Hello all,
I was looking for advice on maintenance of the babbit heads on an old 12″ joiner. What oil works best for lubricating? What else needs to be done to keep them working smoothly? Is it possible or worthwhile to replace them with conventional bearings? Thanks for the help.
Drew
Replies
Drew,
Any oil is better than none. The best oil would be spindle oil which you can get from large suppliers of lubricants.
There is nothing wrong with babbit bearings. If you want to find out more go to http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/ubbs/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&forum=Third+Hand&number=3&DaysPrune=45&LastLogin=
Like Michael said nothing wrong with babbitt bearings. Non Detergent 30 wt oil you can find in an auto parts store is good enough. That's what's specified to use on our Diehl straight line rip. I use spindle oil in higher rpm machines like overhead routers and shapers. There's typically shims between the bearing journals that can be removed as the babbitt wears. Mcmaster sells babbiit material to repour bearings. You make no mention of the type of head on your machine. Square or clamshell I would stay away from. What is the make? I've seen some nice old Olivers and Crescent jointers with modern heads and babbitt bearings.
Hey,
It's a Crescent jointer that belongs to a friend of mine. I go over to his shop to rough mill my wide boards. The babbits tend to get hot when you run the jointer for a while. The cutterhead is round. A great old machine, (although to be honest I have no idea how old it is). There is a side extension with round cut out in the outfeed table that looks like it's for mounting a router and a split fence extension (cast iron) to boot. Haven't tried to putting a router there.
Regards,
Drew
That's a good head on that machine. You can go to http://www.owwm.com and look at some of the old scanned info on Crescent. Interesting site with a lot of amateurs cobbling up old machines. Some of the info is a bit off but there is some babbitt info there. http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/ Good source for some old reprints on babbitt here as well and FWW did a pretty good article on pouring babbitts years ago.
Rick,
What info on the OWWM are you finding to be a bit off?
Keith Bohn
Keith...should have said incomplete rather than off. Considering how long and how many people contributing it's a pretty good haul but there are things that haven't been fully covered yet. Started as hobby restorer myself many years ago and ended up doing machines for a living long before the internet.
Rick
I dunno Rick. I think maybe that you might want to rachet back on your standards a wee bit on this one. Consider this.
The OWWM Web page first popped up right around the turn of the century and before that there was nothing. OK, there was a page or two out there but nothing with anything of substance and what was there was scattered all over Al Gore's World Wide Web making it almost impossible to find.
Keep in mind that the content is provided by volunteers and while there isn't much in the way of "how to" articles the stuff that is there can't be readily found anywhere else.
What you will find there is a boat load of archival data in the way of pictures and manuals, most of which would have been lost in the great trash heaps dotting the 'Murican landscape without the efforts of the volunteers.
When the whole thing was started (the Yahoo forum that is) there were six lonely, middle aged, some balding, most growing a belly befiting their station in life. Since that day the membership has grown to over 1800 members and over 45,000 messages have been posted. The information on that forum generally runs along the lines of pretty solid. The real down fall with the forum is searching the archives. Had I known/could I have done it all over again I would have tracked the better contributions and saved them to a special spot where people didn't need to wade through the chaf to get to the wheat.
If you do decide to contribute an article I do know the WebMeister will accept it gladly. You'd be surprised to know that the adoration in return is huge. OK, there aren't any wimmen e-mailing you their hotel room keys buts that's just because the technology hasn't quite caught up with the concept.
Keith Bohn
I recently bought a bunch of PM machines, from the ealry 80's, kept some and sold the rest. I put the manuals into PDF, and posted them there. Got a nice email from a person who had a PM 141 (14"BS) and was looking for a part number, and thanked me for posting. Felt pretty good. WWer's generally are very coopertative lot, which is why I rarely find one that I do not like.
BTW, that PM 141 I did keep, and it is a great little scroller.
AlanAlan
http://www.alanturnerfurnituremaker.com
Alan,
Ditto what you said on the Powermatic. I posted a "short" write-up on mine.
http://www.owwm.com/PhotoIndex/detail.asp?id=973
Keith Bohn
Hey Rick,
Been offline for a while but thanks for pointing me towards some good websites.
take care, Drew
Sounds like what you have is the jointer/shaper off an old combination woodwrking machine from the late 19th century. The other parts for it would be a bandsaw, tablesaw, horizontal borer/mortiser.
I think there are a couple listed at http://www.owwm.com
Hey Dave,
Been off line for a while, but thanks for pointing me to the OWWM website, good resource.
Drew
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