use and won't get damaged from banging into other reamers. If you have extras, sell them and buy some good boring bars.
 
For safe storage I simple use clear tubing of various sizes, cut into ~2" lengths and pushed onto the cutting ends.
It leaves the shanks readable for size.

The spiral reamers are most useful for holes that have a key way, the spiral allows the reamer to bridge the slot.

Keep an eye out for small tapered reamers used for taper pins.
These could come in useful if you ever need to replace a damaged or sheared taper pin in your machinery.

Brian
 
Cheap and easy is get som tight grained wood, maybe 1 x 2 and place inmill on side.

After sorting rough by size simply drill holes of correct size along edge, spaced about 1/8 inch between od, move a diameter plus 0.125 then drill next.

You can make a stand by cutting notch along the long side of 2x6 that they fit in.

Cheap du-fur ...

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk
 
custom storage needs = excuse for a 3D printer. :laughing:
 
To be blunt about "my" way of doing things, I would sort by size first. Over and undersized right along with nominal sizes. Then set aside duplicates. Put the best of each in a stash set, than another as a working set. Then, any bad ones set aside to be reground to a smaller size, scrapped for shanks, or whatever. Bad ones in each nominal set replaced as needed with new ones. Nothing gets thrown out as trash.

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