On Jan 1, 12:12*pm, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
*Jim Wilkins wrote:
...
If I picture this, you used the long straight shank of the reamer (plus
a bushing?) as the pilot shaft in the other bearing to ensure that
bearing being reamed lines up with pilot-shaft bearing?
...
Joe Gwinn

Yes. I fixed the bandsaw about 20 years ago and don't remember it as
well as the brass bearings on my front end loader, so I may be mixing
the two jobs.

The 'bushing' on the reamer shank was probably a thick layer of
aluminum auto body tape.

Some reamers work better than others backwards. They are ground with a
bevel on the normal leading end and may have a short, imperceptible
taper on the cutting edges. Without these they can chatter or not cut
concentric with the drilled hole. I have a tool and cutter grinding
setup that can bevel them to cut backwards. Presumably few others do
and I don't know a good way to grind a reamer by hand. Lautard(?)
mentioned a honing fixture for them but it doesn't control diameter.

You can make a D bit that serves as a reamer with simple equipment,
possibly only a bench grinder. If you make it on the end of drill rod
you can use the rod as the pilot. I think you would have to press in
only one bearing first and bush the drill rod to the other opening.
After reaming the first bearing you could use it to guide the rod for
reaming the second.

I'm using my HDTV as the laptop's display since it shows two full .pdf
pages at once. It's fine for reading (a download of Holtzapffel
book1), sort of awkward for typing because it's so far out of line
with the keyboard. Sorry for any missed typos.

jsw