Your mileage may vary but I found it barely makes a difference.

Oh man, I gotta disagree with you a little here. I've been running cranes for about 12 years now and I learned the hard way that over-lubing sheaves can actually make things worse in dusty conditions. We had a job out west where the lithium grease just turned into this sticky mess that grabbed all the dirt and made the chattering come back twice as bad a few days later. A dry lubricant or just making sure the bearings are good usually does the trick for me, and I don't have to worry about gunk building up on everything.

Buddy of mine bought the cheapest blade he could find and spent three weekends fixing burn marks.

Piled on some old horse stall mats myself and never looked back.

Sounds like you made it out fine though, maybe the panic was overkill.