Reaming

Ah the day finally has come. I got to ream new holes into my banjo headstock. Rather than drilling, I finally learned to use a new process called reaming. Which is entirely in process than drilling.

The process of reaming: Holes are not made perfect. Holes are never perfect unless they are reamed. Consider drill bits. I bet most of you have seen one. Imagine a rectangle twisted into a helical shape with a sharp edge. These are for rough holes. To get a hole to the exact size you need, you ream it to the perfect size. This is where reaming comes into play. It's almost like a propeller just extruded with a cutting face on each side.

After some consoling with the forums on www.banjohangout.org I decided I would have to do the whole thing by hand rather than relying on a machine. Since it's a careful process, I only had one chance to do it. So getting down to business, below, is a picture of my mentor, Martin Sweet's hand holding a very slightly smaller reamer than what I needed, but It got the job done.

Using a tap thingy, (sorry, I dont know the true name). Slowly and surely, I would increase the size of the holes from 11/16ths to 3/8ths. The picture below is the headstock with the highest, lowest and furthest right holes already reamed. The hole furthest left has only been started and I realized I should be taking photos.

Does it sound hard? It really isn't actually. Sure, my wrist felt like heck, but it was well worth it.