Beaded faceframe tooling question (grinding shaper cutter)

[Shannon Brantley]

I've got a cabinet shop, been in the business for almost 10 years and suddenly I've got 2 potential jobs that want beaded face frames. One has 94 doors and drawer fronts. So I bought (luckily found one) a new, discontinued, Kreg PRS1200 system. It comes with router bits for the bead. I'd like to use my shaper. I bought a bead cutter but the flat part above the bead is much larger than the router bit. Router bit is 1/16, shaper is 5/32. I think it would all function, depending on setup, but I really don't want that huge gap next to the bead. I've looked for a shaper cutter with a similar profile to the bit, but they all seem to be like the cutter I have.

Now the question. Is it a horrible idea to grind the shaper cutter to what I need? I called a friend at an industrial machine shop in town and he said they could do it by hand or send it off to an expensive CNC grinder. I feel like I could do it by hand if I went that route. I've got white aluminum oxide and CBN grinding wheels. Ballance is what's scaring me. The cutter wasn't very expensive so I'm not going to be out much money if it doesn't work out. Am I looking in the right direction? Any ideas?

[Jared Sankovich]

Imho the kreg 1/4" bead is a bit small at .187 with a .62 quirk. The Freeborn 1/4 bead and quirk cutter works well with a kreg notching bit.

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[Warren Lake]

I have corrugated like Jared shows for face frames. Bead is .2500 and put it down .030 lower. Ive used even cheap sears heads (not great) before but you want the very best cut you can get to not have much work after. Ive ground cutters and re shaped ones that were for other things just to save time. Id have one ground by someone set up that does that.

[Richard Coers]

When I bid jobs, I include the price for all tooling I don't have in the shop. So I buy production tooling ready to go. If you decide to modify existing tooling by yourself, make sure that goes into the bid. I can't recommend how you do the modification, I don't know your skill levels, but I wouldn't consider tooling an expense to your shop requiring you to go a cheap route. It's a cost to the customer.

[Mark Wooden]

If you have a shaper, you should have a corrugated head for it; then its no problem at all to have knives ground to whatever specfication you need, up to and including matching a stock cutter profile.
I would not spend the time or money trying to grind a router bit to match; actually, from the amount of bead you're describing, I wouldnt do that much of a run with a router either
Ive done probably thousands of feet of beaded frames of all sizes over the years and have at least 6 sets of knives with various bead sizes and layouts, done the jack mitres with a tablesaw, RAS, SCMS and of course a router with a sliding jig and a 45 degree chamfer bit with the bearing stud ground off. All worked well.
What I'm trying to say is don't limit yourself to what you can get off the shelf, talk to a good woodwork tooling shop and and describe what you need- drawings are best. Initial cost is certainly more than router bits, but that evens out over a few jobs.

EDIT: Im sorry, I mis read what you said, you spoke of grinding a (carbide tipped, I assume) shaper cutter to match a router bit- probably wont work out well; cutter clearance is usually compromised and the quirk tends to burn.

[Shannon Brantley]

Thanks for the replies. Freeborn cutter is on the way. It's exactly what I need. I called myself looking through the catalog but must have looked right over it before.

[Jared Sankovich]

Thanks for the replies. Freeborn cutter is on the way. It's exactly what I need. I called myself looking through the catalog but must have looked right over it before.

One thing to be aware is the width on the 1.5" notching bit is set for the smaller kreg bead. If you use it your minimum single pass notch will be 1.625. (0.312 to 0.318) depth of cut. Meaning you can't have a 1.5" rail, you are limited to a 1.625" rail.

That assumes you went with the 1/4" bead Freeborn cutter.