Making them the new edge boards wouldn’t really help anything, in order to prevent blow out while planing the surface I put a chamfer around the outer edges with a block plane. To get rid of that I’d have to joint off about 1/16" from each side anyway. 1/16" isn’t visually much over 1 3/4"
won’t those those two strips be slightly narrower now?
yes, by about 1/16th each including table sawing and jointing.
Put a 1/8 strip of a differently colored wood between
Or make them the new edge boards
Making them the new edge boards wouldn’t really help anything, in order to prevent blow out while planing the surface I put a chamfer around the outer edges with a block plane. To get rid of that I’d have to joint off about 1/16" from each side anyway. 1/16" isn’t visually much over 1 3/4"