I'm milling a bunch of cherry for a job. My 16" jointer with straight knives works fine for flattening one side before the boards go to the planer, but not so great for truing an edge.
The reason is the blades are getting dull. Well, it takes me so long to change out the knives I just can't take that time in the middle of this job (yeah I wish I had a Tersa or a helical jointer but I don't). So the jointed edges are not great.
I got to thinking it might be good to have a second jointer just for edge jointing.
And I think it could be a much smaller machine, even a 4" head. Byrd make a 4" head - and I picture retrofitting an older jointer with this head, and extending the beds so I can edge joint long boards.
Has anyone out there done something like this? Or have an opinion on having two jointers in a shop?
I think I read somewhere about using the router table with an off-set fence and a straight bit to edge joint boards. Haven't seen this in action, and so I'm not picturing if it will be easily adjustable to do good repeatable milling.
I feel this topic has likely been covered before, but I haven't found any threads on it at all.
Mark