Good and cheap shaper cutters

[Philip Johnson]

Is there such a thing as good and cheap shaper cutters. I know ya gets what ya pays for but can anyone recommend a source of reasonable and good quality shaper cutters.

thanks
Phil

[Bill White]

Grizzley.
Bill

[Rod Sheridan]

Well, it depends upon what you want as far as profiles, and what you want to cut with them.

I'm always using solid wood, so I use a steel cutter head (100mm) with insert HSS knives in 40mm width. The cutterhead is similar to the CMT head, and takes the same knives.

Many suppliers of knives, Dimar, Felder, CMT, FS Tool etc.

The knives range from about $20 to $40 per pair, and of course give a superb finish in solid wood.

I find that you get what you pay for, any inexpensive carbide cutters I've purchased haven't been worth the money.

Once you get into industrial tools you're getting what you pay for, and those carbide cutters, whether brazed or insert have excellent performance and longevity.

Regards, Rod.

[Jeff Duncan]

For simple profiles like roundovers and rabbetting cutters, I find Magnate makes very good stuff at reasonable prices. Once you get into moldings or stile & rails sets I stay away from lesser quality though and go with Freeborn or similar quality.
good luck,
JeffD

[David DeCristoforo]

"Reasonably priced, decent quality" maybe. As mentioned, HSS cutters are relatively inexpensive and will perform quite well if kept sharp. They can actually yield a better surface than carbide if they are good and sharp. The problem is that they cannot keep their edge for very long so they are much better for "short" runs. When you get into carbide tooling "cheap" and "good quality" are mutually exclusive.

[Sam Layton]

Hi Philip,

I just purchased numerous shaper cutters from Infinity tools, (www.infinitytools.com (http://www.infinitytools.com)). I have not used the cutters yet, nor have I ever used any of their products. There service was good, the prices were good, and the cutters look good.

Sam

[Philip Johnson]

the first cutters I will need would be a stile and rail set and a raised panel cutter. I mostly use oak for wood.

[Peter Quinn]

I second the recommendations for Infinity tool. I have used their cutters, a few profiles, stile and rail sets, etc, excellent quality, good finish, reasonable but not "Cheap". I also make good use of the 40MM system of insert knives, I use Amana (exact same knife set as the others, available to me locally). At $14-$24 per knife set, these are actually cheaper than router bits!

I also use a corrugated back insert head for bigger profiles, these are available from many sources as are knives. Check http://www.customouldingknives.com/ for one example.

For raised panels, the best "value" I have found is the Freud RP2000 kit, 10 profile possibilities, carbide insert knives (much sharper than braised tooling it seems) works beautifully. Its more to purchase than any one panel raiser I have seen, so if you only need one profile by all means skip this kit. But if you use different profiles, this is the best bang for the buck period.

I have used a few Grizzly shaper cutters, and as I recall, they were in fact green. That's all I'm going to say about that.:D