Woodex Bearing Applications

The internet is truly a wonderful thing. When Woodex's first website went up in 1995, we never would have guessed we'd hear from so many people, in so many far-flung places, with so many truly fascinating applications for wood bearings. There've been the inevitable wags who've said, "Wooden bearings? Do you make croquet balls, too?" But there has also been a steady trickle of interesting and unexpected inquiries about wood bearings.

We've heard from several engineering students who were designing all-wood bicycles who wanted wheel and headpost bearings. We've heard from one graduate student doing a master's thesis on wood bearings, with the ultimate goal of providing affordable wheelbarrow bearings for people building municipal infrastructure in Africa.

In 2004, we got a call from Katherine Hikita, an engineering student at McGill University, who was captaining a team building a trebuchet to compete in the Canadian Wood Council's First Annual Engineering Competition in Ottowa. Her team - and others across Canada - were given weight limits, and charged with building a catapult of their choosing, entirely from wood. We provided wheel and pivot bearings for a modern, floating-arm trebuchet (pictured under construction, above right). The McGill team took second place in the competition, bested only by the superior woodworking (though inferior range) of a hardwood ballista, built by a team from a cabinetmaking school.

We recently made a split bearing for a submerged, midfeather agitator in a stock chest in a former asbestos manufacturing plant. The bearing (pictured at left) was made from highly-figured lignum vitae. Although the bearing should provide decades of maintenance-free service, it's a shame to see grain like that buried out of sight in an inorganic paper furnish.

We've made wood bearings for a main rotor test stand for a major helicopter manufacturer. While the bearings aren't installed in the aircraft, they do serve as a "safety net" to catch rotor shafts under test, in the event the test stand's main bearings should fail.

We've made wood bearings for a test lab, which support a 10,000-pound steel sled, which slides on railroad rails. Next to the stationary sled stands a six-inch-thick, vertical steel plate. On the side of the plate opposite the sled, an explosive charge is detonated. The shock wave is transmitted through the plate to the sled, which is subsequently launched down the rails - on it's wooden bearings. The sled's speed and distance traveled are measured, and the force of the explosion calculated from those data, in order to assess the efficacy of the explosive compound

We've recently made wood bearings for drill support tools for a manufacturer of horizontal directional boring equipment. In this application, Woodex's oil-impregnated maple bearings are outlasting metal in highly-abrasive, Florida sand.

We've made more than one set of bearings for decorative, backyard waterwheels. The best of these powers an electrical generator in a picturesque setting on the Irish coast. Just the sight of this installation (right) leaves us pining for a nice, cold glass of stout.

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