FILENAMES: Drawbar1.jpg Drawbar2.jpg Drawbar3.jpg DESCRIPTION: These are pictures of modifications to add a thrust bearing to a lathe collet drawbar. Posted by Jim Rozen . Jim provided the following description: ================================================================= Pictures of a home-made thrust bearing for a 3C drawbar for my small Pratt & Whitney lathe. I ran the drawbar without a bearing but it really does work much better with one. Drawbar1.jpg shows the assembled bearing in place on the tube - the handle is an old idler pulley from a belt-driven air compressor! Drawbar2.jpg is a view of the bearing by itself - it just slides right off the drawbar tube. The final picture drawbar3.jpg is an 'exploded view' of the components. The aluminum housing is straightforward to make, obviously it has to be sized to fit the bearing and drawbar tube for the particular machine. The tube in this case is 0.750 OD for scale. I forgot to include a ruler in the pictures, sorry. The thrust bearing itself (caged rollers) and the two hardened steel washers were from MSC. They were pretty cheap, several dollars each. The ID circlip is from Home Desperate. It's best to have that on hand when cutting the groove so it can be a good fit. In this case the end of the spindle would interfere with the circlip so the aluminum housing faces toward the headstock and the handle is profiled so it bears only on the steel washer and avoids the circlip. All told the assembly took only a few hours to make and is a nice easy project. I think it would compliment the 5C collet setup that was in HSM magazine last month very well. The bearing does come in a size which would fit that tube. Jim Rozen