"Mike Marlow" wrote in message ...

Well, I made some progress on the monster and did manage to get it planing
better. The thing still will not feed, and the local Ridgid warranty shop
says that's common. It's a total rebuild of the feed train and if the
warranty registration had not been sent in, then the cost is $300. That
ain't gonna happen! I've priced parts and I can get them for about $130
with shipping if I want to do the work myself. My son is checking to see
if the previous owner submitted the warranty, and if not he'll have to
decide if he wants to put $130 into this. Dad's time of course, is just
Dad's time.


My radar goes off when I hear things like this... "total rebuild of the feed
train." I'd try cleaning, lubing and adjusting, and maybe looking at the
process, before going down that path. Just today I had one of those "need to
replace it" things with the dishwasher... Instead I "fixed" it with a little
cleaning and liquid silicone to lube and restore the rubber washer and rod
on the float switch...

A couple questions.

Firstly, are the feed rollers turning when it's running? If not, you may
have a broken/jumped drive chain or there may be a sheared key in the
sprocket on the roller.

If the rollers are in fact turning, as others have suggested it could be the
roller height relative to the cutters that is the problem... I'd also check
to see that the rollers move up and down under spring tension. If they seem
to be fixed in place it could indicate that the spring loaded bearing blocks
are stuck in place from crud or rust. Stuck rollers would impact how it
feeds the wood.

You mentioned that the board is not flat... Was one side face jointed first
and then placed jointed side down in the thickness planer? If not, a sled
with wedges to hold the board securely while it's feeding might be needed as
the board could be flexing and not maintaining good contact with the feed
rollers. If it's rough cut wood you are feeding that sometimes that causes
problems if the surface is very rough as there is not a lot of contact
surface. Also, sometimes the wood's thickness varies from edge to edge to
the point where little wood is in contact with the rollers. I've had rough
cut that was so rough that the ridges from the saw marks would catch on the
frame and or edge of the bed of the planer and prevent the wood from
feeding. If you don't have a jointer a hand plane could be used to
flatten/smooth the wood enough to get it to feed.

I may be mistaken, but aren't the knives on that machine classified as
double sided disposable knives? If so, 3 sets may not be a good measure of
prior use... hell, I know a guy who destroyed the edges on his first set of
knives on the first board by running painted wood through that also happened
to have an embedded nail. The silica in the paint ground the edge off and
the nail took a chunk out of it!

Anyhow... I'm a little sensitive to hearing "need to replace it" after this
morning's dishwasher incident. ;~)

John