Planer/Thicknesser Problems With Cherry

[Mezzanine Rob]

Hi All
Started to dimension some cherry this weekend, now I have never used cherry before so please excuse me if I am being dim.
My P/T is the Axminster PT106 and has previously dealt with everything I have thrown at it, mainly beech and oak plus some soft woods. I surface planed the two boards without too much trouble taking very thin and slowly fed cuts. When I came to thickness the boards they stalled the machine on only 0.5mm cut. So initially I cleaned and re-waxed the table then sharpened the blades until all looked satisfactory. The improvements were only marginal I could only machine the cherry with the thinnest of skimming cuts taking an absolute age, still stalling the machine twice in the process.
Is cherry exceptionally hard and reknoundly difficult to machine or do I have a problem I need to talk to Axi about?
I have had the side off the machine and the drive "V" belts look if they could be a little tighter but I can't find the manual ( Although probably useless if I could find).
Does any one have this machine and suffered similar problems?

Hopefully your replies can put my mind at rest, as I can ilafford a repair bill or worse at the moment.
Regards
Rob

 

[Richard T]

All I can tell you is no, cherry is not exceptionally hard - not compared to the hardest of hard woods anyway.
How is it coping with other wood? (since the cherry trouble I mean)

 

[Mezzanine Rob]

Good point Richard, need to look at how it copes with other woods. That will tell me if its the machine or the timber.

I am getting a bad feeling about this!!!!!!!
Thank heavens Axminster are such a good company to deal with after point of sale.

 

[gus3049]

Strange, I have a similar model from Fox and cherry is the only wood I have ever had trouble with!

Usually, with plenty of wax and fine cuts its OK but occasionally it really objects to any crossed grain or a change of grain direction. It has pulled out chunks at times. Sounds like a gun going off as the bits hit the extractor funnel.

I thought it was just me!

 

[paisawood]

Cherry is often quite difficult to plane with lots of tearout on crossgrained pieces. Very thin pieces sometimes explode in the thicknesser!

Manual for the PT106can be found on the Axminster site at [urlhttp://www.axminster.co.uk/downloads/200396_manual.pdf][/url]

HTH

David