thrust bearing for bandsaw guides

[Mark Gibney]

Are there differences between the thrust bearings used in bandsaw guides and regular ball bearings? Is the steel casing harder?

I am looking to make some guides for a 20" bandsaw and my online searching has not answered the question of what to use as the thrust bearing.

thanks, Mark

[Jerry Bruette]

No. I would use sealed bearings and not shielded bearings.

[roger wiegand]

If you have the existing bearing, take it to your local bearing shop; they can almost certainly give you an exact, or near exact replacement. Some things are easier to do in real life than online :cool:

[Steve Eure]

Replacement bearings for my bandsaw are run of the mill type bearings. I source them from my local bearings and drive dealer. They generally have them in stock and the few times they didn't, they had them the next day. Quite a bit cheaper than the retail dealership or manufacturer who made the saw. Oh, as mentioned before, sealed bearings only.

[John K Jordan]

If you don't have an existing bearing, you can carefully measure the shaft and find a bearing that fits. If you have the bearing and can read the numbers on the side you can usually get an exact replacement on Amazon or elsewhere. The numbers and letters describe the type bearing and seals.

This site has some info: http://www.engineerstudent.co.uk/bearing_numbers_explained.html

[Mark Gibney]

Thanks everyone. There's a place about half a mile away that just sells bearings.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Thanks everyone. There's a place about half a mile away that just sells bearings.


Fastenal sells bearings, FYI.

[Dwayne Watt]

There is nothing special about the ball bearings on bandsaw guides other than they really should be sealed, not shielded (particularly the lowers, uppers run in relatively clean conditions and shields work OK for a while). Shields are metal while seals are rubber material (2RS on the part number means rubber seal on two sides while 2ZZ means shields on two sides). Metric bearings are standard sizes. The guide bearings on most, if not all bandsaws, happen to be the same size as skateboard bearings (608-2RS) so you can buy these for as little as $0.80/piece on a well known commerce site. There is not a lot of load on these guide bearings so about any brand bearing is adequate. It is the seal that will determine the life of the bearing on a bandsaw guide. If you buy skateboard bearings, you will have spares since they are usually sold in packs of 8.
Thrust bearing on my 14" saw is a 6000-2RS. There is some load on these, but my opinion is most any brand bearing will work for this application. That is not true for every bearing application! Quality matters on some applications much more than others. I would be a bit more selective if I had to replace the wheel bearings on the bandsaw.
The last numbers on standard ISO, deep groove (60nn) ball bearings are the inner diameter of the bearing. 608 is an 8 mm ID. 6000 is a 10 mm ID. 6001 is 12mm. 6002 is 15mm. Once you get to 20mm ID, nomenclature changes a bit where the last number or two are the ID divided by 5. For example, 6004 bearing is 20mm ID and 6010 is 50mm. This last bit of information is provided solely to provide a bit of insight into what bearing part numbers mean.