Restoring an old 6" jointer - Delta Milwaukee 37-207 #1: Restoring an old jointer for the shop

A couple of weeks ago I rescued a an old 6” Delta/Milwaukee jointer from a Garage sale. ( Circa 1940’s)
The fellow I bought it from was mostly into old cars and had no use for this iron and it sat rusting in his way. We made a decent deal and I lugged it homeward.
The surfaces of the in and out feed table were rusted and pitted and I did think about having them re honed at a machine shop but first I felt it better to run it to see what else was wrong.
About and hour with some rust remover from Lee Valley and I had the vital parts soaking overnight in dampened paper toweling or immersed where practical.
With a bit of elbow grease and some metal finishing pads on the electric drill I was able to get an acceptable surface on the tables.

From delta 37 207 jointer

At this stage I was confident that it could be put back in service. bearings good, tables flat, belt not so good,
pulleys, out of round and too small for the 3/4 HP motor.
After some help from the guys here I figured out the ratios for the upper and lower pulleys and swapped the drive system over to “Vee” belts which are wider and tend to run smoother.
I have a 2-3/4” pulley on top and a 6-3/4” pulley on the motor which should give me around 4000 RPM . With the 3 blade cutter head I will be getting close to 12,000 cuts per minute.
To get the motor to hang properly off the belt I had to rig up a hinge plate for the motor to sit on attached to the frame and on the unhinged end I made an adjustable rubber covered motor mount that I can set to take tension off the bearings and still drive the cutter head.

From delta 37 207 jointer

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The next thing I wanted to address was the short bed length and fortunately the out feed casting came with a hole in the end allowing me to put a tenon in the space .
It was a bit of a trial and error as the inside of the casting was neither smooth or parallel.

At any rate, I came up with this:

From delta 37 207 jointer

Today I worked on putting a removable stabilizer leg under the extension and am fitting the sweep under the carriage to attach a dust collection hose.

From delta 37 207 jointer

From delta 37 207 jointer

From delta 37 207 jointer

For what it’s worth the old iron seems to cut extremely well and will serve me for what I need.

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner