Thread: Base moulding

Originally Posted by calcomp

Hi

I am wondering what tools are required to make the attached profile. I have a router. Would that be enough to make that? Any suggestions on tools and combination of bits to complete that profile would be appreciated. Thank you.

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Hi
Welcome to the forums

To answer your question we need to know
1. the dimensions of that baseboard profile, including the height, and radius of each section of the profile.
2. whether you are attempting to exactly match an existing piece of molding or whether you can replace all the baseboard molding in one room with a close, rather than an exact match.

I'm sure there's a 3rd and 4th question, but that should get us started

Originally Posted by calcomp

I am wondering what tools are required to make the attached profile.

Mouldings like that are made on large, multi-head moulders

I have a router. Would that be enough to make that?

Short answer: no.
Longer answer: if you have a router table, power feed, balls of steel and are willing to purchase at least 4 router bits (at least one of which will likely have to be custom made or modified), maybe. But you really shouldn't.

I'm not generally in the business of being so negative, but there are some things that simply should not be attempted.

How much of it do you need?
If it's only a foot or so, and you are really keen, you could file a profile blade, harden and sharpen, rough out the shape and use the blade like a profile plane or scraper.
A lot of work...

There is another alternative, if the actual moulded section is available in that profile or a very close match and is overall the moulded width all you need then is a square dressed flat board and the smaller section butted down onto the top of the wider board.
Many moons and decades ago, I had to match the moulded section on a mantle over a fire place, the whole house was heritage listed so I made a template out of a piece of tin and just ran it through the table saw by incrementally adjusting the fence and blade height then sanded. It was so close when finished even the architect couldn't pick the old and new after it had been painted. There was only about 4.5m of it so if you have a lot to do it would take time and patience.

The picture shows a profile that looks to me like it has been cut with a single bit. There are/were router bits that cut profiles very similar if not identical to that. You'd need a gutsy router and a sensible table setup to profile a baseboard 12 feet long!

However, the router bits I'm thinking of cut a profile about an inch deep (from top to bottom), and I note the OP is in a part of the world where there are some very old houses, some of which have baseboards over 12 inches high, and the profiled section can be as much as 3 inches or more wide. In that case you may be looking at something much too big for any single router bit - you need to find someone with a spindle moulder, the right bits, and the skills to use them. You can make a match the way rwbuild suggests, it's quite feasible for a short piece, but I'd hesitate to tackle a room-full's worth unless you have a lot of time & patience.

There are other alternatives, one would be to look for a local joinery that does custom mouldings, grit your teeth & pay what it costs, which may be not too much if they happen to have matching knives already, & are set up for short runs. That way, you'll get exactly what you need, & you'll still have all your fingers, which helps when you come to install them.

Another is to look for a demolition yard that has some matching mouldings...

Cheers,

Ian, I'm thinking that the profile shown was cut with a shaper cutter.
Given that the US is yet to adopt metric dimensions, it's possible that the profile is still a stock item somewhere in New Jersey.

However, the OP doesn't appear to have returned to the forum, it's possible that we are just buffing our gums.

Originally Posted by calcomp I am wondering what tools are required to make the attached profile.


Mouldings like that are made on large, multi-head moulders...

Originally Posted by elanjacobs

Mouldings like that are made on large, multi-head moulders

...I have a router. Would that be enough to make that?...

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: if you have a router table, power feed, balls of steel and are willing to purchase at least 4 router bits (at least one of which will likely have to be custom made or modified), maybe. But you really shouldn't.

I'm not generally in the business of being so negative, but there are some things that simply should not be attempted.

Reluctantly, I agree with Elan.

My house was built in the 1880's and has baltic pine skirting boards and picture rails, a little larger and more elaborate than yours. In the 1970's part of the house was "modernised" and those period features were removed and replaced with bland modern profiles. When I bought the property I decided to go back to the original.

First, I documented the profile of the moldings very carefully, and then matched sections of the profiles against available router cutters...... I found that I would need at least seven or eight router bits and would then only get the profile "approximately right". The cost of the bits was high.

Then someone suggested that a spindle molder was more appropriate than a router. I might be able to get a local joiner to make the SM blades and to run the skirtings. (I needed almost 200 linear feet.)

The first joinery I approached was Kemp & Denning in Moonah, Tasmania. They looked at my cut-out of the profile, noted that "it looks like one of ours", and then walked over and took a set of spindle molder cutters from a nail in the wall; they matched perfectly. Incredibly, that firm had supplied the original skirtings 100+ years ago and they still had the blades. They supplied the baltic pine skirtings perfectly cut for less than the retail arm of the same firm would sell me the timber. The skirting has now mellowed in perfectly with the 140 year old original.

Sadly, that firm closed early this year after 150 years; a victim of large chains and absence of a succcession plan.

Thank you everyone for the reply. Sorry for the late reply. I can easily get the moulding custom made but I thought it would be fun to make them myself. I was also thinking of any future mouldings I can make myself as a hobby. From reading everyone replies it would take more than a router. I would dont mind investing in multi head moulder, multiple router bits and/or spindle moulder as mentioned without spending more than $5,000. Would it be possible to achieve with that budget investment?

I can recall making a profile similar to this on a multi head moulder after using profile cutter to make the cutters you should be able to replicate close enough with a router or as someone said it depends on how much you need.

You can pretty much do with a router that you can do with a spindle Moulder. Spindle moulder are fast, accurate and With repetition work they are wonderful. But looking at the profile you have.

Say you had trouble getting wide boards for the run you need to do. Simply look at it two or 3 sections Over the length the top section as one moulding at the bottom piece as another.

As to the exact profile in Aust you can simply trace the shape you require and a router blade manufacturers will make 1 or 2 for you...I know this because I have done it.

You seriously need to look at it and say simply how can I make it Not so many years ago I made a moulding for the front door of a Victorian home. Which is nominally 90 x 50 x 2400. And it is totally moulded so I traced the shape onto a piece of paper sat down with a carbitool catalogue and worked out what I needed. My trick was to buy cutters without bearings and use stock that was 200 x 50. And a very basic router fence with the router inverted. I then worked from the center outwards with various cutters to achieve the complex shape I needed.

So what custom a cutter blade in a spindle Moulder could do in a couple of passes I did in maybe 30 pr 40 passes and maybe 4 different router blades. The difference in finish compared to a spindle moulder is zero but the time Taken is maybe 10 minutes for a spindle Moulder as opposed to 2-3 hrs on my router.

So look at it as if that is the shape and how can I achieve it.. The mouldings even for 4 panel Victorian doors. There are router cutters that are very close to the original or you get them made. However when you look at the moulding they are very hard to router even with a router table etc. So I cut them into lengths required...roughly 800 long. then made an mdf piece Which simply ran along a router fence.
I simply screwed the pieces to be routed to an mdf fence and then routered them.Screws were on the back surface of the moulding so they were never seen. It was very accurate fast and simple to achieve. I’m a huge fan of spindle moulders but I get it many are either scared of them or a little daunted but getting custom cutters made. But don’t be scared to simply have a go. As many will tell you long before power tools moulding were done by hand. Be blowed if I would want to make skirting boards 3 and 4 meters long by hand.
Steven

Originally Posted by stevenjd

As many will tell you long before power tools moulding were done by hand. Be blowed if I would want to make skirting boards 3 and 4 meters long by hand.

want to try a whole house full of hand planed mouldings?
say 500+ lineal metres if you include all the other architraves

Hi Ian, a carpenter friend told me in Holland it was customary to leave mouldings and the moulding hand hands were left
in the roof space of homes they were made for. I have no idea how many old homes he worked on but he did say when asked to do traditional work he would look in the roof space to look for mouldings and hand planes.
Steven

Originally Posted by calcomp

Thank you everyone for the reply. Sorry for the late reply. I can easily get the moulding custom made but I thought it would be fun to make them myself. I was also thinking of any future mouldings I can make myself as a hobby. From reading everyone replies it would take more than a router. I would dont mind investing in multi head moulder, multiple router bits and/or spindle moulder as mentioned without spending more than $5,000. Would it be possible to achieve with that budget investment?

A multi head moulder is absolutely out of the question; you'd need a 50k budget at least.

If you're happy to spend the money, you could investigate having router bits made up, but it would have to be done in a router table.

Originally Posted by elanjacobs

If you're happy to spend the money, you could investigate having router bits made up, but it would have to be done in a router table.

Interestingly enough, back in another life in another time (i.e. about a year ago at the Timber and Working with Wood show), I spoke to a chap from Carbitool about this very topic, because I was thinking about having a router bit made up to match some moulding. Whilst I haven't yet done it, the comment made to me was something along the lines of the fact they made the designs in a computer, and then fabricated the bit. He indicated a "reasonable" size bit would only be around $200 to design, create and send out.

I'd wager that the bit you need to do this moulding will be maybe 2 or 3 separate bits, so that *might* give you an approximate ballpark budget to consider.

I'd also agree with Elan, you'd want a pretty good and accurate router table to be doing this on - good fence (e.g. Incra or something highly accurate).