Thread: Thicknesser blade setting

Hi all! Just a quick question for all the woodies who have the know how- how do you go about setting blades in a four blade cutter head on an old Durden? I have been trying to find this info in another thread but can't seem to find the answer. I am only new to this forum and love all the different info available but I seem to spend a fair portion of time reading when I really should be working!
I have only recently acquired the machine and it seems to be well built but the blades were totalled so I resharpned them and then put them back but only sighted them againsed the cutter block with 1 mm protruding out of the block when looking at the back edge of the blade. I just used the thickness of a steel rule to try and gauge it a bit better. The machine appeared to work really well but the machined timber did have a small cutter marks along the length which I reasoned to be that one blade is doing more than the others?
I bought some blade setting jigs from Carba-tec here in Adelaide to try and get a better setting, but the instructions only refer to a 2 or 3 blade cutter head, where you have a solid piece of the machined head to base the jigs on. My cutter head doesn't have a solid part to use as a reference due to the fact that when you loosen the holder to adjust the blade it moves out from the head, and as there is four seperate holders I can't understand how you can get a accurate refrence point as a any one time one of the holders will be loose, and that is where one leg of the setting jig is based?
I am from an engineering background as that is what my business is but I can't get my head around how that could possibly be accurate? I didn't bother trying to run the machine as you could see by eye that the blades were all different, so either I am doing something wrong (which is highly possible!) or there is a different procedure?
Sorry for the long description but I know that there is probably a simple way to do it- I'm just not that clever to see it! That and setting the blades with a dial indicator is tedious to say the least!
Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thanks for your patience if you got this far! Cheers