shaper profile knife set

[Joe Koren]

Hi,

First, I would like to thank everyone for their input on my 5 in 1 combo post. In the end, I decided to go with a 2002 model Minimax that I got for a decent price. It should be arriving in a week or so and I wanted to get a profile set (interchangable knives), and I was wondering which set would be best to get me started. I am favoring the interchangable knives because I heard they work very well and the price factor. Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Joe

[John Renzetti]

Hi Joe, Your best bet is to pick up a set right at Felder in DE when you get your preowned MM from there. They have a set on the used shelf for 1 1/4" spindle. Plus they have a bunch of other profiles in stock.
take care,
John

[Dev Emch]

Joe...
Your just asked the world how long is a piece of string or why is the bananna curved?

There are all sorts of interchangeable knives and it depends on what your going to do. What you want. How much you wish to to spend.

The basic setup is based on corregated knives. Here, you can buy a head from companies like C.G. Schmidt that have four slots. Two are at 12 degrees and the other two are at 20 degrees. This gives you the ideal hook angle for molding cuts versus coping cuts. You can get these in a variety of heights but a 2 inch head will most likely be the best way to go.

Then you can buy sets of knives as needed for darn near any profile. If you use the standard 5/16inch stock, you can also use SCHure Lock knives which are carbide based should that be needed. All interchangeable. The knives are attached to the head by standard gib like structures and the knives align and retain using the 60 degree corregations on the back.

HSS knives are sharpened by honing the back side ever so slightly. No stone attack on the actual profiled sides. So these knives can actually last quite some time. And if you need some strange profile, you can have these ground in very short order. These are industry standards used in shapers and moulders all the time. Tastes great and less filling.

But they do not have a constant cutting circle. This only becomes an issue if you exchange knives or sharpen knives in the middle of a run. The next step up is a head that has constant cutting circle technology.

These heads are usually pro level heads and some of them can cost a holly fortune. For example, a full set of dual profile moulding and coping heads for a standard entry door excluding the panel raiser from Leitz will set you back about $1700 dollars. Other companies have similar offersings for less. The felder company actually offers quite a few heads with various profiles for semi resonable fees for what these heads are. The knives are usually super precise CNC ground carbide inserts.

Now some heads use standard off the shelf carbide inserts which cost about ten bucks each. By using these standard inserts in novel ways, they can obtain simple profiles. One of the simplest of these is the DADO or REBATE head. Again, Felder has a darn nice version of this head. Does Dados, Rebates and when two are stacked together with a precision spacer, an awsome job at cutting tenons. Square inserts often have four useable sides and long, narrow inserts have two useable sides. Very useful and reaonable. You can actually use your shaper as a narrow jointer with these heads.

Now some heads have a whole box full of profiles and a general purpose head. For example, Ammana sells such a set with an aluminium head. These are typical of the flurry heads and flurry OEMs these to a number of companies. Granted they are neat and offer one stop shopping but they are no better off than their cousins, the corregated head. Being that the corregated head has been around for years and everyone who supplies tooling for woodworking supports it, I would tend toward getting the corregated head if this type of head is on my list.

Hope this all helps....