Making Moulding With a Shaper

[.45Cole]

What do you guys think of a shaper for crown moulding? I can get an older delta for cheap, but they are usually less than 1hp. I assume that it would take ~3hp to run a 3 knife head cut a 2-3" moulding. What do you guys think?

I think that running moulding on a shaper would be hard, but a dedicated moulder is pretty pricey.

[JWT]

I would look at a good table mounted router as a minimum (mine is 3hp). A 1hp shaper seems very underpowered and will require multiple light passes at a minimum. What type of wood are you planning to use? Poplar vs Oak would make a difference in your power requirements. How much molding would you be making (furniture accent or full room)?

[Wayne Smith]

For one project I would buy the molding or have a shop cut it if I had the wood. If I had an ongoing use for the molding cutter/shaper cutter I would buy a quality machine. Most molding gets painted so the quality of the wood grain is meaningless. If you have a good table saw you can get cutter knives that mount on that arbor. Not recommended for ongoing work, but may be adequate for a one off job. All of these machines have safety requirements Make sure you know what you are doing and practice, practice, and practice before you make your first cut.

[BD]

I've used site made crown run on a shaper many times in some pretty high end projects. Never seen a 1 hp shaper so I wouldn't know how that would work, but in general, as the crown gets larger, you start to break it up into parts that stack, milling a smaller profile and adding them up to achieve the finished moulding. (Less HP =more knives, more time).

[shooter93]

A one hp shaper is better than a 3 hp router to me. Routers are all rpm's and a shaper has torque. I have both and used both to make moldings....I do this kind of work for a living.....a good router table set up is quite expensive also and my shaper is usually the right tool. You can make multiple smaller cuts with a shaper the same as a router. Both have their uses which is why I have both but for me a shaper is a better tool for moldings. The router table set up I'll get next is approaching 1500 bucks with everything....as much as a shaper. Some of the molding machines aren't to bad in price either especially if you're going to run a bunch of it. Look at Grizzly or William and Hussey.

[.45Cole]

The mouldings would be a hobby, probably poplar or something similar. My plan was a shaper until I saw my buddie's father's W&H moulder that did all the mouldings for an entire shop. The two griz shapers sat in dust. Woodmasters have interchangable heads, drum sander, planer, and moulder. They don't seem to be popular with pro shops, but for an amateur it seems like a good fit, 3 for 1.

I just wanted to ask someone who knows what the right tool would be. Sounds like a shaper less than 1 HP is out!

[Wayne Smith]

Basically you are questioning the difference between a dedicated machine (Woodmaster) vs. a more general use machine (shaper). Both are valuable but you are essentially comparing apples and oranges. I would guess the Woodmaster is about the lightest duty specialty moulding cutter out there.

I would suggest you need to decide if you want an orange or an apple.

[bedbugbilly]

There are many things you need to consider. I had a custom woodworking/millwork shop. My shaper was a 1 1/4" spindle which I ran with a 5 HP single phase motor. I would use it for cutting raised panels and making custom mouldings utilizing a single cutter molding head. Actually, the moulding head was an old Craftsman single knife molding cutter - that was intended for table saw/radial arm saw - that I modified.

If you are talking 2" to 3" "crown moulding, you are talking making a cut on the full face of the work piece and the bevel cuts on the reverse side. For the face side, you are going to have to run the material with the width standing upright. This will require a very sturdy method of holding the workpiece solid to feed through the cutter. You shaper will need to be secure. My shaper was an old converted belt driven machine - table was about 24" X 40" - heavy cast iron with a heavy cast iron base. The machine weighted around 900 pounds or so and even then, I had it securely bolted to the cement floor of my shop which I had reinforced just for the purpose. If you hand feed, it needs to be a consistent feed - better yet - a power feed that feeds the workpiece into the cutter. If you stop your feed partway, especially with HSS knives, you can easily get a burn mark not he workpiece depending on the species you are working with. White oak and cherry are two that are very prone to it. You will also have to think about the end of the cut on the workplace as unless you have a very sturdy jig holding the workpiece in one place tightly, you'll likely end up with "end snipe".

All of my crown (I used to run up to 6" crown), casing, base, chair rail, cove, etc. I ran on a moulding machine that was made specifically for that purpose. The cutting head was horizontal - like a planer - and it had power feed with a very well supported indeed and outfeed table. If I remember correctly (it's been a number of years) I could adjust the feed rate from 33 cuts per inch to 66 cuts per inch.

It's not that you can't make moulding with a shaper or a table mounted router . . and they have come a low way with the offerings with cutters, etc. For short runs a person can probably get by if they take their time and think out what they are doing. Or, built up moulding can be made by utilizing different smaller pieces of moulding. In the end though . . . the machine must match the job. It does no good to use a hand shovel where a bull dozer is needed. It can be hard on the equipment you're trying to use as well ad be a safety issue to your fingers, hands, eyes and general body parts when things go "awry". In the end, you also have to weigh all of those things as well as your initial investment in tooling, machines, etc. as opposed to just purchasing the moulding you need. Just some thoughts on it all . . .

And as far as the Woodmaster machines go . . . they do work but they are also very light. They use a single knife cutter head and rubber feed rolls. They have a cast iron table under the cutter head but stamped steel indeed and outside tables. Moulding can certainly be made with them but you will have to make a clamp on plywood table with guides to feed the stock into and out of the machine. A crown moulding will require two separate cuts. The back cut and the face cut - each requiring their own knife made specifically for that size of crown. The same for base and casing - a back cut and a face cut - two different cutters. I looked at a used one once to possibly add as a "back up". It had a 5hp single phase motor. The guy had used it for about a year and a half and it showed a lot of wear. When he turned it on, I could tell right away that the moulding head was not balanced just by the machine vibration. In questioning him, he admitted he had tried to sharpen the cutters and as a result, the head was out of balance. The rubber feed rolls were pretty worn and chewed up. He switched out the moulding head with the planer head and as a planer, it worked fairly well but I didn't need a planer. I ended up walking away from the machine as I didn't feel that even with a rebuild, it would hold up to what my needs were.

I think Wayne summed it up pretty well . . . apples to oranges . . . and possibly apples to oranges when grapes are needed?

[lancem]

I've had a woodmaster for probably going on 30 years now and have done about everything the machine is capable of doing at one time or another. Mostly now I just use it as a planer. If I were going to set up to do what you want to do from scratch I would probably go with a larger shaper and a power feed.

[shooter93]

I also have a Woodmaster. I bought it because at the time it was about the only wider Planer that had a spiral head option that wasn't a huge cost. My Jointer is also spiral head and once you use them you will never go back. I don't change the Woodmaster over to sand or do moldings. It's been a good machine but I'm looking at a Powermatic set up now that they are priced more reasonable. I like dedicated machines but I do high end work for a living so it's different for me. I don't run large runs of moldings just what I need for a project so the shaper works fine for me and even 3 hp is enough for raised panels etc. If you're running large runs like Billy then you want a REAL molder. I'm a true custom shop so it's different for me. It's all going to depend on how much you run and also the profile size. I can buy most any molding I want in any wood I want so for the large moldings I generally buy them. Give a lot of thought to what exactly you want to do and decide from there. It's hard to give advice because we all have different needs.

[.45Cole]

Really I have time and an interest. I have no need to try to make a living at mouldings, just tinkering. I'm renting an older house and it has beautiful door casings and interesting base mouldings. I'm not far from buying a house and would like to play around. A W&H is out of the budget, but a lower HP shaper or even a Woodmaster fits well. Winters around here get pretty boring hanging around inside.

[Wayne Smith]

Really I have time and an interest. I have no need to try to make a living at mouldings, just tinkering. I'm renting an older house and it has beautiful door casings and interesting base mouldings. I'm not far from buying a house and would like to play around. A W&H is out of the budget, but a lower HP shaper or even a Woodmaster fits well. Winters around here get pretty boring hanging around inside.

In that case investigate moulding hand planes! Use soft wood - you will be amazed at how much you can get done that way - and there was a day when it was all done that way. The only other tools you would need is a miter saw and a good bench and vice. And lots of time, but you already claimed that.