I borrowed my son's 13" planer to plane down some walnut that has been
stacked up in the garage for what seems like forever. I had to clean it up
(including cleaning the rollers with denautred alcohol), and lube it when I
got it. It all seems to work smoothly and properly now. BTW - it's a
Ridgid TP13000 with two cutting knives.

I tried to run a piece of walnut through it that is about 9" wide and about
7/16" thick, and about 3 feet long. I want to take the absolute minimum off
of this board, to get it smooth but not get it any thinner than necessary,
since it's not starting out all that thick.

I cannot get this board to feed through the planer. If I gradually lower
the cutter head to just slightly remove some wood, the rollers will not pick
up the wood and advance it. Sometimes it will even try to kick back out of
the planer. If I add 1/8 or 1/4 of a turn on the adjustment (down), it
still does not engage the rollers, but just cuts a bit deeper.

I stuck a piece of Colonial door moulding in it and slowly lowered the
cutter head until it began to pick up the stock and advance it. That went
through quite well. Tried the walnut again and no such luck.

I'm out of guesses. I've never used a power planer before and I'm about
ready to break out my hand plane, but this just does not seem that it should
be that difficult of a thing to remedy.

Any of you guys that have or that use power planers have any suggestions or
input?

Thanks,

--

-Mike-