The bearing has a bit of play in it now and I can't find my grease gun either (packed in one of the many boxes and crates in the shed) but I fixed the handle coming loose issue by putting a washer and thick O ring between the handle and mounting bracket, fired it up and seems to be running ok but I suspect the bearing needs grease now so won't crush anymore until l buy another GG tomorrow.
On the up side, the CC packed it in when I was crushing a sample of host rock/quartz I'd just reduced in the dolly, I got the sample yesterday while out looking at a creek (I was meant to be working) that was flowing to hard to sample pan, I drove around for a bit then noticed a spot in the bush that looked like a depression in the hill side, it was an old working and a quick walk up I noticed there were several quartz leads still in the vertical crevices but it looked as though the main reef had been dug out long ago.
I grabbed a fist sized sample of host rock with quartz attached that was just laying on the ground and ran it through the dolly when I got home and decided to fire up the CC, that's when things turned for the worse.
I had a hunch on this spot so I put my rock sampling gear in the van this morning and went to my first job the "long" way and got 10ltrs of soil, quartz and host rock from in and under several of the crevices.
When I got home today I put the partly crushed sample from yesterday through a fine kitchen sieve so I could pan the dust and put the rest (90%) aside for when the CC is good again.
Result from about 3/4 cup of dust = 5 small specs that I could get with the tweezers
Keen to crush the rest now and see what's in the bulk of the first sample, then put the 10ltrs aside (labelled) with all the other buckets for when I get the shed sorted.