Montgomery Wards POWR KRAFT Electric Planer TWH 8985 Restoration

Found this at the South High School Rummage sale for $8, and decided to give it a complete overhaual.
This is one of those machines that I always wanted but could never justify buying new.
A 50's era machine it looked OK Just dirty and the blades were butter knife sharp.

An ingenious design where the motor & handle are one unit and the blade & guide are another. The belt looks new, but are still available!

Its a 2" wide planer most of today's are in the 3" + range.

The really cool thing is that the bushings for the cutter head were standard off-the-shelf items so for $7 I was able to replace them.

The blades took some time to sharpen, this is a case where you have to go to the disk grinder and take a lot of material off (slowly)

I clamped them into my machinists vise and grind for 4 - 5 seconds and dunk in water, then it was on to the WorkSharp.

Setting the blades is a slow process, no wonder the newer machines have made great strides in ease of use.