Can the Woodrat or Router Boss make door trim?

[dirk martin]

I'm just starting to read up on the Woodrat and Router Boss.
Not sure which I'll get.

Can these things make door trim, quarter round, or moulding?....or is it spelled "molding" ?

[Jim Dailey]

Dirk,

Yes but it would be like trying to make door trim on a router table... Not my tool the best tool.

A shaper with a power feed would do a better job, but the best tool would be a Williams & Hussey (W&H) molder, or the Shop Fox clone or a Woodmaster Planer. Both of these are power feed with the Woodmaster being variable speed, and the W&H/Shop Fox having a variable speed as an option. And with the W&H or Woodmaster you have lots of patterns of moldings available plus you have the option of having a profile custom ground to meet your needs.

Of the 6 chooses; Woodrat, router table, shaper w/power feeder, W&H, & Woodmaster. The Woodmaster would be my top choose & I happen to own all six of the tools I mentioned.

jim

[Larry Rasmussen]

It does not sound like you are overly familiar with the capabilities of a plain router table. You can make just about any type of molding you want with a router table and a fairly basic bit collection. If you just want to do the occasional trim piece this might meet your needs and give you the tool with the most other uses. I'm not familiar with the Router Boss but the Woodrat would seem like an overly complex and expensive tool if making molding was your main reason for buying.

Regards,
Larry R,
Seattle

[dirk martin]

Thanks for the replies, guys. Here's the scoop.

Right now, I can obtain knot free Red and White oak, for about $1 per board foot. That's in the rough, 1" thick, and kiln dry. I would think that, at that price, I could turn that lumber into trim and mouldings, and make a profit. I'm not looking to crank out thousands and thousands of feet of the stuff....more looking for some side money to help pay off my Minimax MM24 bandsaw, and maybe buy some other nice tools.

My brother is about to purchase a Woodrat or Router Boss...and I was wondering if those would do the task. I'm really glad Jim replied to my post.

I see the Woodmaster 718 is on sale for $1,595...delivered, right now. I know knives are extra. I have a separate planer.

It seems to me that I should be able to pay for that Woodmaster, by selling trim, rather easily on ebay and other channels. I am very familiar with eBay, and their fee structure, and from what I'm seeing, various types of trim are going for $3 per board foot (on the low end)....with some selling significantly higher.

I'm interested in other's thoughts on this....

[Neal Clayton]

the woodmaster would be possible, here's the thing...

1) people want molding in 15-17 foot lengths, with the exception of door casings.

2) you can't square a 15-17 foot board, you'd have nothing left. the best you can do is square the edges and leave the faces twisted/warped.

3) therefore, you need a means of ripping the blanks. molding shops have gang rip saws that can do that. the woodmaster can do that with the sawblade shaft they sell. anything else would require a guided skilsaw setup or some sort of power feeder on a table saw, which would be quite tedious.

4) you will make a metric buttload of sawdust. in a 6 hour day i can create about 200 gallons of sawdust with a woodmaster. consider that and the cost to dispose of it.

5) going rate on knives is 50 dollars a square inch (blank size), so consider that in the cost too. the price of the knives to replicate all of the molding in my house was about 450-500 dollars, albeit an old house with quite large molding profiles.

6) these machines are incredibly loud when cutting large/deep profiles. 200-250 decibels loud. if you have home shop with neighbors close by, that's a consideration too.

[Rod Sheridan]

I just completed two 8 foot lengths of 8 3/4" high base moulding for a friends house.

It's a lot of work, unless you have a 4 or 5 head moulder which can take rough material in one end and spit out finished profiles.

I used a tablesaw, jointer, planer and a shaper with a stock feeder.

It took 7 setups and passes through the shaper because I didn't have custom knives.

I also produced an enormous amount of mulch for the garden.

It's an enormous amount of work, which can be worth it if you need something special, however having worked for a company that ran moulders and gang rips to feed them, you would have to be willing to starve to try and compete with them.

Material cost is one item, speed is the other, as well as the mountains of shavings.

I suggest that you do some research in your area and see what amount of work you could get, how much the customer will pay, and what time frame expectations do they have.

If the customer wants to fax you a profile on Monday, and pick up 200 lengths on Wednesday will you have the material, manpower and machinery to do it.

When I worked in the industry we had tens of thousands of BF of each species in stock, in different thicknesses, a knife grinding shop in house, sanding machines, and a custom finishing shop.

We could normally produce a run in 4 business days, which seemed to be how fast our customers needed it.

Please keep us posted on what you find out in your area.

regards, Rod.

[Doug Mason]

The woodrat is for fine joinery--not making runs of moulding. In addition, the woodrat has a gazillion little parts to get it going. I had one. Sold it.

[dirk martin]

Well, I think there's a couple of things you guys missed, in my post.

I don't plan on having "local orders", as my buyers.
Sure, I may get some local orders, which is all good and fine (I'm in the Chicago area), but most of my sales will be over eBay.

The benefits of using eBay is:
Buyers are fine with 8' lengths, due to shipping costs for longer stock.
My buyers are nation wide.
Recent sales on eBay are visible, and reveal what's profitable.
I can start and stop selling, whenever want.
I create my stock, and then sell it...not the other way around.

Ron, the Woodmaster would do my gang ripping.
I then run the boards thru my dedicated planer, with helical cutters.
Then, back thru my Woodmaster, for the profiles

This doesn't seem that hard....what am I missing?

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Dirk thanks for the clarification.

I have a few questions, never having owned a Woodmaster

- how do you straighten the piece without jointing or running through a moulder or shaper? When I've done it without a multi head moulder, I've had to joint one edge to get it straight, the other edge was removed by the shaper using an out board fence.

- same with flattening a face without jointing. A multihead moulder will flatten the stock, a planer won't.

I never thought about making stock mouldings and then selling them once they were completed. Sounds interesting, hope it works out well for you.

Regards, Rod.

[dirk martin]

First of all, I don't own a Woodmaster....yet.
But I thought the Gang Ripping blades of the Woodmaster, would give me straight edges......

[Gary Gleave]

Dirk, there may be more profit in this if you take the rough lumber to your local molding shop and just have them mill it. If my local shop doesn't have the profile I'm looking for, they charge me $80 to make a custom set of knives. I get charged 50 cent a foot for running the lumber. They own the knives when the job is done, but they also keep them sharp and to the exact profile on each run.
This way you can test your market and profitability before making such a large investment.
personally, I wouldn't mill the moldings for that. The men operating the machinery are working for $10-12/hr.
Use their tooling, electricity,heat,machinery, and employees to make money.
After selling a few lots, use the profits to purchase the machinery and build your business plan .
Hope I'm not raining on your parade, it is not my intention.

Gary

[dirk martin]

Smart thinking, Gary. That is definately a smart idea. That could be a good way of starting out.

If, and when I do opt to create my own trim, in its entirety, is the Woodmaster, with it's "gang ripping blades", the easiest way to "true up" my edges? Both edges will need truing, since these boards are milled on a bandsaw mill.

I know I can square up a board on a table saw, but that will take two passes per board, whereas the Woodmaster can do it in one pass, and produce two or more boards at once.

Oh, and to answer some previous questions....sawdust and noise is not a concern. I live in the country with my own acreage and woods.

[Neal Clayton]

Hi Dirk thanks for the clarification.

I have a few questions, never having owned a Woodmaster

- how do you straighten the piece without jointing or running through a moulder or shaper? When I've done it without a multi head moulder, I've had to joint one edge to get it straight, the other edge was removed by the shaper using an out board fence.

- same with flattening a face without jointing. A multihead moulder will flatten the stock, a planer won't.

I never thought about making stock mouldings and then selling them once they were completed. Sounds interesting, hope it works out well for you.

Regards, Rod.

as for the edges, i use a 16 foot length of angle iron and a skilsaw ;).

you can't flatten it. it comes out of the molding knife with the same amount of twist as it went in with, it just has square edges.

the gang rip head for the woodmaster will give you square edged blanks, but you have to come up with one square edge on your own first so that the board will follow a fence through the machine.

[Gary Curtis]

As one poster said here, a WoodRat is designed to make joints. I've got one, and though it safer than a router table for doing edge profiles, it is powered by a router. And that is light duty if you are milling lots of board feet.

So the motor (relatively puny) and machine (relatively light weight) would rule out the use of a WoodRat.

Gary Curtis