dusty wrote:The only proper and safe solution would, in my opinion, be to purchase 517363 from Shopsmith.
This would provide a new cutter head, new blades, new wedges, bearings and bearing housing. More importantly, it would provide a balanced cutter head assembly that would be SAFE to operate. I am frugal but there are times when you just need to spend some money. This is one of them.
If the alternative was literally a hacksaw, I'd agree with you. But Shopsmith itself sells a jig for sharpening the jointer knives, and they are just as critical to the cutter-head balance. I see no reason why one couldn't grind the wedges to a precise final length. I'd bet that the Shopsmith length tolerance is no better that 0.005". With your Shopsmith, a good disc-sanding setup, and dial or digital calipers, that tolerance would be pretty easy to achieve.
I'd further bet that Shopsmith does not actually weigh/balance the wedges. Heck, a car engine has entire pistons whizzing back & forth at over 5000 RPM. But I would weigh the wedges anyway, mostly out of curiosity. (I recently lucked into a new triple-beam scientific balance at auction for $30. In my testing, it proved to have repeatability of 0.1 grams and an absolute accuracy of 1 gram.
)
If I was wrong on any of those bets, it would show up as vibration when I spin up the jointer, and
then I might consider a more expensive solution.
