I too, sitting here in Western Australia, had never heard of a shrink pot, my first thought being a loopy psychiatrist, thanks for the link Tris and the photos Eshmiel.
Now, back to the original problem, stop overthinking the pin. At original point of manufacture there would have been tubs of parts to be assembled, the ratchet wheel would have been slipped onto the shaft then the hole through it bored and the pin inserted. I've dismantled a lot of braces and sometimes when reassembling the holes don't line up, the reason being I've put the wheel back on the shaft the wrong way round or it is rotated 180 degrees off. This, to my mind, confirms that the hole was bored post assembly. I would think, on more modern manufacture, accurate pre-boring would make it irrelevant which way the ratchet wheel was put on the shaft, maybe I need to pull down a modern Stanley and check if that is correct.
The ends of the pin have to be peened down deep enough to not interfere with the ratchet action of the pawls as the ratchet is being used. An appropriate sized roll pin should fix the problem.
Cheers,
Geoff.
