Thread: "Mouldings in Practice"... or Just in General

Hi Luke . You get good at it by first being shown a bit then just playing with it . I was shown by the tradesmen training me . You would probably get the same info possibly from youtube or a book. Then I played and realized the importance of how its not all freehand but setting up rebates where they need to be first and then doing the hollows or rounds in the mould from there. I was shown this at first, but with my young enthusiasm was not taking enough care.

Then while I was still in my apprenticeship , I had a mate who worked in another antique business and that business was just a workshop full of French Polishers . They were doing work for the public and the trade so had a high turn over of Victorian furniture going through . Plenty of missing mouldings and carvings needed to be re made for those pieces and I got some of that work to do at my bench after hours . I went from getting something like $12 an hour during the day to $60 an hour for that work. This is 30 years back. So I quickly tried very hard to get better at it . It was never long runs like you may need for a complete build . Just 12 to 24 inches of this or that. Every job a different shape. when it was longer sections drawing the shape on paper twice and sticking it to the ends helped. Most of that was in Walnut or Mahogany.
One big obvious thing is , You need the planes to play with . and the workshop I was in had them. Every one in that workshop used them , so they are a rough set now. I bought a nice crisp set later. Then about 23 years back I started building replica furniture . And all that previous work came in very handy .When I need a mould that I don't have a cutter for The rounds and hollows get used 90 % of the time , not a specific moulding plane . Although last week I had to give three drawers an applied cock bead in Blackwood. a side bead plane was used on the edge of a board for that and then cut off on the table saw. Sometimes a cutter for the router is used to get the shape close then the planes take the shape exactly to where its needed . They are a huge time saver , doing the work quickly in certain types of jobs . I did a pair of desks late last year , I couldn't have done it without the spindle moulder though . I would have been there ten weeks with moulding planes rather than two days . Complex one off shapes for a moulding plane project can be done with a scratch stock ,as you probably know. You will have some good rewarding times with a set of hollows and rounds though.

Rob

I'll be watching as I'm preparing to do my first hand cut moulding as part of a furniture repair.

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

By all accounts I've read, "Mouldings in Practice" by Matthew Bickford is the most intuitive instructional currently available - possibly ever written - on these tools. So I'm curious if anyone has read it and would be willing to comment. I'm considering picking it up as some airline reading material in the next few days.

one of my "TUIT" tasks is to write a review of Matt's book.

It's a very slippery slope -- I've bought some hollow and round soles for a Record #405 and started assembling a quarter set of planes. (I hope to be able to limit myself to a quarter set, but the new beading blades from Lee Valley are pointing towards the need for at least a #3, which in turn will no doubt lead to "needing" to get a #5 and #7 -- oh well there are worse things to spend your money on.)


I found Matt's book very helpful, but I'm not sure that I'd classify it as an "airport reader". I found it needed a little more concentration (and contemplation) than I typically want to devote to reading or studying while on an aircraft. As a recommendation of sorts Moldings in Practice was one of the few books that made the trip across the Pacific to Canada.

I found Matt's writing style concise and easy to follow and the illustrations accompanying the text are what you need to see where you need to see it.
In the words of amazon.com -- YES, I would recommend this book

Originally Posted by auscab

..... Complex one off shapes for a moulding plane project can be done with a scratch stock ,as you probably know. You will have some good rewarding times with a set of hollows and rounds though......

That was an excellent & comprehensive answer to Luke's question, Rob! I guess the take-home message is, as always, 'practice makes perfect'.

As an amateur who rarely gets to make any piece twice, it's always been scratch-stocks or imaginative glue-ups that I've turned to when mouldings are required. I would like to be able to use hollows & rounds effectively, but the two pairs I own are hardly a 'set' & not as well-tuned as they might be (not tuned at all, if the truth be told ). They get some use, but infrequently, which does nothing for my skill-set, so I'm barely more than a raw beginner in that area. I find scratch-stocks are great for small runs/repairs, but have their limitations, and while they can give a very clean surface on some woods, they can make a right mess in some situations, I've discovered.

So many skills to acquire, & so little time!

Cheers,

Thanks for the info, fellas.

Rob, thanks for the story. That's exactly the kind of information I was hoping for. I guess asking someone how to use moulding planes is like asking someone how to get to Carnegie Hall, with the answer, of course, being:

Practice.

Thanks for the book review, Ian. I reckon I'll pick it up. I find that, with a lot of woodworking instruction books (The Essential Woodworker comes to mind), I take a lot from an initial read through, but then I take way, way more from the second read through, during which I can actually go play with the techniques or just use the book as a guide.

One thing which intimidates me about these planes is the sharpening process. Because they're essentially a finishing tool, they have to be super sharp all the time, especially since they go against the grain often. Hopefully the book touches on this, but does anyone have any insight on the best ways to sharpen them, particularly with the hollows which have kind of an "in-cannel" profile?

It's also for this reason that I'm seriously considering the HNT Gordons. They have the high bedding angle, but I think that, upon request, they may also be available in HSS, which would allow bevel-up scraping at ~90deg angle of attack. They're expensive, but hopefully I'll get some serious use out of them for many years to come.

In the meantime, however, I'll have a look at the book and pick up some older ones from antique stores. There are only about a million of them kicking around...

Thanks again!

Cheers,
Luke

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

One thing which intimidates me about these planes is the sharpening process. Because they're essentially a finishing tool, they have to be super sharp all the time, especially since they go against the grain often. Hopefully the book touches on this, but does anyone have any insight on the best ways to sharpen them, particularly with the hollows which have kind of an "in-cannel" profile?

Keeping the shape of the blade right, Or restoring a new find to get the blade to match the sole is the first hurdle . Modern high speed electric bench grinders are in to much of a hurry, good for the general roughing in, but when I get down to the last fractions of a mm I clean up the edge with the stones , check the shape in the plane , and when it needs more on the left or right , what it needs is for that little amount to taper out to nothing. I usually have my finger on the switch powering the grinder on and off keeping the speed low . Probably not great for the grinder but that doesn't matter. I like the old hand cranked grinders and if I were going to be shaping a few new blades I would set up a few of those with thin stones. I have an electric grinder with the thin stones as well 4 or 5mm thick , which I dress and shape with a diamond stick . This is for spindle moulder cutters , great for the moulding planes as well . Same thing with the speed though.
Once the shape is dead on and checked with the burr removed , its like sharpening carving chisels . more tricky than a flat blade. I go through a few grades of stone , then onto a leather strop

Rob,

What kind of stones do you use? Oil stones?

do you shape them for moulding plane profiles yourself, or can you buy them somewhere?

Cheers,
Luke

Just the same smaller slip stones used for gouges along with flat stones for the flat faces . All Oil stones .

This is the good book that helped me out when I needed it . Plenty in there on shaping and sharpening blades for moulding planes. and a lot more on other tools. Great reading.

Restoring, Tuning & Using Classic Woodworking Tools: Michael Dunbar: 0049725066700: Amazon.com: Books

Rob

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

One thing which intimidates me about these planes is the sharpening process. Because they're essentially a finishing tool, they have to be super sharp all the time, especially since they go against the grain often. Hopefully the book touches on this, but does anyone have any insight on the best ways to sharpen them, particularly with the hollows which have kind of an "in-cannel" profile?

Hi Luke

As I said a review of Matt's book is still in the wings.
One thing to note; although the book is 250 and some pages, the last 100 or so deal with restoring old H & Rs maintaining / sharpening irons, plus examples of complex moldings shaped with H & Rs.
The first 140 pages deal with how to use the planes and why you really need rebate planes

Well I read the book, I've picked it over, and I've started it again. There are a lot of photos and diagrams, so I was actually able to go cover to cover on a four hour flight to New Zealand.

Gotta say, it's a really great read. I have never cut a complex moulding with hollows and rounds, but after reading that book I think I could probably pull it off with the right tools.

He teaches you how to accurately cut rebates without a fenced plane (which I never knew was possible). I feel like that alone is a valuable skill worth the read!

I will let Ian provide the full review when he gets that round 'tuit, but suffice to say that I highly recommend this for anyone who has any interest whatsoever in mouldings.

Cheers,
Luke

My use of moulding planes is VERY limited, but I think I found something out that might be useful.
When I was a teenager there was a handful of moulding planes in my grandad's tool chest in dad's workshop.
The story I was told is that the planes were bought for him after his return from the WW1, sold to the G/grandfather by a billiard table maker.

I tried and tried but failed to get the most complex and interesting one of those to work in Kauri Pine way back then.
Fast forward to dad moving into a retirement home, and my grandfathers tool-chest being given to me.
We were looking through some old slides, photos dad took in the US during 1950s in the early days of Kodachrome.
Oldest brother was going to print up a stunning pic of a NY street in the rain at night, younger brother had cut blackwood tree I'd used to make a kitchen, and I suggested I make a blackwood frame using that blasted moulding plane.

After a reshape of the blade cutting edge to suit the plane's base, and a sharpen ... I found very quickly that your best friend is friendly grain orientation.
As Rob said above, I took out the waste quick as I could with a table saw, then a rebate plane.
On some pieces I got a superb burnished surface ready for finish, and those with grain that was changing direction I got some awful tear-out.
The hollows and rounds I've seen can be high pitch and skew blade, sure to help that I guess.

Made me think about what the function of mouldings are in a piece of furniture, and how they are seen, what they make the eye do as you look at the piece as a whole.
When designing jewellery, I think about how the eye is drawn around an item, where it is made to dwell and hopefully resolve the whole in one central place.
I know how curves and shadows control the movement.
When the flow is good, and resolution is fast, its a pleasing experience and it seems to succeed. When it jangles and challenges it can tend to be uncomfortable.
Both these can be useful in a design sense when used well, but I wondered back then about the value of curly difficult grain in the moulding.
Does really curly grain make a moulding loose the visual effect of the varying curves,edges and shadows?
On a picture frame, depending on the image it might have real value, but on furniture ... perhaps not.

I'd love to know others thoughts.

Cheers,
Peter

Very good point. Often today, we try to use the most figured wood we can, but the furniture of old which is so moulding-heavy often features straight grained timber which is stained anyway. Perhaps there is a correlation.

Peter, I empathise with your travails with moulding planes & wild-grained wood. Definitely not a happy marriage!

I think it's a good point you made, that elaborateness in something like a picture frame is more likely to be visually tolerable. There's a long & venerable history of ott decoration on picture frames, such as fret work, opulent moulding, gilding, you-name-it. However, aesthetics is not a fixed and quantifiable attribute, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and tastes change over time.

My philosophy when it comes to furniture is to use either decorative wood or decorative architectural features, but preferably not both at once. With moudings on furniture the effects are derived from the lines & shadows, & tend to be more easily appreciated from a distance, not so much close-up. To my thinking, they should not be dependent on any decoration within the wood itself. I've seen quite a few pieces in the flesh that were made using highly figured woods (mostly burl veneers), and on these there is a lot more restraint on any moulding (perhaps not surprising, since there is a limit to how tight a curve you can lay veneer on!). But even the few solid pieces I've seen made from highly figured woods tend to leave it to the figure to carry the decoration and keep the lines pretty simple, with minimal mouldings. I think your visual cortex would become overloaded if you added fancy mouldings to something like my Maple desk: Desk1.jpg
With a small item like this sewing table, I used turned legs in pretty plain cherry, and birdseye Maple on flat drawer fronts. I think there is more than enough action there for one pair of eyes to cope with: Finished.jpg

So the upshot is, plain, straight-grained (& workable!) woods are my natural choice for mouldings....

Cheers,

I have the book, as I'm sure many do. It wasn't too expensive here in the states when it was released, but I already knew how to mark out a moulding and had already made some moulding planes, so I haven't referred to it.

If there are discussions in it (I should know, but I don't) about the orientation of mouldings on pieces so that they catch your eye, I think that'll be more useful than any mechanical bits about laying out and cutting them, because you can easily figure that out on your own. Proportion and design is worth more discussion, I think, than the actual making of the mouldings.