Unisaw blade height wheel very hard to turn

[Dave Agusta]

I have a Delta Unisaw model 36-L352 that is about 3 years old. Lately, it has become very hard to turn the blade height adjustment wheel. It now takes two hands to start any adjustment and a lot of force to raise the blade to full height for blade changes. There is apparently no grease fittings associated with this worm gear and segment unlike the blade tilt which does have grease fittings. Yet the blade tilt wheel is just as easy to turn as when it was new, even though I have never yet relubed it. I use compressed air regularly to blow out everything under the table I can get at but it never helps. There are rubber dust boots covering the worm gear and I have been able to remove the wire clips and see inside one of them and it appears to be clean and not contaminated with any sawdust. I haven't found any reference to this anywhere else and Delta Service was no help at all. I'm not looking forward to removing the table only because I have a Incra router table extension attached on the right side but it looks like that might be the only way to get to the area in question. Anyone else had this problem? Thanks in advance for any help with this.

[Mike Cutler]

Is there a locking collar on the handwheel shaft that has walked it's way down and now you are turning against a lock collar.
Wood dust would be my first suspect, but I have a Jet that it was a combination of wood dust, grease and that locking collar out of position.

[Dave Agusta]

Thanks for the reply Mike. On this saw the mechanism for locking the wheel is a smaller knob at the center of the adjustment wheel that turns in to lock the setting. It has quite a bit of travel but I usually leave it loose, so it doesn't appear to be the cause.

[Dave Agusta]

Update: After opening the left side door again and doing another blow off of all the parts (while twisting my old body in ways it objected to) I was able to get some silicone oil sprayed into the end of the worm gear shaft. That did improve things considerably. Even though I wiped off as much of the spray as I could get to, I've been reluctant to do this since I know any exposed lube is going to be a dust magnet but even if I have to do this fairly regularly it will be worth it. And my hands and arms will appreciate it!

[Darcy Warner]

Use dry kote.

[Erik Loza]

Update: After opening the left side door again and doing another blow off of all the parts (while twisting my old body in ways it objected to) I was able to get some silicone oil sprayed into the end of the worm gear shaft...

One FYI: I avoid anything aerosolized that contains the word "silicone" in the shop, since it will basically ruin a piece of wood's ability to ever be finished if stray droplets or mist comes into contact with it. As others mentioned, there are some dry film lubes that should do it for you. Best of luck.

Erik