I've a 12" Oliver jointer, model 166 guessing late 1930s, and have been using it a lot recently. It's a direct drive, with bearings at the front and rear of the head. The bearing housings each have grease fittings, and opening up the front housing the front bearing is easily visible -- basically embedded is a whole bunch of old grease.
This approach to bearing lubrication seems odd to me. The housing is pretty big, you'd use up a tube of grease just filling it. A bit of searching on line and and I read that other 166's have bearings described as being in an "oil bath". Some of the pictures I'm seeing also clearly show the oil cups that would be used to fill and top-off the bearing housings with oil.
I'm speculating that some past owner of my machine removed the cups, installed grease fittings, and filled the housings with grease. If so, it seems like a bad switch, the worst part being that the grease may not work as well as having the bearings submerged in oil. Why would one do such a thing?
My inclination is to a) do a bit more research, and b) convert back to the original oil bath approach if my speculations can be confirmed.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated!
Mark