I needed to make some crown moulding for my entertainment center project and wanted to use the same wood I'm using for the entertainment center (cherry). I got the moulding head cutter from Grizzly and the profile, . I had a chance to try them out today. Several observations:
- Fit and finish of both the cutterhead and the moulding head are good.
- There are serrations on both the cutters and the head to assure that the knives stay in the cutter head
- The cuts I got from doing about 25 feet worth of cutting were very good. I'm pleased.
- Aligning the knives is very easy, using a flat bench allows easy alignment during assembly.
- Standing to the side while feeding is a definite requirement, while I did not have any instances of kick-back, there is no doubt in my mind that kickback from this would be particularly nasty.
This cutter definitely has a pucker factor of about 8.5+ I took a great deal of time to assure that the knives were secure, and that the cutter head was secure before turning on the shaper. The sound alone is enough to make one think twice before putting wood to cutter. The thing just hums with power. Before cutting, I set up the feather boards and made a couple of dry run-throughs before applying power. I took the approach of using only wood that was wide enough to extend above the shaper fence; I'll cut the molding free later. For several boards, I made two moldings per board, one on top, one on the bottom. I would not want to use wood that just barely fit above the cutter unless I had a power feeder. By using extra wide wood, I was able to keep my hands clear should something have gone awry. I did have a couple of tense moments when a piece did not want to feed onto the outfeed board of the fence. Moving the board outward slightly allowed the board to feed, but resulted in a definite divot in the workpiece as the cutterhead re-engaged. Given the siutuation, this seemed to be the least dangerous method of correcting the situation.
Bottom line, this is probably not what one would use for a production situation. But for limited runs of moulding with a relatively cheap cost for different profiles, this seems to work very well. I'm a happy camper.
The entertainment center design is from Woodsmith #149: Instead of shelves in the lower cabinets, I've made drawers instead; they will be used to store games, tapes, DVD's etc.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety Army General Richard Cody +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+