Peter Huebner wrote:
My new Jet has ball bearing guides. Stacked bearings, which is nice so I can
narrow them when I have to; very nifty mechanism: the bearings are riding on an
excenter that you can rotate and lock in place to effect adjustment, nothing
could be easier.

Except, well, the lower bearings pick up sawdust, don't they. Upon which they
start howling uproriously. At that point I can usually not be bothered to go
clean them so I just back them off a bit, but that's not really what I want to
do, is it? I do not have them as tight as a ciggy paper sized gap in the first
place.

Anything I could do easily? Would a couple of toothbrushes mounted to clean the
bearings work in your opinion?

-P.

FYI, I have the Powermatic which is suppose to be a sister to one of the
Jet models and determined the bearing to have the following dimensions:
Inner diameter: 8mm
Outer diameter: 22mm
width: 7mm

When I visited Powermatic's parent site and entered in the part number
for the bearings, their search came back empty.

I found a supplier of roller skate bearings http://www.vxb.com
and ordered 20 bearings as follows:

2ISB 20 ABEC-7 inline Skate, rollerblade hockey Ball Bearings 1 $14.95
$14.95
Shipping:UPS Ground: $7.22
Sales Tax: $1.72
Total: $23.80

The bearings have arrived, I haven't been able to test them out, but I
fitted one on the the lower bearing spindle I removed and it seems to
match up to the original equipment bearing nicely.