Restoration of Parks 95 12" surface planer

Jesse brought in a Parks 95 12" surface planer, on 03/16/2016. This is a ~280 lb machine, probably manufactured in the 30s or 40s (we'll know more if we can clean up the plate with the serial #). It is cosmetically in bad shape, and has one small operating problem that should be resolvable.

It's not yet been decided whether this tool will get a top-to-bottom overhaul or just be touched up for usability. This page will be used to track resources with repair information, and to document the process of cleaning it up.

Photos

Before restoration

On arrival
Gearbox
The bed

Usability

The planer is somewhat operational now. However the pickup roller (infeed roller) is not successfully pulling boards through the cutter. The fifth link below is for a thread where a similar problem with an identical planer is being discussed, and there are several suggestions we can try there without a full teardown. Anybody is welcome to attempt work on this, if you'd like a working planer or you're just bored. Things we can try (but haven't yet) include:

Confirm that the bed rollers are positioned high enough to support the board rather than having it rest entirely on the bed itself
Attempt to lower the position of the infeed roller itself - this would be a delicate process, since it's important that the roller height is not lower than the cutting height
Further clean the bed - using steel wool, then sandpaper up to 1000 grit
Once clean, apply a layer of non-silicone wax to the bed