Changing knives on Ryobi AP1301?

[Philip Florio]

I need to change the knives on my Ryobi AP1301 planer. Anyone have a suggestion on doing this? The manual seems to make it sound too simple!

Phil

[Rusty Eads]

I have the same planer for about 6 years now and I can change the knives in less than 10 minutes. You remove the two yellow wing nuts holding the dust shroud on (after unplugging the planer of course) exposing the cutterhead. Rotate the cutterhead to the first knife and you will notice about 8 bolts that have to be loosened. You can then slide the blade out and either flip it or replace with new. To rotate the cutterhead to the next blade you will have to press down on a small button that disengages the cutterhead lock. Rotate to the second knife and repeat the process. Tighten everything back up, reinstall the dust shroud and you are back to making chips.

[Philip Florio]

Sounds so simple, aren't there steps to align the knives?

[Rusty Eads]

The knives are indexing, you push them in as far as they go and they are set, no need to align them.

[Philip Florio]

Thanks Rusty, simple enough, I flipped them over, the ones I bought from
Home Depot are different. The original has an 'index' on the end where the
news one don't.

[Rusty Eads]

The ones I get from home depot are actually for the Ridgid planer but they work with the ryobi, part number AC8630 if I'm not mistaken. These will have the indexing tabs and are double sided. I know it is not the best planer (probably considered bottom of the line around here) but I have not had any problems and I have ran over 1000 board feet through mine