Hose Reel Hosed

We got a really nice hose reel to attach to the back of the house a couple years ago I think. It's like cast aluminum or some pot metal—very heavy duty, has no problem holding the heavy black Goodyear hose we have on it. It must be on bearings too, because it reels so smoothly and without a squeak. Anyhoo, the handle broke last year. It too was cast in some light spongy metal. I kept meaning to fix it some how, but knew I couldn't put the broken arm back together. Today I decided to just replace it with galvanized pipe parts. Thankfully the crank is on the correct side so it will always tighten any joints when reeling the hose back in. The sucky part was trying to enlarge the inside of the 1st piece, whose ID was about 1/64" too small, according to my calipers. Lots of filing by hand and grinding with a small grinding bit on a drill. My horse for a milling machine.