Thread: HELP !! I need someone to make me some door mouldings

I won't be able to assist you being in W.A.

Is it off say a kitchen cupboard door, a door on a piece of furniture, or a house sized door that you walk thru?

They are a bow head molding and not that hard to do but not dead easy either.

It would be handy if you knew what sort of timber they are made from.. looks like a softwood maybe an oak of some type.

It depends if the person who makes them has the right profile cutter... to be able to duplicate the molding you already have there.

Those type of bow head door moldings, are the most dangerous to make.... in terms of risks to the makers fingers, more fingers have disappeared in the cabinet trade to bow head door panels on spindle molders than most other ways combined.

It could also possibly be done with a router cutter - depending on the size of the molding.

Going by the photo - and the cutlery on the counter...its a cupboard door from a size perspective I imagine.

Normally when a commercial wood work shop sets up to machine moldings, the set up time...takes a while - so once set up, you run as many meters of the stuff as you think you'll need for say 12 months and put it into storage for when you need it again - so you don't have to lose all that set up time each time you need a molding - you would run the same molding for example in maybe a dozen different timber species.... so that you can make as many timber cupboard doors as you need in any wood someone orders without having to go back and do it all again set up time wise.

When I would run glazing beads for e.g. I'd run kilometers of the stuff in 4 or 5 different species...and pop it into the storage rack...

Unless your a hobbyist who has all the gear and doesn't value your time - you don't spend a half day setting up the spindle molder or router table etc to just run 3 or 4 little pieces of molding for one customer... if that workshop manufacturing down time was worth say $500 - the customer would never be happy paying what it costs to make so few small pieces.

Most shops COULD make them for you - they just couldn't do it at a price you could afford - heck you could buy new timber panel doors cheaper than making the little moldings (A timber bow head fielded panel door in solid timber is about say $60 or $70 - maybe $100 or $120 tops, wholesale, when you buy them in the dozens for a new set of kitchen cabinets).

So you need someone who's old, retired, and makes wood stuff as a hobby, who doesn't mind fiddling about to make those for you coz he doesn't value his time.

Also matching someone else's molding 100% exactly if you don't have the same exact cutters - you have to get one ground special to match.... and cutters (lets say a 3 cutter head) with chip limiters - custom ground to match that specific profile.... well the standard cutter knives are around $40 a set - more like $100+ to get a special custom grind - and probably say $150 upwards to get a router bit made to do the same job.

With bow heads you need a bearing running on top of the cutter or router bit to allow the cutter to follow the bends of the bow head bent piece of wood, and getting fingers near those things - while they spin at 6000 - 10,000 rpms - to hold a little short stick of wood like that, up against the cutter, so it cuts properly - means pretty much using your hands in very close proximity to the cutters, which no one likes to do... the risk of permanent finger loss injury is just too high...

It might seem like what your seeking, is just a small thing, that most anyone can do for not a lot of $....

Most places will run a mile before they will touch this job....

Now...

If you knew who made those doors, and if that's all they did for a living, and they had a heap of them still in stock - you'd probably buy them for next to nothing out of his materials rack.

ONE possible option for you...

These new CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) routers - if you took in the remaining pieces you have - and they could find (or make) a solid glued up panel the right thickness to match the moldings, of that species... someone there who's clever with computers could 3D scan those pieces to make whats called a cloud file... of the profile, and the bendy bits as well as the straight ones & the computer numerically controlled router could carve out those small pieces in very little time, completely with almost zero risk to human fingers.

Trouble again is - the clever computer guy wants $120 an hour for his skills and time...and the CNC router machine costs a small fortune, so the shop who owns it wants $500 an hour to get a return on their size-able investment...

So the cost to make them....would again be cheaper to buy new timber doors for the whole kitchen...

Heck if you had the right wood, and the right little router bit - bandsawed (then edge sanded) to that shape, and clamped it to a bench, you could just run a small hand held laminex trimmer,with the /14 inch chuck and appropriate router bit, to reproduce that profile, and it might be a couple hours work tops...

The trouble is finding the guy with the right router bit - to match what you already have....

Router bits are not that expensive these days - heck you can buy a cheap Chinese set of 50, for $100 on evil bay - or $2 each!

The thing is, even if you bought such a set - would it have the exact same one you need to match whats there already?
Chances are - probably not!

I wish I had a better advice / suggestion for your dilemma.

The right guy with the right gear and same species of wood, could sort it easily - but it could again cost you more than the doors worth to drive all over trying to find that one guy.... and likely he would be the same guy made those doors in the first place.

Best of luck with it - someone here might be that guy - you just never know!.

Edit; I just clicked on your photo link to enlarge it, and it looks to me like that might well be Western Australian (Coastal) Sheoak (species Allocasuarina fraseriana) if that is of any help to you. (you'll see it also spelled sheoke occasionally)

Allocasuarina fraseriana - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The wood you will need will look something like this.



It's not a cheap timber to buy - very popular in the boating industry due to its stability. When I used to mill it, dry it, and sell it into the boat building industry in WA, i would sell it at $2500/M^3 which wasn't far off break even cost because the recovery rate off the log is usually as low as about 15% and there's lots of re-sawing to do before you kiln dry it. It is available tho in limited quantities here in the West. It's not so common in the eastern states but most larger wood merchants should be able to access some for you (enough to recreate those few bits if you can find someone to do it locally) if you don't mind waiting for them to order it in specially.

Was that door off a kitchen cupboard or perhaps out of the cabin on a large vessel made in WA maybe? If it's off a large alloy boat, designed by WA Naval architect Gavin Mair and built by Tim Brown's "Fine Entry Marine" in Geraldton WA, then likely i supplied the wood - and I might know who the cabinet make is who made those moldings. Just a long shot guess tho. Not a lot of commercial kitchen cupboard doors made in WA sheoak.... so I am wondering how they ended up in the east I guess is all and sailed there in a boat makes sense....









Sheoak trim is Gavin Mair's Naval Architecture "signature"... lots of his big charter boats etc ended up trimmed out with the sheoak that I supplied to them.

I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time.