Making moulding

[Kirk Amidon]

I want to take a shot at making some "complex" moulding for a set of built ins. Here is what I know:

I have the following:
Stanley 55 with various blades
Ability to sharpen said blades
Plenty of straight grain red oak to work with
A stubborn streak

I have made some raised panel frames using the 55 where there was both a round over and a groove on the same edge of the rails and stiles. Is there a rule of thumb for orders of operation when attempting a more complex moulding, such as work from the near edge to the far edge (or vice versa) or start with deepest cut and work upwards?

To make several pieces, is the general process to say make a roundover at the edge of a wide board, then rip the roundover off the board, and repeat?

Any hints on other resources is appreciated as well.


Thanks

Kirk

[Jim Crammond]

Kirk,

I'd say you have all of the necessary ingredients for making some moldings. Because you mentioned that the moldings were for built ins, you may want to make several simple moldings and then assemble them into a complex molding.

Do you have a design in mind? George Walker's blog Design Matters has several articles about designing moldings. There might be some things there that will help.

As for making the moldings, there are several good threads on the Oldtool archives that describe the process. Josh Clark's Hyper Kitten website also has a good description with pictures of making a crown molding shelf.

Don McConnell's DVDs about moldings(sold through Lie-Nielson) also contain some good descriptions of the process.

Jim

[Jim Koepke]

I want to take a shot at making some "complex" moulding for a set of built ins. Here is what I know:

I have the following:
Stanley 55 with various blades
Ability to sharpen said blades
Plenty of straight grain red oak to work with
A stubborn streak

I have made some raised panel frames using the 55 where there was both a round over and a groove on the same edge of the rails and stiles. Is there a rule of thumb for orders of operation when attempting a more complex moulding, such as work from the near edge to the far edge (or vice versa) or start with deepest cut and work upwards?

To make several pieces, is the general process to say make a roundover at the edge of a wide board, then rip the roundover off the board, and repeat?

Any hints on other resources is appreciated as well.


Thanks

Kirk

There is a rule of thumb to start at the far edge and work towards the closest edge. The plane is more likely to slip towards the close side as the fence should keep it from moving to the far side.

Also have seen suggestions to rabbet the piece before profiling to eliminate the need for the profile blades having to remove more stock than is necessary.

For some things, it may be easier to run a shape, rip it off and then run another. I find if the wood's grain changes just a bit, it can make a mess instead of a bead or hollow.

jtk

[Adam Cherubini]

There is a rule of thumb to start at the far edge and work towards the closest edge. The plane is more likely to slip towards the close side as the fence should keep it from moving to the far side.
jtk

Right. You don't want to cut away the material you are running your fence against. What Don does is cut rabbets he uses to "fence" his hollows and rounds. You can also cut moldings free hand with hollows and rounds. I do that all the time.

A couple tips;
-Sell the #55 and buy some hollows, rounds and simple molders.
-Don't even attempt the molding in red oak until you have cut it several times in pine.
-When do you cut it in red oak, make sure it is air dried, and very straight grained.
-The #55 basically has no sole so the cutters must be super sharp so you don't tear up your surface.

Adam

[Kirk Amidon]

Thanks for the advice - it will be quite helpful. Still working on the face frames and raised panel doors, but starting to think about the mouldings, and will play around with several designs before committing to one.

[David Weaver]

I'd also advocate dumping your 55. It works well as a plow. Everything else on it is much more difficult than it is with a single purpose plane (I never used the splitter on mine before I sold it). I never liked the surface it left with hollow and round irons.

If you can't find good hollows and rounds, you can order the larry williams video and make them. That's not a low-effort low-cost option, but you'll come up with better planes than you can buy, and you can make only the pairs you need if you don't want to. You can consider the cost of the tools to make planes as money in suspense, because they're mostly made by LN and you can always sell them when you're done.

I bought about 35 h&R planes several years ago when I wanted to try mouldings, but it has been more of a pain getting decent pairs and getting them the way I want them, so I bought larry's videos. They also aren't cheap unless they don't match. I've been able to get random ones online for about $10 per (not junkers, random users), and locally here, people seem to think they want $25 each.

Either making or buying and fettling a set is something to do if you're sure you want to do a bunch of mouldings. If you're not, then as adam says, try using pine and use the 55 for now. Just make sure it's sharp and modify your cut depth as needed. I wouldn't want to use one of those skipping chattering common pitch machines in red oak when the results count.