Electric motor shafts

There's quite a gap between the hack methods I've tried and the ones I usually suggest in print. I started building working models when I was a litle kid with only hand tools, scrap wood, nails, pipe and tin can metal. My windmills and water wheels might run a month between major overhauls.

Copper may last longer if you tin the inside, like crude Babbitt. I tightened up the spindle bearing on my AA/Sears lathe with solder which has been good enough for the little use it gets.

Jim Wilkins I once repaired a worn evaporative cooler fan motor shaft with solder and a file. It was still running good when I moved out of the house a year later.

Don Young

Just depends on the load and the speed. Remember, there once was no such thing as a ball bearing. All those overhead shafts and the tools that they drove had sleeve bearings. And they weren't necessarily metal, either. One of the small businesses near where I used to live when I was a kid made wood bearings, they used to be used in old washing machines. Propeller shaft stuffing boxes for boarts used to be lignum vitae, too. Just depends on load, load type and speed. Keep the sleeve bearings well oiled and they last for a long time. If you really want to get old-timey, look up "ring oiler".

Stan

My surface grinder has one of those on the wheel end of the spindle, the other has a ball bearing. The grinder was designed in 1942, patented in '45.