Oh man, that's always the sneaky culprit!

Holy crap, that's a steal! I did the same thing with a rusty jointer I found at a flea market for $20. Spent a whole weekend taking it apart, scrubbing the bed with wd-40 and fine grit paper, and waxing the whole thing up. It still hums like a pissed off bee, but the cuts come out glassy smooth now. The trick for me was really taking my time on the blades, like an hour per blade with a cheap sharpening stone and a guide I rigged from a scrap of wood. You definitely got the better deal though, planers are way harder to bring back than jointers in my book.

The 'skitter holes' part got me. A buddy of mine who does wildlife removal tried one of those voice memo apps last summer. He was all in for about two weeks, feeding it notes after every crawlspace job. Then one day he went to pull up a record for a repeat customer and the thing had filed his note about raccoon droppings under a completely different property, some house he'd never even been to. He spent an hour untangling it, gave up, and went straight back to his spiral notebook. He still uses the app for grocery lists though, go figure.