Ordering Custom Shaper Cutters

[Mike Cutler]

To All

I need to order a set of cutters to make the cabinets for our kitchen. It's a really basic design. A T&G with a 3/16" radius on the edge. The material is 7/8" thick and the 1/4" T&G is inset an 1/8" from the back of the cabinet door. I'd also like the T&G to be 3/4" deep. The panels are flat, not raised. The design of the door is Arts and Crafts/ Art Deco, with the overall effect of the cabinet face being a soft "falling water" motif. There are 5 discreet layers from the edge of the cabinet frame, to the panel of the door.

Do you provide a drawing when you have cutters made? A CAD file?or do you fab up what you want? It's seems that a drawing would be pretty easy, as long as I know what info to put on it.
I can also make the stile side, stick profile, but I can't make the rail, cope piece as an example.
I see that Ridge Carbide has an order form that includes a drawing field, which makes sense,but other websites do not.
I have 20 doors to make.
I haven't much experience with inset heads, but maybe it's time.

Any advice, or suggestions would be welcome.

[Brad Shipton]

I have done this a few times. I hope you are aware "custom" = expensive.

The cheapest option would likely be to have someone like Amana make you a set with brazed inserts. That will not be fast nor flexible for future use.

You will need to supply a drawing that shows the stock position, bore dia, CW or CCW, cutter body (if insert style), and of course detailed dimensions of the profile.

If you go with insert blades, those are made by first making a plastic template. That is used as a guide to hog out the profile to the point where they can start sharpening the blade. After that, it is put on a CNC that does the fine grinding. Hard inside corners are not always an option, so sometimes they will ask about adding a small rad where they cannot grind a perfect square corner. One supplier asks what I want to a cut tolerance between the cope and stick. Their typical is 0.003", but they will do what ever you want. Some may not ask that question, so you may need to inquire if you start looking at less expensive suppliers. Cope/stick with zero cut tolerance does not make for easy glue ups, but too much makes for a poor joint. I can post a sample drawing if you want.

I would think about your 3/4" tenon requirement. I don't follow why you would want that.

If you decide to go with an insert style head you should decide on the cutter body you want. There are quite a few options. I expect Rod will chime in and suggest a Euro backer. That adds to your blade cost. For cope/stick tools I like a cutter body that has a nice indexing system. That makes is easy to swap between profiles very quickly. You want to make sure you do not need to adjust your shaper height between cope/stick operations. If you are patient, or have a setup stand, you could go the cheap route and use a simple corrugated back blades. That will be as cheap as you can get and there is an endless number of companies that can grind them. Keep in mind, many have minimums. One cutter body option might be this one from Rangate---> https://rangate.com/products/profile-cutter-set Greg and his team are very good to work with. This tool would give you the option to create others in the future too. There are lots of kitchen cab sets on the market.

For 20doors I would think about this. You could probably order all the doors from someone for the cost of the cutter or close to it. Big shops can grind their own knives, so if you are bent on a specific profile like I have been in the past, they can do that to. There is a cost to the grinding.

Guys like Jack and the other experienced guys can grind their own. I cannot.

[Mark Bolton]

If you are only making 20 doors, and have a corrugated head, I would just have a set of 5/16 corrugated HSS or material of your choice, knives ground. We get ours from Oella Saw and Tool. very affordable. (20$ an inch). Its not really worth having custom brazed or insert tooling made for 20 doors and a profile you will likely park on the shelf after and rarely ever use.

[Mark Bolton]

other experienced guys can grind their own. I cannot.

Honestly unless your in a time crunch and simply have to have them that day you just cant cost effectively grind your own profiles by hand if you account for your time. A pair of 3" HSS knives with a templating charge and shipping are less than a hundred bucks. I cant grind a profile by hand, to the accuracty I'd like, in an hour or less (which is what I would have to do to include the cost of the blank material in the number). Plus allowing for abrasives and so on.

I find it best to find a reasonable close shop that has fast turn around (Im lucky that Oella is one day away from me USPS) so if I order a set this morning they may likely be in the mail box tomorrow afternoon or the following day at most.

Id love to have a profile grinder in the shop but for the cost and floor space (which I dont have) its not going to happen.

[Brad Shipton]

Mark, I seem to recall seeing Jack grind his own. It looked tedious.

[Mark Bolton]

Tedious to say the least. Of course doable, but by the time you add up your time, having different wheels, shaping wheels, and so on, it doesnt add up for me.

I have ground a few sets and call me anal but I just cant honestly see how you ever get two profiles perfectly matched enough to where they do the cutting equally. Its seems no matter how hard you try by eye there is always tiny amounts of discrepancy between the two knoives which means one is doing all the work in that area while the other isnt. I have a friend who opts to just grind a single knife and counterweight the other side of the head (on a woodmaster not a shaper) and it #1 scares the hell out of me, and #2 the cut quality is horrible with the single knife unless you run at ridiculously slow speeds.

Like I say, for the hundred bucks its just easier. Cope and stick is trickier but still doable. We had some problems a long time ago with a short run of cope and stick that we ran corrugated knives and JR here helped with the fit with the input of honing a bit off the back side of one set of knives to tighten up the joint. Not the best setup in the world but for short one time runs it works.

[Mark Bolton]

Do you provide a drawing when you have cutters made? A CAD file?or do you fab up what you want? It's seems that a drawing would be pretty easy, as long as I know what info to put on it.
I can also make the stile side, stick profile, but I can't make the rail, cope piece as an example.

We always ship a .dxf file but anyone can grind you a set of knives from a line drawing, a back of the napkin drawing that you take a photo of with your phone, and so on. You will likely pay a small fee for generation of the dxf or whatever file the company you go with requires. With Oella at least, they will generate their files then email them to you for approval showing all dimensions, grade of material you want, and so on.

If you have cad software or sketchup, shipping them a dimensioned 2D is the easiest.

[Mark Wooden]

I'm unsure as to why you want such a long tongue, generally not necessary; but is the profile you're looking for here?-
http://www.freeborntool.com/BrazedTo...014.pdf#page=2

You can get them from CT Saw & Tool, right here in Stratford, CT. They also do custom profiles as well.

[Mel Fulks]

Yeah ,hand ground are never exact but with GOOD steel you still get a good surface. And unless the knives are "jointed" template guided knife grinders are not exact either. The real problem with hand grinding is management allowing ,even encouraging, changing the profiles to avoid buying more steel. One place I worked had over 500 shaper knives that had been re ground to to where some were were too dangerous to use. And some were ground from steel from different bars.For "slip knives" that's bad.
On my own time I matched them up by BAR not profile. That left 200 knives too short,many made from mis matched steel. I put all 200 trashed knives into a can and put it on the forman's desk. Made sure his boss was present ,too. Told them they were not mine to throw away and they could check them. They immediately said "toss em". Many of knives I kept were mismatched profiles. Only several were true usable pairs. The most important trait for doing shaper work is good work habits. Sadly ,guys who will ruin good knives just because someone says they "need it today" are common.

[Gary Radice]

I recommend calling Woodworkers Toolworks. They make custom shaper profiles all the time and will walk you through exactly what you need to do.

[Mel Fulks]

Another point about grinding by hand. The guys I knew who ran the old square head moulders were masters. Most all of the profiles were made of combinations of single hand ground knives. They kept wooden layout templates for every profile they ran. Every knife they ground by hand looked as good as the template stuff. They knew how to balance them perfectly. It was a job always done by a master and apprentice who would inherit the job. Economy of steel was built in.
And the best ones kept the machines up like old fire engines. They never demanded a new moulder...

[brent stanley]

HSS tooling is what you're after in my opinion. If you don't have one already, get a cutter block that accepts HSS knives, and you can have thousands of different profiles for the cost of just the knives as you already own the head. Get knives ground to the profile you're after, and Bob's your uncle. I will often submit profiles drawn in Sketchup with scales included, or you can draw it on a piece of paper to scale, put a ruler beside it and take a picture to be emailed. The picture technique is only really good if rough approximations are acceptable. Typically the company will send you a CAD diagram of what you're after for approval.

B

[Jeff Duncan]

So as mentioned by others, something like this I'd use corrugated steel assuming you have a head? Fairly reasonable to have a set of cope and stick knives ground. If you don't have the head already may want to consider buying one? Insert knives for Euro style heads are also fairly reasonable, again if you already have the head....if not you may want to consider.....

Lastly there's brazed tooling. I haven't had a custom cutter made in years so no idea how they compare cost wise?

The real reason I chimed in though is b/c of your description of the profile. It sounds like your doing a round-over without the typical Ogee style step? If so I wonder how clean your copes are going to come out? Your going to have a rail that extends out to a razor thin edge which may be tricky if you have a smaller light duty shaper. Not saying it won't work, just thinking out loud whether that could become problematic?

good luck,
JeffD

[Bill Adamsen]

Mike: I have CT Tool grind knives for the Schmidt corrugated heads. They are very reasonably priced and typically quick turnaround. I provide profiles drawn in Adobe Illustrator but I'm sure virtually any CAD program would work. I have not used the head for cope and stick but see no reason why it wouldn't work for the right profiles. Obviously the corrugated knives have limitations as Jeff has pointed out.

Less flexible but perhaps better suited, my Garniga head provides a great cut with deep tenons and stock knives are available from Rangate. I suspect you could have custom knives cut for that as well.

[Mike Cutler]

Apologies for not responding sooner folks. I've been on a brutal night shift schedule.

Thank you for all of the feedback. I have contacted a few of the sources provided and given them basic drawings. We'll see where it goes from here.

One question asked was what I wanted such a deep tongue, 3/4"?The reason is two fold.
Firstly,I will be pinning the rails into the styles with a Greene and Greene type of element and want the pins to actually provide some mechanical advantage. They will hide a screw that mechanically connects the two pieces.
Secondly, I have repaired many cabinet doors through the years for friends and family, and personally do not believe that a 3/8" deep tongue is sufficient. At least not where I live. When the joints fail, it seems to always fail in the joint at the top corner, closest to the hinge.