The title says it all, who here is making their own molding blades? What machine or techniques are you using. Also while investigating sanding molding I've found guys that use a flap sanders and others that are creating reverse profiles of their molding with different materials. How do you sand your molding?
I have always ground all my own knives for use on a spindle moulder mostly with 1/4" slotted collars or block collars. If your knives are ground/sharpened and set up properly it should require not more than a quick rub by hand to obtain a good finish suitable for lacquer finish. Have a look at some mouldings at local hardware to get idea of off the machine finish. With running your own mouldings in small production runs you should be able to obtain equal if not slightly better finish. Hand grinding a balanced, matched pair of knives does take a lot of patients and practice to master but it means you are never confined to 'standard' mouldings. If you take your time into the equation it is much cheaper to purchase of the shelf knives. The main secret to a good finish is all about balance, cutter speed, feed rate and limiting any chatter in timber during feeding. I use auto feed unit on spindle to achieve smooth feed rate and equal pressure clamping. Surface finish will deteriorate with hand fed material, that is unless you are good enough to continuously feed at exactly the same rate. I have never had any experience with using planer/moulder combo which you previously posted about. But from my experience with similar sized thicknesser's I have always found that their finish, although quite acceptable, is not as good as it could be mainly because of size/weight of machine allowing for vibration which translates into slight loss in quality of finish. Also bear in mind that each species of timber has different peculiarities that you have to take into account when machining. As with jointing/planing, thicknessing, always feed in the direction of the grain.
"HotRod" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...
Really? How many did you have to use? 2 or 3 has always been plenty for me.
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