Reeve drive on a wood lathe

[Peter Munk]

How can I safely replace a broken reeve drive pulley on the motor shaft of my wood lathe? Since the spring has a lot of compression, removal can be dangerous. Putting on the new pulley and compressing the spring should be even more difficult.

Any suggestions or direction to a written guide would be greatly appreciated.
Peter

[William C Rogers]

Peter, you need to provide the make/model of your lathe.

[Peter Munk]

My lathe is a Craftex B2198, which is identical to Jet JWL-1236 and the Grizzly G1067Z.

[Curtis Myers]

Not sure if this will help as I did not read the entire article.
link is a three page web how-to for repairing the reeves drive


http://www.aroundthewoods.com/lathelube.html

[Mark Greenbaum]

If it's similar to the Shopsmith drive pulley, the Sawdust Sessions has videos showing how to remove safely. I did my shopsmith using a wooden lever with a hole to compress the spring, and the removed the retaining clip, then gently released the spring tension. Re-assembly was a bit trickier, and it helped to have someone around to help with the compression.

[Peter Munk]

Thanks Mark. Unfortunately the video does not show how to remove the drive when it is on a motor shaft.

[Mark Greenbaum]

http://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/productmanuals/MKVMotorReplacment.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HoUwYug-6k

[Bill Boehme]

I've never had any problem replacing the spring loaded pulleys using one hand to hold everything together while removing set screws and snap rings. The spring might be stiff, but it has limited travel. Once it is slowly allowed to reached full expansion there is no more spring force to cause problems by sending parts flying.

[Len Mullin]

Peter, do you know anyone who works on snowmobiles? They would be the ones to ask for assistance, they work on Reeves clutches all the time as each snowmobile has one. I worked on a few over the years, but, that was many years ago when I used to snowmobile. I wouldn't be able to help you out, unless I was actually there with the thing in front of me, sorry.
Len

[Peter Munk]

Bill,
How were you able to allow the spring to SLOWLY reach full extension? Furthermore, how did you manage to get the spring compressed when reassembling the system? I am looking for any help I can get.
Thanks,
Peter

[Bill Boehme]

Bill,
How were you able to allow the spring to SLOWLY reach full extension? Furthermore, how did you manage to get the spring compressed when reassembling the system? I am looking for any help I can get.
Thanks,
Peter

i have a pretty strong grip, but even so I didn't think that it was that hard to do with hand pressure. On my lathe, the spring is between the motor body and the pulley. If yours has the spring on the outside, that might be more difficult. The first time that I did it, I was apprehensive because of what others said about the spring force. The spring is stiff, but not as much as I anticipated.

Putting it back together was easy. I put the spring on the shaft, then the sliding half of the pulley, and finally the fixed half of the pulley which was the only part that required me to to apply pressure while I installed the snap ring. Finally the set screws were installed.

If working space is tight on your lathe, you could remove the motor and stand it on end ... shaft pointing up ... and that should make reassembly much easier.

Another idea for holding things together if you are concerned about parts getting lost would be to use a handscrew to hold things together and slowly release tension after the snap ring and setscrew are removed.

Something that I haven't tried, but might work would be to slip a plastic bag over the assembly to make sure that nothing gets lost.

[Tom Giacomo]

I've done it with just hand pressure it was not that difficult.

[Bill Bulloch]

I use to have a Jet 12/36 and changed the pulleys several times. It has been awhile, but I don't recall it being difficult, pretty straight forward.

[Dick Strauss]

Maybe your pulley broke from being stuck in the first place. If so, you may need more than hand pressure to get it loose unless you soak it first. Even then, you may need extra help. Try lubing the shaft around both pulley halves really well and leave it sit for a few days. Also, make sure that the pulley doesn't have more than one set screw holding it in place. They will sometimes stack two short set screws in one hole to lock the first in place.

Good luck,
Dick