Hi Cockie,
This is a bit more indepth than just attempting to straighten the bed knife, well that's if you want it to cut correctly.
Firstly I'd say that the blade is not far from the end of its serviceable life. I would remove the sole plate with the bed knife attached and also take out the reel at the same time.
Forward both to a reputable saw blade sharpening shop (not sure what's in Townsville) and they will remove the blade rather quickly and make up a new one. Those countersunk screws can be rather troublesome to remove at times. Now as far as the bending is concerned, it may well be the sole plate that's got a slight curve in it, this is quite common in many Scotty's. In this case the blade will have to be shimmed out on both ends to ensure a straight blade fitment. At the same time the blade and reel will be re-ground and all you'll have to do is re-install correctly with no more to do. The grinding of the new blade is done to compensate for any minor sole plate deflection that needs to be corrected so as to mate perfectly with the reel blades as they pass each other.
If you are going to do a full restoration then I would thoroughly recommend that a full cleaning back to bare steel including rust removal of the reel and repaint it prior to forwarding it on for grinding and as for the sole plate is concerned I would just strip it back to bare metal and paint it upon its return to you. This way you can mask up the newly fitted bed knife and only paint to sole plate alone.
Cheers,
BB.
