Shaper

[George Sanders]

I have one more stationary machine purchase in mind. A shaper. My budget is 4 to 5 hundred dollars. I have been looking at cutter prices and at about a hundred apiece they're not cheap. I am willing to bite the bullet and get one as all I have for shaping now is a router table and it is tedious and time consuming. My question is how big a spindle should I try to get? 3/4" or 1"? Wouldn't a 1" require a 3 h.p. 220 motor? I have 220 in the garage. Any feedback would be appreciated.

[Ed Labadie]

3/4" is the most common size for shaper cutters, it's also the most reasonably priced size. Many of the 3/4" bore cutters come with bushings to reduce them to fit 1/2" spindle shapers. This is ok for small diameter cutters but I think many of the companies selling them get a little carried away by furnishing them in cutters that are to large for the spindle assy to handle on a small shaper.

My Delta came with a 1 1/4 spindle. I replaced it with a 3/4".

Ed

[Chuck Saunders]

Bigger is better, not cheap, but the rigidity is what counts. Larger cutters (diameter or height) need the rigidity. The larger cutters also benefit from horsepower. If you are going to move up from a router, I would make the move worth while. I would run anything on 220 that will run on 220, fewer amps means smaller wire. When I look at shaper cutters I feel like they ought to give me the shaper for free.

[Jeff Duncan]

1-1/4" spindles are the way to go, but if your spending $500 that would barely cover the cost of the spindle, never mind the rest of the machine. 1" spindles are not really as useful as the most common cutters available are 3/4" or 1-1/4". You can use bushings to make them work, IMO though not worth the bother.
Probably more important is the use of a powerfeeder. Without one you'll not realize much of the benefit of the shaper. Unfortunately this too is out of your budget range.
What are you planning on doing with the shaper that you can't do with your router table? The reason I ask is b/c you may be better off upgrading your router table than buying an underpowered shaper without a powerfeed that may not be all you expected. If you give us a little insight on the type of work you want to use it for we may be able to make some other recommendations.
good luck,
JeffD

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi George, as others have stated, rigidity in the spindle, and enough power to use a large cutter are the two most important characteristics of the shaper.

After that you can get into number of speeds, sliding table, tilting spindles, power feeders, table size etc.

For home use I have a 3 HP machine with 3/4", and 1 1/4" spindles as well as a never used 1/2" spindle.

I also have a Hammer 1/2 HP power feeder mounted on it.

For producing moldings, edge treatments and panel raising in solid wood, I use a cutterhead with replaceable HSS knives from CMT. The knives are aproximately $20 per pair and produce a superior finish in solid woods.

I also have some carbide cutters for biscuit slotting, rebating, and panel raising in composite materials.

The most common cutter bores are 1 1/4", 3/4" and 30mm.

Good dust collection is necessary, both for your health, as well as the quality of cut, and cutter lifespan.

I'm sure that you'll be very pleased with your shaper, however I wouldn't go smaller than 3 HP, and many cutters are the price you've set for the machine.

Regards, Rod.

[Jim Becker]

George, some good advise here already...and I'll also state that your budget is likely unrealistic for the machine unless you find a nice pre-owned machined. IMHO, going with less than a 3hp machine for this purpose is counter-productive as you'll really not be adding any more capability from your router table, in general, and adding a lot of cost for the tooling.

[Steven Wilson]

I am willing to bite the bullet and get one as all I have for shaping now is a router table and it is tedious and time consuming.
A shaper is just as tedious and time consuming to setup as a router table. You should look at upgrading your router table. You can make some nice upgrades to a router table with $500. Are you using a good lift? Does it provide fine adjustment for lift? Do you have a substantial router? I have a shaper (as a part of my combination machine) but find that the router table is more useful for the profiles I use most often. I generally use the shaper for tennon's, rabbet's, and more milling type operations.

[David DeCristoforo]

...You should look at upgrading your router table. You can make some nice upgrades to a router table with $500...

This is probably the best advice considering your budget of 4-5 hundred dollars. You are going to have to get very lucky to even find a used machine in that price range that will be "stronger" than your RT

YM

[George Sanders]

Looks like I need to triple my budget!:eek: I have been to several sales that had a shaper and most went for far below what they were worth because they were three phase. The homeowner quality Craftsmans went for more than what they should have. Go figure.:rolleyes:
I guess I'm looking for an industrial machine. I am looking into tearing down a couple of corn cribs and would like to turn out some flooring.

[Karl Brogger]

I figured I had almost $7k into the first shaper I purchased. Between the cost of the machine, cope clamp, cutters, and a feeder it added up much faster then I wanted it to.


When I look at shaper cutters I feel like they ought to give me the shaper for free.

Yeah, no kidding. Some of the insert tooling heads are rediculous. $800 just for a stick + rail cutters. If you can swallow the cost it is definetily worth it. That idea worked for Gillette. Give you the handle for free, charge you like crazy for the razors.

This is one of the best investments next to a stock feeder you can make for a shaper. It keeps your hands away from the cutters, and it is really fast. $650 well spent.
http://www.relcuttools.com/copecrafter1.jpg

[Peter Quinn]

George, you need to multiply your budget by 10X. If you can get a good used 3HP shaper for under $700 your doing good, and for flooring a power feeder is not really optional, so add at least $500-$1000 there. And dust collection is not really optional either, so make sure you can provide 600-750CFM to extract chips and maintain cut quality. Then you will eventually want some cutters to spin on that puppy, and thats where it gets thick quick.

If you are going to do things like cabinet doors, flooring, mostly small edge shaping operations than 3/4" spindle is frankly plenty and the bigger spindle is just wasting your money. If you forsee thicker moldings with one pass on a molding head, lots of raised panels, full sized doors etc. than a 5HP 1 1/4" spindle machine might be for you. 3/4" cutters are a fair amount cheaper and fine if you are non industrial in nature.

[Steven Wilson]

I guess I'm looking for an industrial machine. I am looking into tearing down a couple of corn cribs and would like to turn out some flooring.

Now that we know what you want to do then you'll want to look for a 3HP or better shaper with a powerfeeder. You'll probably want a 1 1/4" or 30mm spindle. If you're only interested in making the grooves for flooring then that will keep your tooling costs down. You might want to look into a cutterhead with replaceable inserts (Felder has some nice ones that go on sale once a year). Besides the shaper you'll need a good planer and since you're processing used material you'll need to make sure you remove imbeded grit and metal. A planer with easily replaceable knives (like a Tersa cutterhead) would be useful; skip plane with some old knives, final planing with fresh blades. And as mentioned in another post you will need good chip collection. Even if you find a shaper for $500 you're still looking at a $2K budget. If you find a 3phase 3HP machine you could always add a VFD for fairly cheap.

[Jeff Duncan]

Well I think the basics are just about covered now, I just have one more FYI piece of advice I'll throw in. You mentioned wanting to do flooring and something you may or may not realize is that you need specialty cutters to mill flooring. A typical tongue and groove set is not the correct
way to do flooring. Of course I say that bearing in mind that in reality you don't really even have to have flooring interlocked if you choose not to. But the correct set of cutters, which leave a bit of play between boards allowing you to easily fit them together, will likely use up most of your budget. And of course you'll need a coping sled if you want to do the end cuts. And if your really going to do it right you'll want yet another cutter to do the relief grooves on the bottom of the flooring.
All this to say it's usually cheaper to buy flooring from a local lumberyard then to try and make small quantities yourself. I say this as the owner of 3 shapers, 2 powerfeeders and a cutter or two. When it was time to put a new hardwood floor in my kitchen, I just bought it from the guys I buy my lumber from.
Just something to think about before you make the leap.
good luck,
JeffD

[Brad Shipton]

I have just finished making about 600bdft of flooring. Couple of notes. 20hr labor for 300bdft from 4/4 rough to ready to install. Lots of steps to complete. Thicknessing, edge jointing, ripping, relief cuts (optional according to many), tongue pass, groove pass, squaring and end matching (again, many points raised by some to suggest this optional). My flooring looks exactly like Mirage, except it is 5" wide and many pieces are 9ft long. The chip quantity to prep 300bdft was 5 - 45gal containers, DC is absolutely necessary. Power feeder will set you back between $500 to $1000 depending upon the hp, but you must have one to make moulding or flooring stock. Without it your end product will look homemade because widths will vary and profiles may not fit everywhere. The replacable insert heads are great, I have one from Weinig, but it cost $850 with all the knives. LRH/Amana both make a cheaper braized 3/4" verison, but they still costs around $500 new. I sold off my used 1ph 3hp 3/4" spindle shaper for $700 and repaced with a heavier 1 1/4" Felder saw shaper.

Brad

[Peter Quinn]

I used to work in a flooring mill, typical week one five man crew produced about 125,000LF of perfect quarter sawn WO that sold for less than I could make it at home with my shaper just buying the wood and paying for power on the tools. If you hit one nail in recycled lumber you kill a very expensive cutter stack, so a metal detector is a good call.

If your making flooring on a shaper you dont need to joint the edges if you offset the fence, a good glue line rip will do, you can even make a sled to use a table saw as a straight line. You don't even need to cut to precise width if you mold the second edge off a back fence setup. Are you familiar with a back fence setup? Works great for production runs with slightly varying widths of input material to produce exact width output.

I still believe you don't need either a 5HP motor or a 1 1/4" spindle to produce flooring as you are not taking a very big cut (3/8"-7/16"?). If you are attempting to produce relief cuts on the bottoms with molding knives you might want a 7.5HP shaper for a molding head that big or a small dedicated molder/planer setup. Molding the relief cuts would be the worst part of the shaping process in any event.

[Roy Fleming]

I think that all should remember that an old iron 1 hp shaper is probably at least as powerful as an newly defined 3hp shaper. Changes in hp calculations as well as "developed" hp are not a meaningful comparison.

[Brad Shipton]

Peter, learned what you have said about the cost/effort the hard way. Ahh, live and learn. There is the pride factor and the joy of learning. Glue line rip is not an option for me. My suppler (a wholesaler) would have to ship the stock back and forth and the waste factor would have been quite high. Anyway, to the question. My first batch I edge jointed, and the 9 - 12' lengths were quite the problem with my jointer (had problems maintaining straightness at the tails). The last batch I ripped one edge with my new slider and the second edge was done with the fence along with the PF. I did not clean up either edges with a back fence before T&G passes so the saw marks were still there. I assume by back fence you mean a secondary fence at the opposite side as the cutter to keep the stock straight. While installing I found I had some minor gaps up to 1/32" or slightly greater. At 5" wide the flooring flexes very very little when installing. I have several more batches of stock to make so I wondering if I should change any steps to improve. I know I can fill the small gaps after sanding, but I think I can do better.

Thanks
Brad

[Karl Brogger]

You don't even need to cut to precise width if you mold the second edge off a back fence setup. Are you familiar with a back fence setup?

I'm not familiar with this term. Is that where you would have the stock being pushed away from the cutters against a fence? That would be my recommendation.

You don't have to do the relief cut in one pass. I made the trim pack for my brother's house, (I'll never do that again), with a 2 1/2" flat cutter we made two passes on the base trim to get the width we wanted. The reason I didn't get a wider cutter was that I didn't want to have two, one for the casing and another for the base. I didn't think I would use it enough to justify the cost.

[Peter Quinn]

Yeah Karl, When I say back fence I'm talking about a rigid board clamped to the front of the shaper table the exact distance away from the cutter arc at top dead center that you want the finished width of the stock to be. The board acts as the bearing surface and the power feed is angled to push against this board, not against the standard fence, which is typically set back a bit so it doesn't get in the way but still collects chips and surrounds the cutter for safety.

Brad, if you can make both sides of the board parallel thats all it takes. You can do it on a slider, and I recently saw a guy on U-tube had an awesome long miter slot sled to straight line 14' with a standard cabinet saw. Rip one edge straight, use the fence to rip the other parallel. I'd probably plane to thickness then straight line the stock.

Rip your stock at least 1/8" over your finished width including the tongue. You run the groove through the shaper on the first pass with the outfeed fence set flush with the deepest cutting circle of the knives and the infeed fence set back 1/16" so you are jointing and molding that edge in one pass. Switch to groove cutters if you have only one shaper, then clamp a square board to the table the distance away from the cutters you want your finished width to be. This board needs to be thick enough to be rigid but thin enough to accommodate the power feed, typically 6/4 oak or maple works well. Sand and wax the edge that will face the cutter so it is smooth.

I set the distance of the back fence roughly with a metal ruler then tune it in with test pieces by loosening the clamp on one end slightly and taping with a dead blow to make adjustments, check everything with calipers.

As far as gaps at installation, do your cutters put a back bevel between the finished face and the tongue/and or groove? There should be a narrow point of contact when tongue and groove are put together that is forced tightly together when nailed/stapled with a flooring hammer, and there should be a gap between the bottom tongue shoulder and groove shoulder that allows the faces to come together tightly. I'm not an installer but I've seen guys screw a 2x4 to the subfloor a few courses away from the board they were working to give a push with a pry bar when boards needed a little gentle persuasion. Just need enough room to get that nailer in there. A helper to push the pry bar helps.

[Brad Shipton]

Peter, I had not thought of using a 2x4. I too ended up making a jig to straight line the boards. My slider is only 80" and I really had a problem cutting the straight pieces down. I had some difficulty maintaining precise widths for the end 6-12" as the PF ejects the boards so I might use the straight line jig for both sides next time. The Weinig head I use offers different back bevel specs for the insert knives. I went with a 20thou back set (if memory serves correctly). Thanks for the milling tips. I will definetly try them. Helper, funny guy:)

Brad