ribs, ridges and uneven surface from my thickness planer.

[Adam Herd]

I have a ryobi rapid set planner that was bought from a friend. I used it to plane a bunch of boards down to thickness. I am making a coffee table and I planed the 8/4 for the top with no problem. Now i am working on the stretches and i am getting a horribly rough finish from my planer. It is leaving ridges and not a parallel surface. when this first happened I thought maybe I was taking to much off at once. After setting the depth take off as little as possible I'm still getting a horrible surface. Are my blades just dull or is there something else going on? I started with rough lumber and used to joiner to flatten one face and then using the planner to get down to thickness and have parallel faces. Again I didn't start having problems until I started with the 4/4.

[Lee Schierer]

Typically ridges are caused by a chip in a cutter. You can eliminate this by shifting one cutter left or right about the width of the ridge. Chips can be caused by nails, bits of dirt or other foreign objects on the surface or embedded in the wood.

Can you post some photos of your wood surface?

[Adam Herd]

I can't post pictures of the wood surface because the surface can't be seen well in a picture but I did figure out how to get to the blades and I have posted pictures of what I found.367471367472

[Andrew Hughes]

Dam that's a bad one it looks like the planer is sticking its tongue at you.:p

[Bill Dufour]

Dust collection will reduce the chipping and little divots caused by chips being rolled over by the outfeed rollers.
Bill

[Adam Herd]

I was working on taking the blades out. I am just going to replace them they are a mess. How ever the second to last screw on the right I can not loosen. It is an allen wrench and I have stripped 2 allen wrenches trying to loosen it. I can not tell if the inside of the screw is stripped or not. Does any one have ideas of how I can loosen the screw? The head of the screw is round so I am unable to get vice grips or anything on it. What do I do?

[Lee Schierer]

I was working on taking the blades out. I am just going to replace them they are a mess. How ever the second to last screw on the right I can not loosen. It is an allen wrench and I have stripped 2 allen wrenches trying to loosen it. I can not tell if the inside of the screw is stripped or not. Does any one have ideas of how I can loosen the screw? The head of the screw is round so I am unable to get vice grips or anything on it. What do I do?

Some times you can tap on the screw to break the grip a bit. Then get a quality allen wrench like a Bondhus, some of the cheap ones are not hardened well and will bend or just round off. When you put your screws back in put a small dab of never seize on the threads to prevent future problems.

It looks like your problem resulted from taking an excessive bite and from the wood splintering and possibly poor chip removal. Look at your wood and if you see cathedral grain run the boards so the points are away from the direction of feed. Look at the edges of boards and run them though so the grain ends are leaning --->\\\\\\\\\\ not /////---> with the arrows being the direction of feed.

[Derek Cohen]

I was working on taking the blades out. I am just going to replace them they are a mess. How ever the second to last screw on the right I can not loosen. It is an allen wrench and I have stripped 2 allen wrenches trying to loosen it. I can not tell if the inside of the screw is stripped or not. Does any one have ideas of how I can loosen the screw? The head of the screw is round so I am unable to get vice grips or anything on it. What do I do?

Is it possible to grind a straight groove for a flat head screwdriver (using a Dremel)? Then use a square shank driver with grips.

Also a little heat on the screw head to loosen it.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Dave Cullen]

I'll second the idea of heat. Point the flame of a propane torch at the head of the screw for a few seconds (vacuum the wood dust first!), that often will loosen stuck screws.

[Cary Falk]

I would soak the screw in PB Blaster for awhile. I had the same problem on a jet planer/moulder. I go some of those allen wrenches on sockets and used my Bosch rordless impact to kick it loose after soaking.

[michael langman]

If it is a flat head screw that is stuck, just drill into the center of the flat head with a drill a little smaller then the diameter of the thread diameter.
The head will spin off as you are drilling. You will only have to drill as deep as the head of the screw. Then you can spin out the remaining threaded piece.

[Don Jarvie]

Once you get the blades follow the manual to set up the planer.

Since your havng issues with 4/4 it may be one face isn't flat so the planed side will reflect the unflat side. The rough stock is jointed flat on one side so your not seeing this issue.

[Chris Hachet]

I am going to second PB blaster.

[David Eisenhauer]

3rd on PB blaster. Take your time on this and let the stuff soak for hours and then overnight. Hit it with PB again the next morning. Tap the stuck screw while soaking it so that the vibration of the tapping works the juice down into new threads. Sometimes rushing the process ruins the screw head and then you have real worse problems.

[Bill Dufour]

Use a dental pick to dig the dust out of the Allen head so the wrench goes to full depth. Do not use a ball end Allen wrench. Soak it in oil for a few days. heat it up to around 350 and let cool a few times, then try to remove it while cool. If worst comes to worst use. a left hand drill to drill it out.
Around here it is hard to find quality metric allen wrenches. If the socket is bad you may take a English size and pound it into the metric socket and use that. Grinding compound may reduce slip as well. No grinding compound ? try toothpaste but let it dry before applying.
It will be almost as hard as the drill so good luck. carbide may be needed here.
Bill D

[Larry Frank]

I had similar problems with my DW735. I do not like using heat with a torch as you can damage things. I just drilled the head off of the bolts, took the blades off and the rest of the bolt came out easily.

[Adam Herd]

I tried heat with a propane torch but no success. I guess I will pick up a can of PB blaster and try that. Its really hard to get any tools in there though because there is only about 6 inches of space between the cutter head assembly and a bar that looks like it is for the height adjustment lock down. I am really nervous that the screw head is stripped because if it is then even if it gets loose with the PB I will still need a good strong purchase to free it. I'm really nervous about making this problem much worse than it already is.

[johnny means]

I once had issues with a rounded out fastener in my Felder j/p. I epoxied an allen socket into the heads and used an impact driver to break the bond.

[Andrew Hughes]

Adam if you pushed that machine that hard to dull the knives so far that chips stuck under the chip breaker.You should consider a upgrade.The planer might not be worth the time to fix. Some of those bench top machines are a dime a dozen on Craigslist.

[Jim Morgan]

I had a similar problem with a blade assembly screw on a 2nd hand DW735 that would not budge. I ended up attacking the head of the screw with a cold chisel - first held vertically to cut a groove across the screwhead then at an angle on just one side of the head to get the screw moving. After I got it out, I replaced it with a Torx-head screw & wiped some Moveit on the threads to prevent seizing in the future.

[Bill Orbine]

Just wondering if you planed green or wet wood. It can be brutal on machines.

[Adam Herd]

What I ended up doing was just drilling the the head out. Then I used a cold chisel to break the head from the shank then I was able to take everything out and use vice grips to get a hold of what was left of the shaft to unscrew it. I was really trying not to drill it because I wanted to re-use the bolt and because I did't want to damage anything by drilling out the side of the shank or drilling to deep. Luckily I drilled straight through the shaft and not to deep. To answer Bill's questions, the 8/4 was partially dried and the last pass I used the planner with on the 8/4 is when my problems started but the 844 was perfectly dry. However I believe the damage was done when staring on the 4/4. I want to thank everyone for giving me their time and advice I really appreciate it.

[David Eisenhauer]

Glad it worked out Adam and hope you can get back to planning soon. I still say you (and everyone else) need to keep a can of PB Blaster on hand in the shop. That stuff works wonders on stuck screws/bolts :).