Shelix cutterhead upgrade for jointer

[difalkner]

I'm building a Curly Maple and Purpleheart audio rack and the front edge of the Curly Maple needs to be pristine.  When I tried to run it across the straight knives of my jointer a while back it did what I expected it to do - it chipped.  So I ordered a Shelix cutterhead but they were back ordered and it just came in a few days ago.

The install of these is well documented so I won't bother with that except to show a few photos, the most significant being the huge drop in sound level.  I wear hearing protection at all times when equipment is running in the shop but it's still cool that the sound dropped this much.  The before and after sound tests were on the same piece of Walnut, 6" wide (the capacity of my jointer) and about 11" long, rough side straight off the sawmill for both tests.  I took the board from rough to smooth and recorded the highest sound for before and after.

David

[wtnhighlander]

That is quite a significant drop! Some report an apparent loss of "power" when switching to the shelix head. Have you noticed any such thing?

[difalkner]

It is a very significant reduction in dB, far more than I thought it would be.  I've only used it about 5 minutes and the only thing I've noticed is that it takes more effort to push a jointer-width board across the cutterhead than with the straight knives. 

My quick assumption is that's because there's always a cutter in contact with the board.  With straight knives there's a small timeframe where there's no contact with the board, albeit a small timeframe.  Granted, the effort isn't double, it's just 'more' effort although it still isn't difficult to do a full width board.

David