Pouring Babbitt Bearings for a Crescent Band Saw

[Music] hello keith rucker here at vintage machinery.org guys today i got a little project we're going to be doing i've got some uh bearings that need to be reported and a little back story on this real quick uh last week or two i've been just really really busy i haven't had a whole lot of time to get here and shop but i've had a young man that's been doing some work for me and he's kind of gotten called up and i said you know what this is miles mcdonald a college boy's been working for me he's been home while this whole coven thing's been going on and been helping me out a lot just doing general stuff out here in the shop i said miles you're ready to restore a machine so uh i kind of gave him a machine out here to start working on it's actually a bandsaw a wood cutting bandsaw and i'll be giving you some more detail on this in a later video and i've been pretty much hands off on it i really haven't even been down here in the shop i've just kind of turned him loose uh but he's gotten to a point where he needs a little bit of help and that is on these bearings these bearings need to be reported this is for the top uh wheel on the bandsaw there's this casting actually a pair of castings here that have babbitt bearings in them and i'm gonna go ahead and try to get that done this weekend so when he comes back in next week uh that he can go ahead and continue working on that bandsaw restoration so let me zoom in here show you what we got and we are going to get started re-pouring these bearings so this is the bearing assembly that goes up on the top wheel there's several things going on basically two oil holes here in the top and on the inside when you open this up you got a couple of places for some babbitt and these babbitt areas here uh these are babbitt bearings i've talked about babbitt bearings before this is a material it's kind of a lead tin alloy it's been around for a very long time and back before we had ball bearings this was pretty much the standard bearing material and while we have pretty well replaced babbitt bearings with ball bearings in today's world they still are actually a very good bearing material and they actually do pretty well so the downside to them is is that they wear over time i guess that's true with any bearing but the nice thing about them is is when they do wear out instead of having to order new bearings you just melt the old metal out and you cast a new bearing you actually pour molten babit in here and do that so what i'm going to start with here is we're going to melt the old babbitt out and then work on getting this set up to cast new bearings one thing i will note here is on this particular setup you got really two bearings one on each end of the casting the center section is kind of void uh this will fill up with oil and it's kind of serves as a reservoir but it's not a solid bearing it's just bearing on both ends of that shaft that's really what you need it's just like a ball bearing you would have a bearing on each end instead of having uh you know a solid bearing all the way across you really don't need all that friction in there we just need to make sure we got the ends covered let's uh let's get this melted out and uh we'll get started on this project to melt these out i've just got my casting sitting here in a ladle where i can catch it and i've just got it propped up over here against the vise and we'll use the torch and roast bud tip and just heat it up and melt it out so let's uh let's do it all right guys we're gonna let these castings cool down and i'm gonna further clean them up there's my babbitt that we melted out of there and anyway we're just going to let these cool down before i try to handle them yes there's a bunch of junk in there of course there's a bunch of grease and oil and whatever in these that we burned them out we got a lot of residue so we'll just get a wire wheel down there clean those out but let them cool first got these cleaned out pretty well now and again we'll only be pouring babbitt on the ends the shaft will lay in here and we will actually pour the babin around this so the babble will be contained in the shell and it will be formed to the shaft now to get this thing set up properly what i'm going to do is i'm going to go over to the lathe and i am going to make a couple of bushings that come up on the ends of these and actually sit inside of this groove just barely uh but then also hold this up so that it's not sitting on these ridges here these are in here to kind of keep the babbitt contained in those two ends so i'm going to run over to the lathe and make a couple of bushings for this that'll also help keep the babbitt from pouring out the ends just going to help out all the way around so let me get over there and get that started and uh i'll bring you along for the ride so just got a little piece of scrap metal in here we're gonna bore that out inch and a half on the inside so it'll fit up on that shaft and uh turn a lip in there that's uh about inch 750 i think we'll start by center drilling this so we can punch a hole through there start with a 3 8 inch hole just as a [Applause] pilot [Applause] next we got a 13 16 slowed the blade down a little bit going up to a larger size we're going up to one and seven sixteenths it's a little bit under inch and a half got about 60 thou we need to bore out of here so i got a boring bar on here that's a 20 40 thou right there got about a little over 20 thou to go take a little bit lighter pass so according to that i got about just a tad over five thousand take out of there all right looks like we're just a little under one and a half which is right where i want to be i'm going to get that shaft and slide up over just make sure it goes but it looks like we got a good clearance there here we go that'll be good i'm gonna come in here now and uh face this front and we're going to cut a little step in there don't need much i need to turn this step down to about an inch 700 thou maybe just a little bit over that it's going up into a casting it's not a machine surface so it's a little bit rough um not very precise i guess i should say and we've got about uh see one two three about four hundred thousand take out of there [Applause] yeah we got about another hundred thou [Applause] right in these corners [Applause] and now we'll come in here and part it [Applause] off [Applause] all right we got our ring made here let me go test fit this one and uh everything works out right we'll make another one dislike it so you can kind of see what we've done here i've taken the bushings i put them on my mandrel that we'll be turning with here or pouring around and those fit right down in those ends and these serve two purposes like we said before number one it centers the shaft into the casting they're up off of those uh pieces in there that we were that are those little dams and it also caps the end of this and helps keep the babbitt from pouring out the end because if we pour it in there right now it's just going to pour out so we're still going to have to dam it up a little bit more using some damning compound but that right there is going to go a long way toward helping us out with that so we are about ready to set this up for a pour now that we've got our bushings made now for damning material i'm using a product called babitrite and this is you can't get this stuff anymore i've still got some that i've had for a long time it's about the consistency of play-doh there are some replacement products out there and i'm going to have to order some replacement stuff because my stuff here is starting to get really dried up and hard to use but what i'm going to do is just put some of this down in here and i'm just kind of putting it right behind both of these dams here because i really don't want the babbitt to go down the center of this thing so we'll just uh put some in here and we'll let that shaft kind of conformed to it all right so now i'm going to come in here with my shaft press it in place and that should keep any babbitt from going into that center section next thing i'm going to do here is we will reinforce around these bushings that we got on the end we got to keep the babbitt inside so we'll just mold this in place do that on both ends to the point now we're ready to start heating everything up and getting ready for the pour so you do want to preheat your parts here you don't want the babbitt cooling down too quick you want it to stay molten and uh until it forms completely around that shaft so to help with that we're just going to take our torch and heat everything up really just want to get it you know a couple hundred degrees dab it melts at around seven eight hundred degrees if i remember right fairly low melting temperature so uh you know we don't have to get this thing red hot but we do want to have enough heat in there that uh everything will just flow good around there and not not cool down too quickly meanwhile also have my babbitt over here melting and i just got a camp stove here with a ladle on it i do like to kind of skim the top of this before i pour just to get any impurities out um i usually just rake it to the other side of the ladle there and also i'm using a pine stick here when you put that in there whenever it charge that stick that is warm enough to pour so we are actually ready to pour right now so just bring the ladle over here and we will pour it in there and hope that babbitt doesn't go pouring everywhere all right that one is done there we go all right we're gonna let that cool down and we'll get the other side prepped up to pour it all right we have let this cool down it's still a little warm but uh you know i can touch it with my hands i think we're good i'm gonna put some gloves on though it is like it is still just a little bit warm but i want to burn myself but um it is i can touch it just not very long let's see how this looks pull the shaft out and that first pour is about perfect so to get this down i'm just going to use a rasp file this is actually a horseshoer's rasp this fab it cuts really easily it's pretty soft stuff all right that looks pretty good i'm going to clean it up and go ahead and get it ready to pour the top half i'll go ahead and note that i have gone ahead and filled in some babbitt right material down here in this bottom and i've already smoked up my shaft here go ahead and get all this kind of position where we want it and i've gone and cut some spacers here this is just out of some cardboard some thin cardboard which i have seen for this purpose many many times in old machines ideally i like to use a gasket paper but honestly guys i couldn't find my gasket paper just now when i was doing this so we're resorting to cardboard and i need to put some dams in in here so let me go ahead and get that just like before we'll put one on each side of this little spacer in here to contain our babbitt into that area now we can set this on top and we'll go ahead and snug all these up as well little spacers in here you want to have some shims between these two uh layers as this babbitt wears out or wears down what you want to be able to do is uh come in here with some or take one of those shims out and you can actually pull the bearing back down and tighten it back up uh by adjusting those shims in there that's one of the nice things about babbitt bearings is they are adjustable as they wear let me get a wrench and tighten those up i think we're ready to start heating this up i have got it all clamped down my gaskets are in there spacers shims whatever you want to call them shafts smoked up i got my damning material around the bushings on the end we're pretty much ready to go here we're going to pour into the pour hole here we'll pour into this hole right here this is the actual pour hole that goes in that front cavity this one here just goes into an oil reservoir this one will not get used for oil these two will get used for oil um we're going to go ahead and get this heated up get my babbitt melted and hope we get a good pour out of the top half this one's going to be a little tough pouring down that hole there i'll make a mess but as it cools it shrinks sucks down in there and we want to make sure we got it filled to the top all right this one will be a little bit easier we got a little reservoir here and we will let this cool i am going to go ahead and see if i can get some of this babbitt up go ahead and melt it back into the slug over there before it cools down all right we're gonna let that cool and we'll be back so it's cooled down enough again where i can hold on to it it's still a little warm but not so hot you can't handle it and we're going to take it apart and see see what it looks like let's see here and we got a little bit of a leak in there but no big deal and that top bearing looks fine it's not unusual on these top bearings to get a couple air pockets up in the top but it's not critical at all guys you need a place for the oil to go anyway and that's just an oil reservoir for all intent purposes so no big deal at all that piece there will just break right out fortunately then fill up the whole cavity and i get my file out we'll dress those down and i think i think our babbitt pour turned out just fine let's uh get the shaft ready to go back on the machine next thing i want to do is cut some oil grooves in here so the oil can get around i'm just got a little dremel tool with a piece on it we're just going to grind a little groove there from our oil hole i drilled that through the other side we'll just connect it over to this little uh void that's already in here that'll make a nice oil pocket and then we'll just kind of continue across the top here all right same thing over here got a couple little areas in here we'll just turn those into oil pockets i don't want them to go all the way to the at to the ends i want to keep the bare oil in the bearings it's going to want to seep out some naturally but we want to keep as much in there as we can that's on the top all right once that's done um i'm going to take a bearing scraper here and just start the process of scraping i'm just going to do a rough blind scraping here this is very similar to scraping a ways on the machine you just kind of knock down the high spots to get that shaft room to turn and i'm doing this blind right now we'll tighten it up and see how it turns and see if we need to blue it up and and hit high spots or whether we can just get it to run pretty good without having to do all that usually i can do it without having to actually blew it up but uh this is clearing out a little bit of space in there but it's also giving some oil grooves a place for oil to move this is the bottom bearing cap and we're going to do the same thing here i'm going to put some oil grooves in in here as well these are going to be more x's rather than just a groove across the [Music] top [Music] [Music] the babbitt scraper will kind of take anything that's high on those uh grooves i just cut in there and we just won't give a place for that oil to go and distribute around and really coat that bearing well this is the actual shaft that i'm going to use the other one was actually the piece i cut off of this i just used it as a mandrel to since i didn't really want to put the heat on the one i'm going to use and i had plenty of extra metal there to do that start by putting the collar on the back here this is just a to help keep it in on the running in here this will run on one side and the actual bandsaw hub will run the other side and it'll keep it from moving laterally go ahead and put some oil in here our shims back in drop our top shell on here and get our screws started and our shaft is turning it is a little bit tight i'm going to probably take it back apart do some more scraping and i'll go through several cycles of that until i get it where it's spinning nice and free in there but basically you can see the process the bandsaw hub will go up on uh the wheel hub will go up on this end and this will be for the top wheel on the bandsaw all right i think we've got this pretty well done uh i've taken it apart i've done some more scraping i've got it where it's turning nice now went ahead and trimmed up the the shim in there and it's turning pretty effortlessly right now so i think this is going to be fine and this is pretty much ready to go back onto the machine before i do though i am going to go ahead and get this painted up and ready to go back on but uh i think our bearing job is done i thought i would come over here and just give you a quick sneak peek at the band saw itself that miles was working on restoring when i got this machine and i've had this machine for probably 13 14 years now and i've just never done anything with it hadn't had a shop to work it put it in until now but when i got it mechanically it wasn't in terrible shape there were a few little issues but nothing terrible and we're just taking the time to clean it up get it uh restored it's more of a cosmetic restoration other than these bearings and a couple of the little small things there really wasn't anything major wrong with this but i'll be doing a full-blown video on this later on let you guys see this it's a pretty neat machine it's an interesting machine with a unique bandsaw and we'll share more about that later on but right now our job for the day which was getting our new bearing poured i think it's a success and it is ready to go back onto the machine we'll let miles work on that this week when he's back in here working on the shop and with that guys that is going to be a wrap so as always thanks for watching please subscribe to the channel comments are appreciated as are those thumbs up and guys we will catch you on the next video [Music] you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 477,036

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Woodworking, Metalworking, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org, crescent machine company, band saw, babbitt bearings, babbitt, pouring babbitt bearings, pouring babbitt bearings video, babbitt bearing, babbitt bearing pouring

Id: g_zmuB2upmY

Length: 28min 27sec (1707 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020