Molder Recommendations

[Victor]

I have to make some custom casings and baseboard moldings in curly maple. Which molding machine should I buy? Woodmaster, RBI or Williams & Hussey? Thanks.

Victor

[beenthere]

Welcome to the forum.
What is the budget?  From past postings (do some searching for them) there are several moulders that have been discussed.

[Victor]

Beenthere,

The budget is $2,000.00. I am interested in the pros and cons of any molder in this price range.

Victor

[low_48]

Do you have a shaper? With a good fence and a power feeder you can run some nice moulding, and have the shaper for making doors. I have owned a William and Hussey, and a Jet moulder/planer. Both worked very well, both made money pretty quickly. If you can find home restoration contractors, or can advertise for making short runs of moulding, you can keep busy. Because setup is quick, running 20' of custom moulding to match old stock is something you can do and mill shops want nothing to do with.

Running curly hard maple will be tough in the low end machines. The cutter head speed is the same as most thickness planers. There is no support around the cutterhead to limit chipout. I think you could get a better finish with the shaper. You could set it up to climb cut if you had a good power feeder.

I don't like the rubber rollers on the infeed side of these machines. If you make multiple passes, and the stock slips a little, you will wear some grooves in the rubber almost instantly. Don't be fooled by the idea that the William and Hussey will let you run curved casing because it has a cantilivered head. You can do the same with the Jet. You could run tighter curved work on the W and H, but most windows are wider than a foot.

As far as I am concerned, all the machines will do the job, shop for price.

[Victor]

low_48,

I have a Delta shaper that works very well. The moldings I need to make have custom profiles and I doubt I would be able to find the appropriate shaper bit. Also some of the moldings are 6" wide.

I was also looking at the Powermatic 15" planer/shaper. Has anyone used this machine for making molding?

Victor

[trim4u2nv]

I  have used all the previous machines.   The machines with a fixed bed have an advantage.      Such as the W&H or old Rockwell and Delta planers.  The bed and feed tables can be fixed and just the cutter head is moved up and down.  My favorite small setup was a W&H without power feed.   I took two tablesaw power feeders and set up like a throughfeed moulder.  Also could adjust the feed speed with gear ratio changes and a VARIAC drive for almost infinite feed adjustments.  This, bear in mind, was using 2 table saw powerfeeders (1 on the infeed plank and 1 on the outfeed plank.)   As long as the wood is moving relative to the cutter you will avoid burn marks.  This setup had a lot more oomph than the standard feed system.   Finally put our last powerfeed W&H in the corner about 5 years ago and bought more full size moulders as prices came down.  Excessive tearout and tailout blowups are your common problems with this type of setup.  Without a real pressure bar and chipbreaker you can have snipe issues also.   The other advantage is setups  are much faster as the square spindle is indexed and typically takes 2 to 4 bolts to lock in the cutter.

[Robert Long]

Victor;
Welcome!
I have a new Williams and Hussey and like it a lot......cuts real smooth for a two knife machine as long as you control the feed rate. As to the curly maple, take small bites, don't try to cut too much off at one time so make several passes, also with the W & H this method will avoid making grooves in the in feed roller.
All the above responses are correct but failed to leave out one important thing......a sharp set of cutting knives.

Good luck with the purchase of whatever machine you choose to buy!

Robert

[saddletramp]

Howdy Victor. I have the wood master 712. Like it so far. The variable feed rate is really nice. I have done a lot of eastern red cedar some walnut and oak with a little of red elm and sycamore and catalpa mixed in. Take light passes in the funny grained woods and you will be fine.

[Victor]

Thanks for all the helpfull posts. With regard to curly maple, has anyone heard of misting the wood with water just before milling to reduce tear-out?

Victor

[srt]

Yes Victor, I remember reading that years ago - I think in Fine Woodworking.

I'm another one in the Williams and Hussey camp.  As a custom woodworker, I pull mine out once or twice a month to make crown for a kitchen, or molding for a door or etc....

The Folks at W&H are nice to deal with also.  The machines hold their value well. 

I bought mine used about 10 years ago.  It had moderate wear on it when I bought it.  Haven't had to replace anything yet.

One thing it is not - a production machine.  I don't mean it's slow, because I don't feel that it is.  However, if we have 3000 lf of baseboard to run, we're better off subbing it out to a guy with a real moulder.  However, for the 36' runs of some moulding for an old house, it's just the ticket.

I plan on building a new house in the next couple years - I'll make all the  moulding on my W&H (after sawing the wood on my WM)

One more thing - W&H says to make the moulding in one pass.  I've discussed this with them, because I feel this is in error.  I'm of the mind that a few light cuts are better.  They're concerned that when you do it my way, you loose the surface the feed roller grips, and the wood could be shot backwards out of the machine, or a knife could break.  Personally, I think that although they have a point about both concerns, its not as much of a reality as their lawyers may be telling them.  I forget which company - maybe Oliver, but anyway one of the old wood working machine companies basically went belly up from being sued for something a real woodworker would have said was the operator's fault - a shame.

There is a variable feed available for the machines.

Hope this helps.

[Victor]

Does anyone recommend the Logosol planer/molder?

Victor

[Justin L]

Don't know if you have the molder yet, but here's some(possibly late) opinions

One problem with any of the machines will be the hook angle of the cutterhead. My guess is that they are in the 15-20 degreee range. For Hardwoods, 5-12 is better. It will scrape the surface instead of lifting the grain when going against it(every curl will be against the grain 1/2 the time). You can get away with the wrong angle sometimes, but it will show on the curly stuff.

The lower the MC of the wood, the more brittle it is, so it will tear out more.

You may be able to get low angle heads for the logosol, but I'm not real familiar with it.

Justin

[Victor]

Justin,

I haven't purchased a molder/planer yet. I ordered the free videos from Woodmaster, RBI, and Logosol and have not received them yet. You make a good point regarding the hook angle of the cutterhead. I am going to make sure I get the angle to be between 5 to 12 degrees. Also, I did an experiment where I misted the curly maple with water just before I planed it and it made a huge difference - virtually no tearout. It does make a mess of the planer though. Thanks.

Victor

[ADAMINMO]

Did you contact Baker or any of the other sponsers to get their information on the moulders they carry? I'm sure they can maybe help you as well.Logosol is a good machine. I know several people who own them.They do a fine job.Baker has a similiar machine to the Logosol.

[beenthere]

AdaminMo
I thought your moulder looked very well built when seeing it in Escanaba, MI last fall. Is there a video of it?

I'll look at your Baker site. Thanks.

[ADAMINMO]

There is a short video on line but we can send you a full length one if you pm me your address.