Now we will move on to the brake plate or friction ring as I like to call it! This ring of metal is what keeps those awful backlashes from occurring during a cast. It provides a place for the centrifugal brakes to rub against thereby slowing the spool down and keeping it from over running while outcasting! This is the area of a reel that produced results which surprised me the most after "SUPER TUNING" it! Theory suggested that once I sanded and polished this area that the brakes would now be rubbing against a nearly friction free surface necessitating the use of more brakes during a cast to control the spool. That made sense to me! Once again I was shocked by the results. After "SUPER TUNING" the individual brakes will now provide MORE control on the spool than before. I have verified this on every reel I have "SUPER TUNED" without exception! In retrospect, I think I have two reasons that explain this. "SUPER TUNING" the friction ring makes the surface of that ring flat and even. This then provides the brakes with an area that they can make near 100% surface contact with as they rub along its surface! Thus providing more consistent and even resistance which actually allows for the use of fewer brakes during casting. This correlates directly into longer casts! My other theory about this is that if a friction ring is scratched, dirty, oily, has wear tracks or is oxidized in some way, that the brakes will bounce up and down on their posts as the spool spins effectively turning them on and off throughout the cast. This obviously would cause them to have inconsistent braking and be ineffective in controlling the spool. Now lets talk about how to "SUPER TUNE" a friction ring.

By now you are already familiar with the steps, 1) 600 grit sandpaper 2) 1500 grit sandpaper 3) Simichrome polish on a cotton tipped stick for final polishing. So that is what will be done again, but I had to modify my sanding stick a bit to accomplish this on the friction ring. Hopefully you can see it in the pictures. I used the same old round piece of wood with a ¼ inch slit in it, but I placed a nut with a inside diameter about the outside diameter of my toothpick right below the slit. Then I used Super glue to attach a nylon washer to the top of the nut (end of nut toward slit). The washer needs to be larger than the diameter of the nut to prevent the nut from contacting anything and scratching it while in use! Then I reinforced the stick with some heat shrink tubing and secured the nut to the stick with heat shrink as well. What this homemade tool does is keep the sandpaper from sliding down the toothpick and removing itself from the work area during operation of the rotary tool. Cut your sandpaper and place its end into the slit, then wind it around the stick making sure to keep the sandpapers wound diameter less than that of the nylon washer. Now begin sanding with the rotary tool by rotating it around the friction rings surface. NOTE: this method works best for brass friction rings, if you are doing a reel with a chrome hardened friction ring you may want to skip using the 600 grit sandpaper and just use the 1500 grit followed by the polish. Make sure to remove any nicks, oxidation,track marks, etc. from the friction rings surface with the 600 grit paper then move on to the 1500 grit. As the end of the sandpaper gets loaded up with brass from the friction ring, stop the rotary tool and cut off the used up sandpaper. Then go back to sanding, this way you won't have to keep winding new sandpaper on the stick every time it loads up. You may have to clean the friction ring with alcohol a few times during the sanding process. Definitely do so prior to the polishing stage as we don't want any fine metal dust getting on the polishing stick and scratching the friction ring at that point. Don't stop polishing it till the ring has a mirror like finish. Remember to keep your friction rings clean and free from dirt, oil, etc while casting. This will provide you with excellent, consistent braking and predictable long casts!

FRICTION RING PICTURES