Basics of Reamers: Types, Styles, and Materials

Chucking reamers are used to enlarge and smooth pre-existing holes in industrial materials, such as wood and metal. They are not designed to create new holes but to refine and accurately size existing ones.

Chucking Reamers

• Suitable for use in drill presses, lathes, and screw machines.

• The most commonly used style for reaming holes to tight tolerances.

• Available in straight flute, RHS/RHC, LHS/LHC, and expansion styles, in both standard and jobber lengths.

Hand Reamers

• Includes a square shank end, like a hand tap, for use with adjustable or standard tap wrenches.

• Designed with a tapered cutting head for easier insertion into the workpiece.

Shell Reamers

• Comparable to the cutting section of a chucking reamer.

• Component is supplied without an integrated shank.

• A straight or taper shank arbor is used with the shell reamer to form a complete cutting tool

Pipe Reamers

• Prepare holes for taper pipe tapping.

• Constructed with a square-end shank, enabling use with adjustable or standard tap wrenches.

Expansion Reamers

• Equipped with an adjusting screw to resize the cutting head, allowing the expansion reamer to be reground multiple times.

Bridge Reamers

• Enlarges and aligns holes for rivets.

• Ideal for steel construction, especially with I-beams.

• Available with various shank styles for portable electric drills, drill presses, and square-drive impact wrenches.

Repairman’s Reamers

• Designed for deburring pipe and conduit, as well as enlarging holes in sheet metal.

High Speed Steel (HSS, M1, M2, M7, M50)

• Delivers long tool life and high productivity at minimal cost.

• Performs well in free-cutting and carbon steels, as well as soft non-ferrous materials like aluminum, brass, bronze, and copper.

Cobalt (M35, M42)

• Provides superior wear resistance, hardness, and toughness compared to HSS.

• Minimizes chipping and micro-chipping under severe cutting conditions, enabling 10% higher speeds than HSS.

Solid Carbide

• Ideal for high-performance applications—carbide runs at higher speeds, withstands elevated temperatures, and offers excellent wear resistance.

• Carbide is brittle and prone to chipping under unfavorable conditions; heavy feed rates are better suited for HSS and cobalt tools.

• Ideal for abrasive and tough-to-machine materials such as cast iron, non-ferrous alloys, glass, plastics, and composites.

Carbide Tipped

• Delivers many benefits of solid carbide tooling at a lower cost, especially for larger diameter tools.

Straight Flute

• The most widely used reamer.

• 45° chamfer angle for smooth entry into existing holes.

• Straight flutes direct chips forward into the hole; suitable for through-hole applications only.

Right Hand Spiral/Right Hand Cut (RHS/RHC)

• Extracts chips from an existing hole.

• Perfect for blind-hole applications.

• Design enhances shear for a smoother finished hole.

Left Hand Spiral/Right Hand Cut (LHS/RHC)

• Push chips forward, ideal for through-hole applications.

• Engineered to deliver the finest hole finish.

Taper Pin

• Features a 1/4″ per foot taper.

• Designed to ream holes for standard taper pins.

Straight Flute and Left Hand Spiral Taper Pin

• Designed primarily for hand reaming.

• Optimal results are achieved when the hole is drilled a few thousandths of an inch smaller than the minor diameter of the finished reamed hole.

Helical Taper Pin

• Engineered for machine reaming of taper-pin holes in production environments.

• The high-spiral design reduces chip packing in the flutes.

Special Sizes

Over/Under Reamers

• Offered in increments of 0.001″ above or below standard key sizes, such as 0.2510″ (oversize) and 0.2490″ (undersize) as alternatives to the standard 0.2500″ (1/4″) reamer.

• These sizes enable users to achieve hole fits that are either tighter or looser than standard fractional dimensions.

Special Decimal Sizes

• Encompasses sizes beyond standard fractional, letter, wire, and metric specifications.

• Available in 0.0010″ incremental sizes.

Dowel Pin Sizes

• Ensures precise hole preparation for dowel pin insertion.

Machine Reaming

To 3/32"	.003"- .006"
3/32" to 1/4"	.008"- .010"
1/4" to 1/2"	.012"- .015"
1/2" to 1"	.017"- .020"
1" to 2"	.020"- .025"
>2"	.030"- .035"

Hand Reaming

All Sizes

.002"- .004"

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