IN this video, I'm making a wooden ball bearing on the lathe
For the balls, I'm gonna use just regular marbles
and I've already drawn a one-to-one drawing of roughly
what size this is gonna be. And, I'm gonna start by making
the outer ring. So, I figured
the most convenient way to cut the holes is with
a circle cut on the drill.
Then I realized that stock's gonna want to jump
as soon as it breaks through, so I'm clamping it down
before I finish the cut.
Now I need to glue those pieces together to make a thicker layer
and I'm also adding a sacrificial layer
to help me mount it on the lathe.
Now I need to mount it, center on the faceplate
and I put a hole in the middle of my sacrificial piece
to help with that.
Now I have a groove on the inside
for the marbles to run along.
Now I got to round the outside of it.
I initially left these tabs on here, because I thought they
might be useful for mounting it, but I didn't need them.
Now, I could try taking that off with a parting tool,
but then it would hit the screws that I used to mount it with.
Outer bearing race is complete.
Now I need to try to measure how much space I'm gonna have
between the marbles, for the inside one.
Just over 5 centimeters.
And, that means this scrap, that came from the inside
is big enough. I glued the two layers together.
Now I got to mount this little part on the lathe somehow,
and I figure the easiest way to do it is to just
turn a mandrill, nice and round, and then just ram it on there.
This should now be the right size.
And, the grooves should be the right shape for the marbles.
Now, how to get the marbles in there?
If I move this off the center,
then I can get the marbles in there,
but it's very tricky to get them in,
so I actually made this spacer to help with that.
And, now I can fill this halfway with marbles.
And, as long as the marbles are kind of evenly spaced
all around, this works as a ball bearing.
And, this is also how they put together real ball bearings,
like this one, so let me cut a small one open,
to show you.
So, inside of this one, we have just seven balls,
and we have this funny guide to keep them
spread around evenly. Let's see if I can
get that out somehow. Whoops.
So, here's the guide for the bearings.
And the inner race and the outer race.
These two look very much like the parts I made.
Now I just need to cut 8 holes around the edges of this thing
to keep the marbles spaced.
This is the size of the drill I need to use to drill those holes
but it will probably tear the pieces apart if I try that.
So, I made this clamping jig
that will hold everything in place
while I drill them.
So far so good, I only broke it in one place.
On a real ball bearing, these ball cages are held together
with a little tab strip bent over, because they have to be
assembled in place. I was thinking of using
some wood screws to screw it together,
but even my smallest number 4 wood screws
are too big for this. So, I'm thinking
I'm just gonna tie it together by snaking some copper wire
through there. I've got two wires
already placed. And, if I get that in here,
move the marbles to line up with the holes,
and now I can place the other half.
Hopefully I can get that wire through all the holes.
This ball cage was obstructing the view too much
especially because the main goal of the bearing is actually
to look cool, so I filled it entirely with balls,
and I was able to do that by making
a replacement one of thes, out of two halves..