It was bound to happen....things had been going too well (mostly).
However, this was a failed day for jointer progress.
Today after having the new 30 wt oil (100 sae) soak back into the felt, I decided to try and do another temperature/run test for my Buss Machinery Company 8" jointer.
The steps for that did not go as planned. The day started off with the belt being too loose and it spinning enough to over temp the pulley enough to start impacting the belt and it started spinning with the pulley not moving. While trying to take the belt off the pulley was hot enough that when I accidentally touched it, there was the 'OWWWWW!" event and my hand moved away at high speed and slammed into other things, causing a multi-band-aid incident to occur.
Then I spent a lot more time going back and forth trying to loosen up/re-add spacers in for the bearings...lots of oil started to come out again on the pulley side bearing(both sides leaked). Tried the new felt I got, and cut it a bit too thick and it somewhat helped keep the oil from flowing out, but caused a lot of friction on the shaft right where that felt got added...but a lot of oil ran out on the center area from the pulley side bearing. And sprayed everywhere as well along the length of the jointer.....which cant happen when trying to actually use it. ie we cant lose that much oil in 2 minutes...and have it spray everywhere for this to work and be usable.
So today this was a fail. I checked online and based on the shaft dimensions, they do not make real bearings that size....so there is not even an easy way to switch with this head to use ball bearings without tons of other work/expense. And this with even not knowing if the head will be usable/ie I havent managed to make something to take the head bolts out to swap the damaged blades for better ones...and so I do not know if those head bolts are good or are too dangerous to use.
If those head bolts are too dangerous to use, even buying a new helical head assembly for way more than the jointer is worth ($2800) would not help as I would still have to figure out/fix/spend even more $ to make new bearing blocks.
Today's mess and the overall uncertainty left to get this working makes me think it would have been better to not have purchased this jointer and just spent the money on something else....hopefully that mindset will change by the next time I try and fight with it. We shall see.