I finally got the problem solved - just ignore the manual!
I set the rollers to 1/16" ( one turn of the depth adjustment ) below the bottom of the knives. That puts just enough pressure to pull the boards through with minimum cut. The rollers then get more pressure as the knives are lowered into the wood. Since you can only cut about
3/8" the roller pressure does not get out of hand and it works very well. I was able to plough a 3/16" relief cut in one pass with beautiful results. Too bad nobody will see it on the back of the installed molding!
Sometimes that is what you gotta do - unfortunately!
I bought a 6", Model 95 Powermatic jointer about 5-6 years ago and it is a great machine. The manual - not so great. During the set up process I started noticing inconsistencies between the book and the machine I was working on. Then I noticed that the illustrations regarding rabbeting had nothing to do with my jointer. I got on line and looked at the book for the 8" Powermatic and it looked like they had an entire section transposed between books.
I sent an email to Powermatic's service department and got a quick, terse return informing me they had stringent review and quality standards and the manual was correct. So then, I called them, suggested they look specifically at certain pages. The immediate response was cool. But about two days later I received a very apologetic phone call, followed by an email from the head of their product support department. It sounded like they outsourced some of their publications work because errors were made in "translation". I checked the on line version about six months later and it was corrected.
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