What does a Grizzly Bandsaw and a skateboard have in common?

Bearings.

Bought a used Grizzly G0555 Bandsaw with riser block and HD mobile base last week. It was an estate item that had little use, but had been sitting for several years. Everything seemed to work fine, even though the blade was the OEM that came with the riser block. Got it home, unloaded and moved as far as the patio where it had to wait for a space to be cleared in my tiny shop. This was Thursday before Labor Day.

Friday, run up to Woodcraft and get a Timber Wolf 1/2” 3TPI blade so I can do some resawing. Get home from work, rearrange stuff and finally move the saw in the shop.

Saturday, chomping at the bit to start playing with my new toy. Started to install the new blade and discovered the blade tensioner and release not set correctly. Apparently this is quite common as the proper instructions were not included in the original manual. I had read this excellent review http://lumberjocks.com/reviews/424 when I first considered buying a bandsaw that alerted me to the problem, thanks. Got the blade on and start to adjust the guides when I find the two lower guide bearings are frozen, “crap”.

Try finding bearings on a Holiday Weekend, the hardware store did not have the right size in stack, which was goood since they wanted $11 each. All commercial sources like Grainger were closed, and Woodcraft didn’t carry them. Hit the net and noticed that the bearing # 608ZZ came up quite often on skateboard supply sites. There is a skateboard store about a mile away and yes they did carry that size bearing. Evidently that is the standard size for most skateboards and skates. There was quite a range of options $1.50 each on the low end up to $20 each for “faster” bearings.

Long story short, the cheapest bearings work fine. Got the saw up and running and got to play this weekend. Just thought I would pass on an alternative source for parts in a pinch.