Recently upon stopping for a roadside look at a powermatic 20" bandsaw I stumbled upon my dream planer, a helical head 299 and I mean stumbled. I took a chance as machine had been outside, poorly covered for an undisclosed period of time. It sits proudly replacing my two planers (which sold immediately on woodweb) and runs perfectly. What can I say? when a curious fellow asks if your interested in a planer? always say YES!
hello gents, pm 20 had not degraded to that point for mailbox fixture, in true Jeff Foxworthy fashion my mailbox is affixed to an antique 2x spindle chair borer and is indeed proper redneck.
getting back to 299 talk, fellow had covered it with two tarps fortunately but a significant amount of surface rust had occurred (hence my 3500 purchase price) tables and ways have cleaned up just fine, bed roll adjustment dowangie jimmie was bound tighter than uncle dicks hatband and typical poor moving procedure process had bent the lever like a pretzel. other than that it runs, planes and feeds just fine.
GRAY is a problem! i'm a green guy, original color was green, oliver green.was nervous about small stock like solid edgeband stock i prepare, finish dimension of 6x22mm. it is very sensitive to bedroll adjustment for thin stock and seems to plane to 8mm just fine without a shoe, the bedrolls are powered. it loves fast feedrate varible from 20-60 fpm, head mtr. is 7.5 hp and feed mtr 2hp, dusthood came with it complete with control gate.
guy has a older rockwell 20" bandsaw with if wood/metal pete is all over but if wood only it is available, also a small crown like ours and some misc. which i will inventory and post. also a scmi T3 sliding shaper, a bit of a cheapie when it was made but curious with a stub spindle for coping and tenoning, needs TLC, look for further posts on this stuff and more
thanks pete I did win bid on manual for 299, actually very close to my serial number in original issue. Eagle Machinery did a search on my machine and it was built in 1975 for Corning glass works and cost 9K. they make the machine today for 31K, i can buy the grinder motor and accessories for 1500 from Eagle, i think it's worth a try to ask the guy i purchased from if it's around, we'll see? cutters are 4 sided and carbide, about an 1" square and 84 of them, sharpening takes how long? seems like very light grinding will be the procedure.
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