This one’s for the folks out there who cut a lot of steerer tubes and handlebars. This is a tool that most of us won’t use every day. Or even every month, or quarter, for that matter. To be honest, a nice solid inner-outer reamer isn’t on most riders’ Amazon wish lists. For a lot of people out there, this might be the first time you’ve even seen such a tool.

But if you do happen to be one of the lucky ones that gets to work on bikes for a living, this is a must have item. Or maybe you just need to have the best tool for the job, even if you’re only going to trim one steerer tube all year. That’s me. A couple years ago I bought a super nice multimeter because I had one electrical circuit to install in our house. I’ve used the thing a total of 3 times. Damn it looks good in the drawer of my toolbox though.

So does the Ridgid Inner-Outer Reamer I picked up a while back, only I use it way more than the multimeter. The last inner-outer reamer I had was novel when I got it over a decade ago, but like most of these things nowadays it was plastic and featured just four coarse cutting blades. The Ridgid tool is made of solid metal and is by far the nicest example of an inner-outer reamer I’ve come across. Its 45 hardened steel cutting blades on both inner and outer reamers are sheathed in a nice aluminum housing that’s coarse enough for greasy hands to grip, and it has a heavy, solid feel to it. There are even a couple flat surfaces 180 degrees from one another that have little metric and imperial ruler marks. I admit I’ve never used them, but could certainly see them coming in handy while trimming aluminum handlebars.

The tool is simple and rather self explanatory to use, with the purpose of deburring and beveling the cut surface of a pipe. My old inner-outer reamer’s four blades would sort of skip over the surface of the material, leaving unsightly chatter marks, but the finer 45 cutters on the Ridgid tool create a smooth, almost polished finish. It’s a massive upgrade.

It’s not totally perfect. The blades are on an angle to create the bevel, so they miss the top surface. I still need to knock the top burr down with a file, but that’s the case with every inner-outer reamer, so it’s not really a gripe with this specific tool. Until I find a tool that takes care of the inner, outer and top burrs all in one fell swoop, this little barrel of monkeys will be my go-to. I actually get a little excited every time I get to use it, which is about the best compliment a tool get get, don’t ya think?

The Ridgid Inner-Outer Reamer comes in two sizes. Mine is the smaller one, which will handle a max tube size of 1 1/4 inches and is the perfect size for steerer tubes and alloy bars. I paid around $40 for it.

Photos: Ryan Palmer