Thanks to all that responded, but particularly to Owen. He made this easy. Here are a few notes on Jet mini bearing changes.
First, they are different than the Delta only in appearance, so if you have a Jet, find the old thread where Owen was kind enought to post pics from his Delta manual. Follow those directions.
Plus or minus a couple of steps they work for not only bearing replacement, but for belt replacement, too.
However, for me it was not the bearings that were the culprit. The problem was the proper tightening of the handwheel, or in this case, the overtightening of the handwheel. It seems that with all the years of use the handwheel had worked itself loose and had begun to tighten itself with every time I grabbed it to stop the lathe. I actually compressed the "wavy washer" completely flat and created a lateral or thrust force on the bearings.
But technically speaking as to the proper order of headstock reassembly, with the spindle back in place and the bearings/belt/pulleys reinstalled, all you have to do is reinstall the handwheel and set the screws. But they skip the most important step.
Here is the kicker for proper installation: you only snug the handwheel (compressing the washer) and back it off about 1/4 of a turn. Set the two handwheel screws, and check for lateral movement by trying to move (you might hear a small click or something similar) the spindle laterally with your hand. If there is no sign of movement when you try to move the spindle back and forth from the handwheel side to the tailstock side you have a proper installation. (I take it for granted here that you know that if you can move the spindle up and down you know the bearings are shot...)
When the handwheel is over tightened, it pulls the center of the spindle side bearing back towards the handwheel creating a lateral thrust. The bearings in the headstock are carrier bearings and are not made for lateral stress and they overheat dramatically when they are under this kind of load.
So from an archived post at WoodCentral I was thinking how lucky it would be if the handwheel had just slipped from the years of use. I got to thinking that this has to be a fairly common occurance...
And that was it. I had disassembled the headstock to put in new bearings, but when my curiosity got the best of me and I had to try it. That was it, and now things are back to normal.
So the lesson learned here is to check the handwheel for proper installation as I have verified through a local tool repair tech that it is indeed common to have them work loose and eventually burn out he bearings. It is also common for somebody like me to not understand the function of the spring steel wavy washer which provides exactly the correct amount of pressure to hold the spindle in place with no movement. According to him it is not uncommon for the handwheel to be overtightened on a new bearing installation and to have the same results I had when the handwheel worked loose.
I thought I would post all this because as usual the folks that populate this place sure came through for me so I thought I might try to save any mini owners some grief later on. I strongly suggest that you copy Owen's post in the previous thread and save it >and< the pics to a safe place for later use.
Robert