Thank you Douglas Robinson

[Hook]

I finally had the ambition to get the Behemoth out of the garage and put the shop fox mobile base to use.



This is the Sears planer with a Delco motor my grand dad left behind when he passed away in 1989. My dad finally let me have the thing about 4 years ago. I spent several hours sanding, working with naval jelly, installing new knives, replacing a chain, other refurbishing and what not to make it a viably usable machine. When my dad sold his home 13 years ago, he asked a buddy to store it for him. Said "buddy" took it out of his barn to make room for something else, put a tarp over it and let the elements have their way with it for a number of years (think western NY weather). I pulled it out of a patch of weeds and thistles in order to load it on my truck. It took 3 of us to get it on the truck (after taking the top half off of the stand) and two of us struggled to get it off the truck. My grand dad had welded some wheels on the stand but Saturday one of the wheels was rusted so badly it just bent right off under the weight while I was getting it out of the garage. I had the "shop fox" mobile base I had bought from Doug specifically for the planer and it took me a solid hour and a half to get the other wheels off and get that thing on the shop fox (by myself). I spent a lot of time making wood shavings yesterday while my Bills got clobbered by the Cards.

 

[DavidF]

EEk! That took a lot of vision to see that as a "keeper"! glad it's working for you now though.

 

[Chuck Seehuetter]

It's great that you would go through all the work to get your grandfathers old planer working again. Great work. I've got one almost like it that I haven't started to rebuild yet. It's a Sears model 30623392 which is a Foley/Belsaw Model 985.
I hope to start the rebuild soon but will disassemble it totally and use electrolysis on most of the parts . Any hints on problems you ran into with yours would be helpful

Thanks for sharing yours.

 

[Hook]

This is the model number as best as I can see it:



The only numbers I can read are the 306912

It looks like mine is missing some shields on the sides around the belts. My grand dad was notorious for removing stuff like that.

My biggest issue was rust all the way around. It took a LOT of oil getting the chains to become flexible. I had to replace the one long chain that sets the height of the platform entirely. Never seize worked on some of the components as well. I was looking more for function than for restoration. I don't have the resources to restore the machine to near original condition. I was thankful the motor worked. I'm not sure it's the original motor either.