Today I had the reel bands printed off. They've been printed, next is the UV varnish, then guillotine.
It's kind of exciting, but scary at the same time. If I've got it wrong at all, it's too late now.
I should have them trimmed out by the end of play today.
The bands are done. We had a small mishap when the sheet went through the UV machine (the machine is about 20 foot long). The proofing paper comes on a roll so it has a tendency to curl when the sheet hit the delivery it folded in half causing a crease. Fortunately the sheet didn't fold completely flat so it's going to be fine.
I had them guillotined out and they're finished. I'll fit them to the drums tonight and see how they look. In all honesty, they look better than the original reel bands and I don't think you will see the crease when they all pulled around the drum. I'll pick the best of the 3 for each band.
The first band is fitted to the drum and something isn’t right?.
I've got some flat spots on the fruit. Now this is not a big thing, bit my roundness is being affected some how?
I had the bands trimmed to 36mm and it's possible we may have a slight bulging which is causing the flat spots. It's terribly minor really, but it would be nice to get them spot on.
If you look at plum 3, you can just see what I mean.
I think the bands are a tiny fraction too wide which is causing the band to bow making it bulge. The material isn't sitting perfectly across the width.
Although the old band measures at 36mm it maybe a fraction under, actually?
See picture to the left.
I bought a 1 metre ruler today and a very sharp (lethal looking knife).
I took .5mm off the side of the band and tried it in the reel drum. Believe it or not, this is all it takes to prevent the band from sitting evenly in the channel.
The band will comfortably slide all the way round the drum now uninhibited.
As the picture shows, the reel band is now properly fitted to the reel drum. I still need to glue it in place, but essentially the flat spots have been eliminated.
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OK all three bands are now trimmed and mounted using a Pritt type adhesive. This is the least messy option and allows some adjusting.
That's it now there isn't any adjusting, either they're right or they're not!
The next stage is to rebuild the reel deck, but I’m not going to do that yet. I have a donor cabinet arriving this week, so I don’t need to pull my Golden Award reel deck apart, I’d sooner wait for that to arrive. So far so good.
