Getting my bearings.

I was changing the blade on my Grizzly G0555 14" band saw. When I do that I like to do a quick cleaning of the lower guide. To my dismay, I found that one of the guide bearings was frozen and the other wasn't far behind. Of course, I didn't have any replacements on hand. I found inexpensive replacements online (8 for $5) but "next day" shipping was around about 10 times the cost of the bearings. And, because it was Saturday, "next day" was actually Tuesday. Of course, the local places that supply bearings were close until Monday.

Great, my project is on hold until whenever. But, I recalled that skates and roller blades use ball bearings. A quick check not only revealed that they do but that they all are the same type (608Z) and lo-n-behold they are the same as my Griz bearings. Yee haw! A bit more online research revealed that they only come in packs of 16 and run between $24 and $40. Guess I'll have a lot of spares.

So, off to a local skate shop. The nice lady behind the counter had a pack of 16 for about $30 and I was about to pull out my wallet when she said "How many do you need?" "Well, just two, actually". She then pulled out a box of used bearings and said, "you can have any of these for free". I dug through and found a couple of really clean ones, put them on my saw and was resawing away in no time at all. Put a huge smile on my face for the entire day. I also ordered the bearings online with USPS first class (AKA, whenever) shipping. Total cost - $9. Sometimes the universe is on your side!

So, two lessons from this: Always have replacement bearings on hand and skate shops are a great place in a pinch.