Shaper snipe troubleshoot

[Patrick Walsh]

That’s good to know. You can read all kinds of stuff that can make your think this or that. I trust you know what your talking about so I’ll just leave it be. We have 7hp for the cope “overkill” and tow 9hp machines one used for stick the other mostly used for panels lol...

So power shouldn’t be our limiting factor. If I setup the outboard fence I take it I position the pressure feed slightly against the outboard fence?

With good heads and sharp knives, you should not have to climb cut. A power cut has a higher chance of tear out obviously, but it's not as fuzzy. Just cut around any tear out.

There's no decent way to collect that I've found either.

I used to climb cut a lot of stuff, but since getting better shapers and really good heads, I haven't even considered it.

[Joe Calhoon]

With good heads and sharp knives, you should not have to climb cut. A power cut has a higher chance of tear out obviously, but it's not as fuzzy. Just cut around any tear out.

There's no decent way to collect that I've found either.

I used to climb cut a lot of stuff, but since getting better shapers and really good heads, I haven't even considered it.

This is is what I have found also with better tooling and machines.

I think cope first vs last are both acceptable methods depending on your shop, tools and product. Myself I prefer cope first and outboard fence for the sticking. We do a wide range of things and usually small batches so shaving a little time is not a deal breaker for me. True tenoning is usually best done first.

I had to shorten a couple door mulls the other day that had already been profiled. I just coped a wide board on both ends and used the cutoffs for backers. It worked well. I think the horizontal clamp helps.
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[Martin Wasner]

If I setup the outboard fence I take it I position the pressure feed slightly against the outboard fence?

Yep. Whatever your preferred amount is. I've been told I run too much. On a four wheel feeder, difference at the front of the case and the back is about an inch.

I don't even lock the feeder down with an outboard fence as mine hits that regular fence and stops.

One less step when swapping heads.

[Martin Wasner]

I think cope first vs last are both acceptable methods depending on your shop, tools and product. Myself I prefer cope first and outboard fence for the sticking. We do a wide range of things and usually small batches so shaving a little time is not a deal breaker for me. True tenoning is usually best done first.

Bigger parts like pass doors and similar, I don't think there's really an advantage one way or another. I would probably lean towards coping first. And like you said, in smaller runs it probably doesn't matter on time either.

[Bill Orbine]

The other option is to do your copes 1st and run the shorter pieces on a sled that has a longer guide on the fences. The down side with using the sled means change the setup for longer stock using the power feeder. Two things to change going from sled to stock feeder 1) the cutter height and 2) the outfeed fence to the lower point of cutter. Less than a couple minutes down time which is minimal and fairly quick routine. For a sled, I have a 24" pnuematic Weaver jig meaning short pieces 24" or less. No climb cuts and no tearouts cope or stick. The Weaver jig is also used for coping the rails. No outboard fence is used.

[Martin Wasner]

Thinking out loud

-Toggle clamps mounted in a T track so the rail length could be variable.
-Outboard fence.
-Sled narrow as possible, but wide enough so the toggle clamps clear the feeder.

Once you know zero of the sled, it'd be easy to dial in the width with a digital read out on the outboard fence. Just adjust the fence and the feeder. The feeder would be pulling the sled through. Spindle height is a non issue as well with a digital read out or a counter. If I made the sled on the router, I'd know exactly what the thickness is.

I never thought of it that way, thank you Bill

[Jeff Duncan]

Hey Patrick, if/when you swing by my shop I'll show you my cope setup. It's as simple and rudimentary as you can get, but it works! One advantage I like with my setup vs some of the others is I can cope sticks as short as 2-1/2" long for drawer fronts or whatnot. I use the same method for cabinet and passage doors, just use a larger sled. Oh and I use the 8hp T-160 for coping

I very, very, rarely climb cut. I know guys out there either swear by it or against it, but I feel its something good to have in your back pocket. Honestly its something rarely needed in my shop. As mentioned a good set of cutters on a good shaper should cut just fine. A couple tips, for clean sticking.... take off the full profile plus 1/32" - 1/16" of an inch. If you try to just get the profile, (ie rub collar style), the cut quality won't be great. If you have really gnarly wood take off 75 - 85% of the cut in the first pass. Then run the sticks again taking off the rest of the profile and the additional 1/32"+ and usually you'll get good results. If you absolutely can't get a clean cut b/c the woods super difficult again take the full pass, then make a clean up pass using a climb cut just removing a minimum amount of material, say 1/16" depth.

There are some nice setups out there for outfield fences but again mine is rudimentary consisting of a straight edge and clamps. Feeder needs maybe 1/4" - 3/8" of toe in form front to back to provide adequate pressure. Having a bit more probably won't hurt anything, but probably doesn't add anything either.

good luck,
JeffD

[Patrick Walsh]

Jeff,

We do take the 32nd off our cope. And clearly we use a backer board it’s just not a easy swap out as a toggle clamp that allows one to just slide the backer board to the infeed fence whenever you need to clean it up. That seems to me to be our missing link in our setup as we often skip it unles it’s really bad. I mean we do it prior to every new run of a profile and that’s usually good enough to get us through a job but fro time to time someoething gives you a hard time and adjusting that backer board on the fly would be sweet!

We also make our doors to the exact size of the opening accounting for the math that relates to the desired finished flat exposure also taking into account sizing the door down 3/32 for revails.

I would love to stop by the shop but I’m keeping myself crazy busy every free minute working on the T-75 restoration and I’m gonna want your toys and now is a bad time for me to spend

dim

Hey Patrick, if/when you swing by my shop I'll show you my cope setup. It's as simple and rudimentary as you can get, but it works! One advantage I like with my setup vs some of the others is I can cope sticks as short as 2-1/2" long for drawer fronts or whatnot. I use the same method for cabinet and passage doors, just use a larger sled. Oh and I use the 8hp T-160 for coping

I very, very, rarely climb cut. I know guys out there either swear by it or against it, but I feel its something good to have in your back pocket. Honestly its something rarely needed in my shop. As mentioned a good set of cutters on a good shaper should cut just fine. A couple tips, for clean sticking.... take off the full profile plus 1/32" - 1/16" of an inch. If you try to just get the profile, (ie rub collar style), the cut quality won't be great. If you have really gnarly wood take off 75 - 85% of the cut in the first pass. Then run the sticks again taking off the rest of the profile and the additional 1/32"+ and usually you'll get good results. If you absolutely can't get a clean cut b/c the woods super difficult again take the full pass, then make a clean up pass using a climb cut just removing a minimum amount of material, say 1/16" depth.

There are some nice setups out there for outfield fences but again mine is rudimentary consisting of a straight edge and clamps. Feeder needs maybe 1/4" - 3/8" of toe in form front to back to provide adequate pressure. Having a bit more probably won't hurt anything, but probably doesn't add anything either.

good luck,
JeffD

[Joe Calhoon]

Bigger parts like pass doors and similar, I don't think there's really an advantage one way or another. I would probably lean towards coping first. And like you said, in smaller runs it probably doesn't matter on time either.

Martin, yes house doors this is the best way in my shop. We do cabinet doors the same way. Not many cabinets anymore but used to do a lot. short cabinet door parts we use the outboard fence and packing tape the parts together in a train. For short house door and window parts we do the same only sometimes using the joinery to connect the train.
I think in your operation a double head coper would be the ticket if you do not already have one. I know my friend locally that has a cabinet door shop runs lineal on the moulder then uses either multi shapers with left and right heads for this and maybe a double coper. They do a lot of different profiles and have multiple setups and dedicated machines. They have a lot of real estate for dedicated machines. I think profile first is for sure a better production solution.

As a side note the cabinet door shop recently put in a CNC router for sizing doors and putting on the edge profiles. They are real happy with this and say real accurate for inset doors.

[Darcy Warner]

I have enough space now, I am tempted to drag home an old dinosaur greenlee 545 DET, just because I can.

[Martin Wasner]

As a side note the cabinet door shop recently put in a CNC router for sizing doors and putting on the edge profiles. They are real happy with this and say real accurate for inset doors.

We scribe our doors to the opening on inset. It's basically impossible to reliably make a perfect opening, or at least more time consuming than fitting the fronts on the edge sander.

For full overlay where you get cumulative errors, we might try that on the next one. It'd be super easy to setup. I think I'd do it with left and right tooling. Zero chance of blowing out end grain that way.

[Patrick Walsh]

Yeah if we just used math to size our inset doors to the faceframe it would be a mess. I guess it goes to show we really are not that good lol. In all seriousness for cabinetry not furniture chasing perfectly square is a waste of time and not nessisary.

For the most part when doing full overlay I can usually just use math to size my doors. I still lay them out on the carcasses using stacked veneer as spacers as to not take to much when edge sanding but most of the time no need to fuss with anything.

This is rarely the case with inset. I suppose if you were a shop that just made doors like Waltzcraft the machines joe is speaking of would make sense.

The square thing does drive any craftsman nuts but it is what it is. It’s not furniture. When building furniture from rough stock making sure everything is perfectly flat and a uniform thickness couple with mortise and tenon all layed out with a marking gauge things come out square pretty much 100% of the time at least in my experience. With kitchen cabs, built ins, vanities that kind of precision goes right out the window as working with pre dimensioned stock pocket screws so forth and so on just won’t allow for it consistently.

I hate it!

[Joe Calhoon]

I wondered about the inset also. Haven’t done any for quite a while but we always fit every opening with the edge sander with the table angled to give a slight bevel. I will pick his brain about it next time I see him. They are production oriented in a very competitive market. Different world from a craftsman builder. Early on they had a SCM double end with stacked tooling and a SCM Center single end. The Center was a interesting concept of a machine. I was interested in one for house doors but they take a lot of space. The double end I think they used for a contract they had for locker doors that were large order repeats of the same door.

[Larry Edgerton]

For my backer I run it through and then put a piece of cellophane tape on the back and run it through again without changeling height. Gives me just the right amount of slop. I stick with an outboard in long lengths and then cope.

Interesting conversation.........

[J.R. Rutter]

FWIW, we cope first in sets of 3 or 4 rails at a time depending on width, then continuous feed end to end on the sticking. Coping square parts makes it easy to cut multiples in one pass. The cope removes a bit of the backer every pass, and because we have a pneumatic cope clamp, the backer moves up every pass to keep good blowout support. Like Joe, packing tape rails shorter than 6" in groups to run through the sticking cut. For drawer face stiles, we run long strips and crosscut after sticking. Our crosscut saw tends to tear out just enough that I don't trust it for cutting all stiles like this. Besides, by crosscutting first, every cut can have the long strip flipped and/or rotated to keep crown consistent and have best show face.

Back to OP's question about snipe: Make sure that your feeder is angled towards the outfeed of the outboard fence. You can experiment with how much of an angle, and also wheel height above table (how much downward pressure), but there should be a range where you can consistently get zero snipe. The position of the feed wheels along the fence (length of feeder's horizontal arm) can also make a difference in results.