how do you make your mouldings?

[tod evans]

there are quite a few of us who use various mouldings in our work,whether a basic taurus or an elaborite stack for a cornice. the machines used to form these mouldings range from a simple scratch-stock to a stanley 55 or a dedicated set of hollows and rounds in the cordless variety and from a router to a 6 headed moulder or cnc in the corded variety.
so without mentioning brand names, what is your preferred tooling for the mouldings you create?

i`ll start with my own answer; single sided moulder, shaper,router,multi-plane and chisels. i also grind my own tooling.

[lou sansone]

Tod
since I only build 1 off furniture pieces ( 18th century ) I end up using a variety of shaper and router bits ( in the shaper ) to get the basic shape I am looking for. I could go the antique molding plane route, but feel it is more of a distraction ( you start to get the collecting bug ) than it is worth. One nice addition to my shop would be a tilting shaper and a head that accepted tooling that I could grind myself. Some moldings have to be done on the table saw and then hand scraped ( tall case clocks have gigantic cove moldings that would be pretty difficult on any shaper ). Broken pediment moldings for high boys, secretaries and tall case clocks I simply carve by hand.

could you post some pictures of your tooling grinding setup and the head that uses them.

thanks Lou

[tod evans]

lou, i`ll be happy to take pics but i have to remember to bring the digital back to the shop. it went on holiday with us. maybe tomorrow? tod

[Steve Clardy]

Single sided molding machine. I make my own crown for cabinets, run handrails on it also.

[Jim Becker]

I rarely use moldings (Shaker and Nakashima is my style), but try to make them when I do using whatever technique seems both appropriate and "safe". I do not own a molder, so it's table saw and router table for this kind of work.

[Dev Emch]

As I have said, I find the shaper to be the most important stationary tool in the shop. But you need some features to make these bad boys work. My shaper is massive and I have a tilting spindle which really helps on the moulding side of things. Dont use the tilt feature much for non-moulding type work. I also find the power feeder indispensible for moulding because it guarantees a clean cut free of jogs and burn marks.

But if you use the shaper heavily as I do, you also need to be able to change things in a hurry. My shaper is equiped with an HSK 80 spindle which allows me to change a spindle in about 5 seconds. So I can go from collet spindle to 30 mm to 40 mm in no time flat.

For moulding use, the slider does not do much for you. But having a fence that weighs about 100 pounds is another problem. Here, a swing away fence lift is a god send. You crank the fence up using a hand wheel on a post and then swing the fence out of the way until its needed again. Its pointless trying to manhandle that pig without one.

I use all sorts of tooling. For many cuts, you can use standard insert type tooling. Rebate heads, groovers, etc. You can increase the number of profile options with a tilt spindle. But for off the wall, one off type stuff, your going to need to grind custom knives.

Here the weapon of choice is 60 degree, corregated knife stock. You buy this in 24 or 36 inch stock and cut off a section to grind a knife. In order to use this stuff, you will need a cutter head or two compatible with this material. I use cutter heads borrowed from wynieg moulders that use a 40 mm spindle. These heads have four gibs.. two 12 degree and two 20 degree. You can also get them with four gibs of the same angle if you need more knives. I use a 2 inch deep and a 4 inch deep head. These heads are solid steel and it takes two hands to lift the 4 inch deep head. They are also about 6 inches in diameter. So you should use the smallest head possible for the profile in question. Often, when cutting an edge detail on a 3/4 inch rail or stile, the 2 inch head is more than adequate. When cutting some coves, I may need the extra depth of that 4 inch deep head. My heads came from schmidt in new jersey and work really nice.

My buddy wally has a foley belsaw profile grinder that grinds the knives in place. He makes the template from cad drawings and uses his CNC wire EDM machine to carve out the profile. Then using this template, he uses the foley belsaw to finish the knives in the head. Now these are all HSS steel. If you need carbide, then you need to change grinders accordingly.

The heads I have from schmidt can take the thickest knife stock out there. As a side effect, you can also swap out the HSS and replace it with carbide using what they call the Sure-Lock knife system. ITs a carbide and backer plate replacement for your steel knives.

Lastly, companies like Viel make a hobby-centric knife grinder that uses its own heads and corregated knife stock. The system is similar to having a key made in the hardware. And the heads are spindle stackable so you can break your profile up into managable head units. But the cutter heads are to small in diameter to be of use to me right now. Great idea but not really compatible with larger shapers.

All these heads are mostly for small run profiles. If you have a job that requires long runs or one that occurs frequently, you may be better off using some type of insert technology. For example, I would be lost without my Leitz lock mitre cutter head.

[Steve Wargo]

http://madhunkyworkshop.com/images/MouldingOpen.jpg

Moulding Planes.

[tod evans]

steve, i love the dichotomy of moulding planes behind euro hinges! :) tod

[Steve Wargo]

Sweet huh? I never claimed to be a period furniture maker. But making moulding is my favorite part of a job and it's because of the planes. a few more have been added since that picture.

[Alan Turner]

I use a table saw to waste most of the stock (if necessary), and then molding planes, or hand filed seratch stocks, or both. I do one off furniture, and 18th Cen. work when it comes along, and so my "production runs" are often 2 four foot pieces.

[Scott Parks]

I use a molding head in the tablesaw. Next would be a hand held router. And for a simple chamfer or round over, I use a #60 block plane.

[tod evans]

lou, here are some pics of the grinding jig i built, some before and after steel for the w&h and some heads i grind knifes for used on the shaper. if my memory serves you run a delta 3/5 horse? if so both wkw and griz stock small two knife heads. so does schmidt and they stock steel. tod

28467

28468

28469

28470

[lou sansone]

hi tod
thanks for the pictures

I wonder how much the grinder costs. it is something you think I could find at auction ?


lou

[tod evans]

i found mine at auction for under a grand. of course since i bought it i have seen different machines for less?? but this one has some pretty cool features not needed for profile grinding. what you need to look at is the bearings that the hub attaches to, large and sealed is the ticket. i regularly see b&s tool and cutter grinders on the block and a template follower is not dificult to construct. i`ve nixed the coolant on mine it makes no difference to m2 if it gets hot and the slop of coolant was a pita, although wheel life is somewhat shortened.

[Paul B. Cresti]

Tod,
I too make all my own molding. It is done primarily on the shaper with a combination of shaper cutters and routers bits. Very very seldom do I use the router table

[Dev Emch]

Lou...
Here is a link to a dealer showing the Viel Profile Grinder. These guys make a pretty neat little machine for light duty use. The two knife grinder heads are compatible with schmidt corregated stock.

http://www.moonssawandtool.com/browse.cfm/4,446.html

Tod...
That is the wirdest profile grinder I have ever seen! You need to explain what you did here. It looks like you started with something like a 618 surface grinder and built a follower rig which you can then bolt to the main table in place of the orig. magnetic surface chuck. Am I right here? What kind of wheels do you run? How wide are those wheels and what do you do to dress them?

So do you think that a small surface grinder like a Brown & Sharpe #2 or #2L could be used in the same capacity? Now you got me interested in this approach!

I saw a foley belsaw profile grinder sell on ebay about a year ago for $800 bucks. Havent seen any lately. My buddy has two of these. One is used for steel knives and the other one is used to finish profiles on brazed carbide shaper heads. The coolant can be a real J-O-Y to work with and clean up!

[lou sansone]

nice link to the viel grinder .... has anyone tried it ... seems sort of inexpensive to me.

lou

[tod evans]

what i built is patterned after the veil in a way,kind of a cross between it and a roundamat[sp] i owned a veil for a while and although underpowered it did work well. figure about 45 min per inch on a two knife head with it..the one i modified was made by united tool, it started life as an automatic cutterhead grinder for s4s machines and will still do that well but i don`t have an s4s machine..so the self indexing tailstock and hydraulic feed see no use. i dress the wheels freehand to match homemade styluses using everything from a foley rotary dresser to segments of a core-bit welded to a piece of steel rod. i`ve had good service from the 3m blue wheels and use 46 grit to rough and 100 grit to dress. really it`s not to dificult to addapt any good grinder to do profiles, just over build to avoid flex and you`ll be fine.....tod

[Dev Emch]

what i built is patterned after the veil in a way,kind of a cross between it and a roundamat[sp] i owned a veil for a while and although underpowered it did work well. figure about 45 min per inch on a two knife head with it..the one i modified was made by united tool, it started life as an automatic cutterhead grinder for s4s machines and will still do that well but i don`t have an s4s machine..so the self indexing tailstock and hydraulic feed see no use. i dress the wheels freehand to match homemade styluses using everything from a foley rotary dresser to segments of a core-bit welded to a piece of steel rod. i`ve had good service from the 3m blue wheels and use 46 grit to rough and 100 grit to dress. really it`s not to dificult to addapt any good grinder to do profiles, just over build to avoid flex and you`ll be fine.....tod
That makes sense. I had considered doing this with my Brown and Sharpe #1 ID/OD cylindrical grinder. But I kept thinking that my problem is how to move the grinder wheel in and out as there is no Y movement on the main bed. But thinking about it, if I make a heavy duty dovetail shoe with its own way system, I use my template jig to move in and out as needed. Great idea.

And for the photo cops, here is a link showing my grinder or grindah depending on your local.

http://www.owwm.com/PhotoIndex/detail.asp?id=1235

Its in the background. The disc sander is my 30 in kindt collins master after its trip home from WI. There are fewer than 250 of these in total.

[tod evans]

dev, look at the pic i posted, the side to side is riding on 2 thompsons with a 1 1/4 shaft protected with billows. front to back is the machines ways. if you need more pics holler. or if you have a better idea holler, i`m far from the brightest here i just cobble things `till they work. tod

[Kelly C. Hanna]

I am without a shaper although I do want one. Right now I make my own via the TS and the router like Jim does. I prefer mine to those you can buy if I can make 'em...mainly cause I know no one else has that exact profile.

[Lucas G Hager]

Do any of you guys know anything about tod evans grinder in the above post? He says B&S so I assume Brown and Sharpe, but any ideas on model number. I've never even heard of these grinders.