Don't be sawing any half-pipes. It may fly up and down on ya.

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
Been having trouble with the roller guides on my band saw from the git
go. First time I ran it one of the shields popped off. Put it back on
and it was OK for a while, then another popped off. Put it back and it
was OK for a while. This went on for several years. Yesterday one of
the shields popped off and the cage came out. Time for a new guide.
Pulled the bearing off and looked at it and it was marked "608ZZ".
Figured I'd have to call around to the bearing places today, but just
for hohos I googled the thing and found a remarkable lot of hits on
skateboard sites. So I went down to the local skateboard shop (Skate
Lair in Enfield, CT--doesn't look like much but they're well stocked)
and showed the guy the bearing. He reached into his junk pile, found
one that spun and was going to _give_ it to me until he found out that I
needed more than one. I ended up getting a set of 8 sealed ABEC-5s for
25 bucks which let me replace the whole lot with a couple of spares.

Turned out that a couple of the bearings on the lower guide weren't
turning at all, and at least one more had something wrong with
it--periodically when one or the other was contacted I'd hear a whining
noise--that's gone.

Thought I'd post this just in case it might be useful to somebody.