This problem must be common for those who work on machinery but I have not faced it before. The blower I use for dust extraction from planer has two pillow blocks with self centering bearings with grease fittings. I have greased them before, maybe when it was warmer. Today they need it and I can not get grease to flow into either of them with my pump grease gun. I heated with a heat gun without success (it is cold and I only got the fitting up to 70 degrees (estimated)).
I just replace the zerk fitting. There is something called a zerk zapper that is hit with a hammer and drives out whatever is clogging the grease fitting. Not sure I like that idea as it pushed the clog into, instead of out of, moving parts...
When I worked in my father's garage back in the 50s cars had lots of grease fittings and it wasn't unusual to have the odd one refuse to accept grease. Normally we used a grease gun driven by compressed air but if it didn't work we would use the hand-pumped gun and it sometimes would clear things up. Apparently the pressure exerted on the fitting can be extremely high in the order of a few thousand psi.
In the tractor and car world I have had many not accept grease. I have used tools like this in the past with good results. Should be able to get one at a car parts store.
Bill, I haven't read the other responses but here's mine.
There are several reasons a zerk fitting won't take grease. One is the zerk is temporarily or hopelessly plugged. You can easily remove the fitting and clean it then try again. But new zerks are cheap and available at auto parts stores - I keep all sizes in Imperial and Metric threads, straight, angled, etc. Just unscrew the old with a wrench and use it to verify the thread of the replacement. If it should break off use an extractor.
A worse problem is when the shaft is clogged with old grease, dirt, or maybe sawdust in your case. The old grease can get hard and the new grease cannot enter even if the zerk is good. I've had this happen several times, most recently on a skidsteer (bobcat) where dirt had worked into the bushing. You can try pumping solvent through the zerk but it is far better to remove the pivot, clean, lube, then replace.
BTW, my favorite grease for big equipment is the blue stuff Kubota sells. From the blue color you can see when new grease is squeezing out the sides. As it ages the blue turns brown.
Caution. The pivots on bushings on big equipment are simple steel cylinders, sometimes with grooves machined in them to allow the grease to spread inside. You can pump as much grease into these as you want and not hurt anything other than make a mess.
However, another type of pivot has seals instead of open ends. Too many pumps of grease on this type can blow the seals. None of the heavy equipment I have uses seals but I can't guess about your machine. Read the manual.
Also, it is not recommended use thick sticky moly grease on bearings that spin rapidly, for example wheel bearings with ball bearings. These need a special bearing grease, much "softer" and gentler with a lower viscosity.
I keep five different grease guns with different greases and power - I like to use air-operated guns. However, my newest favorite is this cordless electric Milwaukee:
This can be set for multiple pumps with one button press. The main bearing on which the entire carriage of my excavator rotates needs 100 shots of grease at certain points on the maintenance schedule!
I put Lock N Lube nozzles on most of my grease guns so clip easily onto the zerks and even better, I don't have to fight to remove one from a zerk down in recessed pivot.
I followed up on your suggestion to use Lock N Lube grease fitting. They allow you to lube in places that are near impossible with conventional grease guns. I am bringing a vintage Newman Planer back into service. There are a couple of fillings that are impossible for mere mortals to lub. The Lock N lube tips make a difficult location possible. After your post I ordered both the short and long version of the Lub. Tips.
The offending lub. Zerk is down in the black hole below the bed of the planer. I spent better part of an hour trying to get a conventional fitting on this zerk with no success before I ordered the Lock N Lub.
Here is a picture of the Lock N Lube connector connected to the grease Zerk on the planer
Here is another picture of the Lock N Lube connector after greasing the bearing. There is some grease leakage on the zerk, but most of that occurred after I connected the connector and before tuning the angle of the grease fitting. At first the coupling leaked but with a small amount of tuning the angle of the grease fitting leakage stopped. Simply can't do this with a regular grease fitting.
A couple of pictures of the Lock N Lube connector.
I read about them somewhere and had to try one. I'm putting them on several of my grease guns too, since some of my "dirt" equipment has recessed fittings and fittings that would otherwise require some contortions and an exercise workout to get to. With the Lock & Lube if I can see or feel the zerk I can connect.
This guy has to be lubed in over 20 places about every 8 hours of use!
Since the Lock N Lube is not cheap, I also tried a cheaper imitation. BAD IDEA! It's design made it harder to depress the lever which was annoying. But worse, it died after very little use and started leaking grease out the side of the nozzle. I could not locate a seal kit for it and the seller was unresponsive. It's in the junk box now.
By comparison, the Lock N Lube has worked perfectly AND comes with a seal rebuild kit!
