How I Pour Babbitt Bearings
by
Vince Gingery
Vince tells us about his latest booklet...
"Prior to 1940 just about every machine built used Babbitt bearings, and every mechanic was familiar with them. If, today, you ask the average guy under 40 years of age if he has ever heard of Babbitt you will likely get a blank stare. And when you try to explain it, the reply might be something like, 'that's old technology, who needs it, and who cares'.
"Many
of us get a great deal of satisfaction from restoring old tools, machinery
and automobiles that are destined for the scrap yard. We find that there is
a lot of old, heavily-built machinery built to last still available at scrap
prices. Often all that is required to put one of these machines back in working
order is cleaning and painting individual parts and re-pouring the Babbitt
bearings.
"This
little booklet contains the basic information you need to melt and pour, in
other words, restore Babbitt bearings. Topics include: bearing metal requirements,
Babbitt availability, safety, cleaning the shell, anchoring the Babbitt, tinning,
set up, melting, preheating, pouring and finishing the bearing etc.
In addition, you should consider making your own bearings
from scratch. You will be amazed at how simple it is. It's 
a
valuable skill for those of us who design and build our own machine tools.
Light duty, low cost pillow block bearings are still available. When you
price a set of heavy duty pillow blocks for a saw mill arbor or surface
grinder, however, you quickly realize the value of being able to make
such items yourself...."
What you get here is a small, jam-packed booklet that lets you look over Vince's shoulder as he restores a saw-mill arbor to like-new condition. He's certainly not inventing anything new, rather he's showing you how you can do the job today.
Babbitt is excellent bearing material, and with it you can quickly
and easily make low-cost custom bearings for those off-the-wall machine tools
you 
plan to build.
Or, like Vince's bizarre ol' man, Dave
is doing, you might just want to do nothing more than put a set of new wheel
bearings in your row boat.
Get a copy. Usual Gingery quality. Heavily illustrated. Loaded with practical how-to. Good stuff as usual. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 booklet 44 pages
No. 1524 ... $7.95
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