Edger with top head??

[Dewey]

I had a Older Gentleman that came and checked out my mill.
I currently have a twin blade edger. He said there is an edger that has a top head or knife that will take you can run a slab through and get a board out of the slab.
has anyone heard of this??

[DanielW]

I've never known of one that's readily available 'off the shelf' as a stand-alone, plug-and-play unit for us small-scale operators. But in the commercial sawmill world that's quite popular. I was at a site not long ago with that setup. Heavy slabs from the twin scragg were routed to a dual side edger: One side would feed through a three-saw edger, the other (the slab side) would feed through a combo two-saw edger with an overhead resaw that would take the top off the slab (making a thinner slab and board). Heavy slabs would be taken off the scragg line, pass through an optimizer, then get routed to the slab side of the edger. The cant from the twin scragg would go a different route, into a gang, and any boards needing edging from the gang would route back to the other side of the edger. Not an uncommon setup for a lot of smaller commercial mills sawing structural/dimensional lumber. Larger structural mills can have lots more bells and whistles.