Cleaning Spindle Bearings

After reading RLamparter’s excellent post documenting the refurbishing of the spindle bearings in a Boyar Schultz grinder, I had a go at mine. The grinder is an ’80s model and it just didn’t coast down as it should. So when I got to the task of cleaning the old bearings, I soon tired of picking out grease and repeated soakings. So I found a better method.

I wanted to find a way to agitate the solvent to clean the bearings. First was the container. An empty plastic container for sour cream was perfect. It has a lid to seal the solvent AND it is white. The white surface clearly shows the flushed out contaminates as the bearings approach being clean.

The agitation comes from a small air pump from a fish tank. This pump provides a mild stream of bubbles that keeps the solvent working. A small piece of steel raises the bearing off the bottom, allowing the fluid to flow thru the bearing. Run your tube thru the lid of the container to seal the system.

Hopefully others will find this useful.
John

p/s
When not used to clean bearings, the fish tank pump is mounted on my 14” band saw to blow chips from the line of cut.

If water floods inside a wall the air hose from the pump can be dropped down into the bottom of each stud bay and air flowed for a few days to dry it out. Really only useful if a pipe leaks or a window leaks and one or two bays get wet. More then that and mold will grow too fast to dry it out before it gets bad.
Bill D

Certainly if you want the best results from a surface grinder, new bearings would be the best way.

John Allan said:

I wanted to find a way to agitate the solvent to clean the bearings. First was the container. An empty plastic container for sour cream was perfect. It has a lid to seal the solvent AND it is white. The white surface clearly shows the flushed out contaminates as the bearings approach being clean.

Run your tube thru the lid of the container to seal the system.

Hopefully others will find this useful.
John

Click to expand...

If air is being pumped in, without some sort of closed loop vapor recovery, the system and solvent can not be sealed. May as well leave the lid in the trash if it's not needed to keep dust out.

CalG said:

If air is being pumped in, without some sort of closed loop vapor recovery, the system and solvent can not be sealed. May as well leave the lid in the trash if it's not needed to keep dust out.

Click to expand...

I confess that "sealed" was a poor choice of words. What I tried to describe was a mini wash tank. The lid prevents splashing, and reduces evaporation.