After 10 years the bearings are starting to rumble on my old reliable Nova 3000 lathe.  Unfortunately, Nova has changed their US support system recently, and lost a lot of institutional knowledge. From my experience, the new guys are eager, but just don’t know anything about machines older than the DVRs.

On top of that, I’m a reasonably savvy woodworker, but not a machinist. I can’t figure out how to remove the drive shaft of the lathe so I can replace the bearings.  Some generic advise I found online says to hammer the shaft out to the right (from handle wheel toward tailstock) (using a brass hammer, etc.)  But the pulley is in the way to do that, and; part two, I can’t figure out how to get the pulley off without damaging it.  It seem to be on pretty tight, with a steel key in the keyway (although it’s an aluminum pulley).

I could see pounding it in the other direction, but I just don’t know what’s under there, and dont’ want to bust anything.

I do have the brass hammer &-)

Any advise, especially from someone who’s changed the bearings on a Nova 300, would be really enormously appreciated.

dan.