Tailor Made By V. Huttley - The Lucky 7 Oberon Fly Reels - Part 3

Vince Huttley of Tailor Made By V. Huttley sent me an email update a couple weeks ago and it more or less got lost in the flow.  I found it yesterday morning since I did want to post the latest update to the "Lucky 7" series of fly reels that Vince has been working on for the past several months.

If this is the first post that you've seen on the "Lucky 7", then please get caught up by checking out Part 1 and Part 2.  Now you can enjoy Part 3. 

I am always amazed what someone can create by milling and you'd never think that the foot to a fly reel would have so many steps and calculations to it.  Fine work again by Mr. Huttley.

Vince wrote...  "Sorry mate that it's been a few week with very little progress documented on the Lucky 7 fly reels.  The wheels have been tuning slowly in the back ground but hopefully this will shed some light on my process.  For these steps I think the photo's will explain more than I can but will try to fill in the gaps. 

Unfortunately whilst machining the reel feet blanks I didn't get any photo's of the process, in short I machine the tapers of the foot in the lathe which pretty much look like an odd hour glass and drill in the centre to the correct radius matching the standard reel seat.  

Something that I have taken a lot of care in with my feet is they work with most screw lock and sliding band seats.  I can't say they will work with all seats but you will find a tray on my bench full of test feet and blanks that didn't make the fit.  Now with these cylindrical blanks they are machined in the fourth axis (Rotary Head) on my little CNC mill and once in the fourth axis, a cutting path is programmed to remove the excess from the blank.  

Now this is when milling gets cool!  I can index this step three times around the part simply by rotating it.  After all the excess is removed a final finish pass is done to bring the parts to tolerance and give a nice machined finish then mounting holes are drilled.  Next, throw the blanks in the lathe, part the excess material and you're left with three 90% completed feet that look like an extravagant piece of pipe.  Simply crush in the hands and they will break up into three separate parts. 

Next, the parts are mounted in the vice and mounting holes relieved for screw heads and a slight radius machine on the ends to remove any hard edges, quick dress on a mandrel wrapped in sandpaper the remove the drill marks and the feet are complete.

On to the bodies and again, I never get tired of seeing the fourth axis in action and mostly the reel really takes shape in this step.  Each reel body is bolted on a mandrel and mounted in the chuck of the fourth axis.  To machine, I break down the bodies into four separate windows and machine one at a time spinning the body around the milling cutter. After the windows are cut, a flat for the foot is milled and then two holes are drilled and tapped to mount the reel foot and that's it. 

Each part is now checked, measured, sharp edges removed, clean and prepped for anodizing.  Once anodized, assembly will start to happen, so stay tuned."

All "Lucky 7" fly reels are spoken for, but that doesn't mean that you still can't follow along with the latest shop news on the Tailor Made By V. Huttley website as well as Facebook and Instagram too.