Scroll saw inner bearing sleeves

[LabradorBob]

I have been researching the hardness of the material used for scroll saw inner bearing sleeves.

it suggests a minimum hardness of 50 Rockwell C,with 58 to 62 hardness recommended.

I have rebuilt my Delta 40-694 axcalibur ex 21 and all of the bearing sleeves have been easy to polish with sandpaper on the lathe.

Taking out scratches on the surface,they seem pretty soft to polish out fairly easily.Bought a metal lathe so i can make my own.

anyone have any experience here?

[kmmcrafts]

The issue I ran into when looking into making my own sleeves was the cost wasn't worth the effort.. I have a small benchtop metal lathe to make them on but sourcing the right type of material and the time and effort ( for me at the time ) was just not worth it.. Now if I was more into making things on the lathe rather than sitting at the scroll saw making inventory to sell at the time.. I may have found more value into doing them and researched more for the source of correct material etc. so I guess I just found more value in buying the sleeves. 

Now that all said... some of the sleeves are odd sized and are hard to come by especially for the Excalibur as they have some of them as a oddball size.. however I found a source through Jet scroll saw parts where they sell these sleeves.. IF you look in the excalibur parts list they only offer the whole assembly with all bearings and sleeves etc.. which by the way is probably the better way to rebuild these anyway as when measuring the bearings and sleeves there is definitely some tolerance changes between the new and old bearing sleeves even though they really didn't look too worn.. This could be the lack of quality of parts the factory assembled them with in the first place. Certainly tightened up the slop in the saw by changing out the whole assembly when I rebuilt it the second time.. First time rebuild was just mostly cleaning and replacing visibly worn parts so mainly just the larger two bearings and the larger sleeve at the back of the saw.. This one seem to be the one to get the most wear in my experiences.. 

[rash_powder]

Are you talking bushings?  McMaster Carr has a fantastic selection, as would your local machine shop.

I have play in the bushings in the arms of my Hegner and need to replace them, just don't want to pay what they ask for them.  They are most probably off the shelf components and NOT the $13 each that they ask.  I rebuilt a John Deere snowblower auger/impeller with new bushings from the machine shop for far less than half what John Deere asked for all of them.  

[Scrappile]

@rash_powder If you happen to find the exact size of bushing needed at McMaster Carr please let me know which ones they are.  I know they will be a meteric size.  Mine are fine on my Hegner, but I would like to have some on hand, just in case.

[LabradorBob]

Material should be easy to find to make them,the cheaper black drill bits are the correct hardness and are easy to find.

[Wichman]

On 12/19/2025 at 8:06 AM, Scrappile said:

@rash_powder If you happen to find the exact size of bushing needed at McMaster Carr please let me know which ones they are.  I know they will be a meteric size.  Mine are fine on my Hegner, but I would like to have some on hand, just in case.

The bushings from Advanced Machinery are $12.55 ea. pretty inexpensive for OEM.