Ok so I've been now working toward creating the latest iteration of the Archimedes 16:1 pulley based downgearing system and as part of that I decided to remake some of the pulleys with grooved outer races as I had discussed previously wanting to do - in order to prevent the fishing line from walking to a corner of the pulley and wedging itself in between the bearing and the plastic disc sandwiching in the bearing and becoming jammed that way. Previously, we had glued in a very tiny piece of clear thread to block this gap anywhere I found the tendency for jams to happen, however, to create a grooved outer race from the outset is going to prevent this issue all together!

So to do it, I took my little 1x3x1mm ball bearing and pinned it down with my left thumb against wax paper on top of a stack of post it notes, so holding it all with my left hand in the air. I used my highest zoom on my visor magnifier to see what I'm doing. I then loaded very tiny amounts of super glue onto my xacto knife with sewing needle tip instead of blade tip and using this sewing needle tip, very carefully placed super glue into the joint where the ball bearing outer race meets the wax paper. I did this for about 1/3 of the bearing then carefully lifted off the pressure of my left thumbnail pinning it down and rotated the whole thing then repinned the bearing down again with my left thumbnail and repeated the process of adding glue little by little. When one side was done, I was able to carefully peel it all up from the wax paper, flip, and do the other side.

This needs to be carefully trimmed down still but the idea was a massive success. The bearing still spins freely and the grooved outer race is done! That fishing line can't go ANYWHERE now to jam anything! The photo is just the ball bearing and the glue. So the plastic discs will now be able to go over this and the fishing line won't be able to walk across the outer bearing surface and jam itself between the bearing and the plastic discs anymore!

Note: my concern about this procedure was that the glue could potentially walk underneath the bearing and glue the outer race to the inner race and thereby ruin the bearing - but this did not happen! The gap between the underside of the bearing and the wax paper which were both firmly pressed together by my thumbnail was too tight for the glue to travel into there and ruin anything. So the glue only went where I wanted it - which is on the outer race of the bearing forming the intended groove on that outer race. A huge success. I used 401 glue btw.