Affordable planer/moulder

[pineywoods]

I have an 18 inch woodmaster that I use for small runs. It's available with a router mount on the outfeed side, make tounge and groove from rough boards in 2 passes. Just finished running 1700 ft of 4 inch crown moulding, two passes per 12 ft 1x5. Woodmaster has all manner of knives available, but I make my own. The hardened tool steel is available from MCI in 3 ft lengths, quite reasonable.

[Snag]

I was planning on getting the router attachment if I do indeed purchase the woodmaster.  Glad to hear it is working out well for you.  I do intent on doing a descent amount of processing with it, but spread out over a couple years.  This might be a dumb question, but what is the process you perform to make your own knives?

[pineywoods]

Making my own knives-----The first step is to make a template in the exact shape desired. Keep it in a safe place, you'll need it later. I use thin sheet metal. to make the template, cut and filed to shape. Use the template to mark out the shape on a piece of hardened tool steel. (Unless you have access to heat-treating facilities, another story) I use an abrasive cut-off saw to rough out the shape of the cutter. Go slow, cool the metal in water frequently. Too much heat will take the temper out of the metal. Then I go to a standard bench grinder and finish shaping and sharpening freehand. Final sharpening is done using a fine grinding wheel on a special grinder. It uses the template and a guide pin sorta like a pin router guide to get the exact same shape as the template. Mine's home-made, I'll try to get some pictures. Biggest problem I had was finding a source for the steel. I use 1/4 X 1 1/4 available from MCI industrial supply, available in 3 ft lengths.
I've been well pleased with woodmaster..factory support is excellent