William,
Who da man, you da man baby 😆
When I saw that little bearing the first thing that popped into my head was the word … CUUUte 
Did you find anywhere that supplied replacement of this type? How did the mechanism seem to run in comparison to a non-bearing type, smoother, better, worse?
There are companies that sell miniature needle bearings with a 2mm bore, these would work great as the load on these gears should be radial and not thrust, but even so, needles will handle some thrust. I may even try to pick up an old movement and try it, once I get my tooling issues sorted out.
What is the diameter of the pivots on clocks, generally, lets say on a mid sized mantle?