Hi DonnyW,
I thought that this might be the case as the outer corners looked a tad suspicious.
Regardless a new bed knife will see it right for many more years to come.
One thing your bed knife photos clearly show and that is that Scott Bonnar painted their sole plates in the same colour as the overall chassis.
This has been a topic of debate many times over here in the forum but yours being an original paint job is proof of settling this argument for once and for all.
I hope that you are having new bearings installed onto the reel as if you are using the old ones there will be an amount of wear on them and you'll never be able to adjust the reel accurately and it won't be machined accurately either.
The only bearings you can obtain for these reels are sealed "RLS5" bearings which are far better than the original open sided units that allow grit to get into them and shorten their lives rather rapidly.
Cheers,
BB.
