Spindle Moulder Advice

[blackrodd]

Peter, as you say, the saw doctor won't be very busy now with circular saws, now that TCT blades are so common place and cheap.
Laser welding has helped as the old method of brazing teeth and then grinding to the finished item was rather labourious, and very costly.
The need to re tension the old steel circular saw blades is a thing of the past, but I would think that the bigger bandsaw blades will need looking after, keeping the crown's shape, which, after all keeps the blade tracking and running even. And the steel's tension, should the saw blade over heat by material jamming the in the guide.

If I may say so, that's a Really good and practical article you have written there on using the spindle moulder
I have often thought that EVERY spindle moulder sold should come with tuition just like that, getting the best from you're equipment and the need for safety, as these tools can really bite.
Here's Some scary stuff, years ago, to maximise feed speed and production, on some planers and many six cutter moulding machines, the cutters were "jointed" this meant that a carborundum stick was moved by hand along a slide to equalise the setting and then honed.

I believe some forage harvesters are sharpened in the same manner but the user pulls and pushes a rod, attached to the grinding stick, keeping hands well away.
Regards Rodders

 

[blackrodd]

Jacob, I like making glazing bars 2"x 1" and i prefer the ovolo as opposed to the chamfer.
There's something satisfying about making a window, I find.
None of the merchants around here, stock anything ovolo moulded, 3" or 4"bottom rails, 2"x 2" head, stiles etc or sliding sash parts, still, it will help the smaller workshops busy!
We used to make windows for the national trust, they specified yellow cedar then termed joinery pine, difficult to work by hand as it was so soft and cutters had to be really sharp or the finish was really "wooly"when machined.
Regards Rodders

 

[Jacob]

Yes nice work. Instant improvement to an old building!
Everything I did was copy of original as it was all period building work. This meant having to make my own cutters (or modifying an earlier one.) Some of the bars very thin 44x15mm typical - thinnest was 38x12mm for sashes in an old pub.
Thin stuff hasn't much weight so any wobbles or changes in feed pressure tend to show up, which is where the power feed really comes in, though you can do it with shaw guards plus feathers etc if you set it up very carefully.

 

[Peter Sefton]

Rodders

I know our local saws doctor now does very few plate saw blades, usually very large ones used in the farming industry. The TCT are now so good and well balanced they have just taken over.

I remember "playing" with my planer and and India oli stone to joint the cutters. (yes India Jacob) It gave the best finish ever but to much resistance to be safe for surfacing work. My mate has a jointer on his SCM thicknesser but never uses it these days.

I covered the jointing of cutters and other old tricks to improve your planer in an article for F&C last year.

http://www.peterseftonfurnitureschool.c ... rticle.pdf

Our short wood machining course is very popular and I feel necessary, it is now easier than ever to buy your own wood machines and just go home and plug them in.

This is potentially very dangerous, we hope to help woodworkers make the most of their investment and learn how to set up and maintain the kit whilst selecting cutters and safe methods of use.


Jacob

I have made a few delicate sash windows over the years great when all the mouldings and scribes come together.

Cheers Peter

 

[heimlaga]

I make some joinery as a side income to carpentry (I did before I got too ill to work even part time and now I am recovering and will start again after some more recovery time). I mostly made odd one off doors and sash windows and sometimes a few metres of speciality mouldings. The spindle moulder on my huge old combination machine gets a lot of use. Once I can afford a bigger shop I will get a separate spindle moulder that I can leave set up while doing other things on the combination. Without a good full size spindle moulder with a sliding table I would have to turn the clock back to the hand tool era as no router would do the kind of work I do on the spindle moulder.
My training is 2 years carpentry and 1 year joinery in the vocational school in the late 90-ies.

I don't critisize Peter Sefton for advocating the use of approved tooling but in reality a shop with a small turnover and only one-offs or short production runs cannot afford to always use the solutions found in the catalogs of mayor tooling makers. That would bankrupt me and many others instantly shut down every small joinery shop in less than a year. I just don't like to live on benefits for long periods so the money that puts food on the table has to come from somewhere else if I can.
I am known locally for being overly safety concious but in the reality you have to turn a profit to pay for your daily bread so I try to make a reasonable compromize:
-I have decided to not use square heads and clamshell heads. Most of my competitors still use them all the time.....but....well...... I am just too scared of the uneven degree of fatigue in those old bolts. The design was unsafe from the beginning and age makes then even unsafer.
-I have decided not to use french cutters though some of my competitors sometimes use them. The design is too unsafe for me.
-I have put away the slip collars even if many of my competitors still use them all the time. The design does not feel safe.
A flying knife is a hazard that I don't want in my shop if I can avoid it so I do not want to rely purely on bolt friction for holding a profile knife.

-I sometimes cut profiles with one knife and a counterweight in the other knife slot of the head. With low enough RPM and low enough feed rate it works all right. I try to avoild this practice as far as I can but sometimes I cannot.
-Very few of my heads have chip limiters. It would be very expensive to have a number of heads made to order with chip limiters and speciality knives. The whole idea is totally beyond reality. Then they would be very difficult to sharpen as there isn't any room for the grinding disc between the chip limiter and the steel. Stick welding chip limiters to my old heads and ginding them to shape would distort the head and cause dangerous internal stresses.
There are hardly any secondhand heads with limiters on the market but limiterless heads can sometimes be found. If the steel is worn out the old head can be sent off to a professional who brazes new steel pieces in place.
-My "euro head" with profile knives does not have chip limiters. Just because a new head would cost a bit of money not to mention the time (=lost money) spent grinding limiters.

I rekon that I can keep my fingers far away from the head and use guards just like our vocational school teacher taught me before limiters were introduced. However to shelter me from a flying knives I need a 5 inch log wall between me and the machine so I just have to stretch my limited means and use cutterheads that do not thorow knives.
That is how I think. Feel free to disagree.

 

[Jacob]

Me the same more or less - with old Whitehill blocks (which were the "safety" blocks of the time).
I don't have a power feed at the moment so I always switch on with care and all guards in place - or a big piece of timber. I think a lot of people are experimenting with the old ways - the price of old blocks has gone up - they used to be scrap only.
NB it's not for the faint hearted and only for the one man alone in a workshop!

 

[doctor Bob]

NB it's not for the faint hearted and only for the one man alone in a workshop!

Yes, no point in more than one being killed at a time.

 

[Jacob]

The old Whitehill blocks are a lot safer than the square blocks or french cutters so we are half way there.
We are waiting for a manufacturer to produce design which will have modern safety features and allow the freedom of a french cutter - and most of all the economy; DIY cutters are very cheap and very adaptable.

 

[doctor Bob]

The old Whitehill blocks are a lot safer than the square blocks or french cutters so we are half way there.

Jolly good, the chances of being killed outright are less, maybe just end up a dribbling vegetable, mumbling incoherently ............. arrhhh, apologies Jacob, you obviously have been hit quite badly in the past by a cutter. :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Jacob]

Actually I did lose one once (from a modern safety block) but that was because it hadn't been tightened by the previous user. My fault too for not checking, so that's two people learning a lesson. It shattered harmlessly behind the fence but left a permanent nick in the metal work.

 

[blackrodd]

Actually I did lose one once (from a modern safety block) but that was because it hadn't been tightened by the previous user. My fault too for not checking, so that's two people learning a lesson. It shattered harmlessly behind the fence but left a permanent nick in the metal work.

Jacob,I'll bet that was A very nasty surprise, one of my work mate and Teacher's told me that when the cutters did come out, they seemed to always get launched to the right as in 2 of the clock, from above. I always remembered that and would always keep the area clear, myself included.

Worse thing I ever saw was a machinist in Shaplands had started, just before lunch, to change the 3 planer irons on a 18"X 4" 3 sided planer. When he returned from lunch, forgetting that the cap iron was not tightened down on 1 blade, he switched it on.
Getting to about half speed, out it came, hitting the bed, just under the hardened edge, breaking the bed casting along the sliders, where the bed was locked down each side.
Afterwards, we counted 15, or more shiny pieces of shrapnel embedded in the ceiling boarding and luckiest of all, he just moved to hit the off button, as a piece went flying towards his head, but it caught his eyebrow and cut it fairly deeply.
The planer irons had adjusting slots, for up and down adjustment for cutter projection, so I guess that is what held on for those few seconds, before release.
With the broken bed casting,it was knocked back about 3", you could just pull the bed off which must have weighed about 3, or more hundredweight (sod the kilo's).
The place was busy with men and machines and just one injury, very lucky for several there, including me, walking past! Regards Rodders

 

[deema]

I think that that all of the points that have been raised have a lot of merit in their own perspective. One thing that we should not give the impression is that a Spindle Moulder is a fire breathing dragon of a machine that cuts appendages off at the slightest turn on of the machine.

A spindle moulder IMO is one of the most versatile machines I have. If used with modern tooling and shaw guards it's also very safe (all machines have inherent dangers taken). Safety can be enhanced and the quality of cut improved with the use of a power feed.

Putting it into perspective, and again this is only my opinion, a spindle moulder is not as dangerous as a router (well in my hands it's not, I've had more close calls with a router than with my spindle) and again, certainly from my observations, there are more risks generally taken with a table saw than you would ever hear about with a spindle moulder. (trenching, no crown guard, no giving knife etc to name but a few)

It is when you first power up a big block on a spindle rather scary, but that also I feel makes you respect the machine more than 'every day' machines that you see unusual things being done with, normally by our American cousins on uTube.

Please don't be out off, the spindle moulder is a far better investment that a router table (IMO) and once you have one, a machine that you will truly value for its versatility and practicality.

 

[Jacob]

Agree. I'm lucky that I got to spindle moulding before I was drawn in to the world of routers. Hardly use a router at all - just the odd job. Spindle is 100 times as productive. And a lot quieter, less dusty etc

 

[blackrodd]

I think that that all of the points that have been raised have a lot of merit in their own perspective. One thing that we should not give the impression is that a Spindle Moulder is a fire breathing dragon of a machine that cuts appendages off at the slightest turn on of the machine.

A spindle moulder IMO is one of the most versatile machines I have. If used with modern tooling and shaw guards it's also very safe (all machines have inherent dangers taken). Safety can be enhanced and the quality of cut improved with the use of a power feed.

Putting it into perspective, and again this is only my opinion, a spindle moulder is not as dangerous as a router (well in my hands it's not, I've had more close calls with a router than with my spindle) and again, certainly from my observations, there are more risks generally taken with a table saw than you would ever hear about with a spindle moulder. (trenching, no crown guard, no giving knife etc to name but a few)

It is when you first power up a big block on a spindle rather scary, but that also I feel makes you respect the machine more than 'every day' machines that you see unusual things being done with, normally by our American cousins on uTube.

Please don't be out off, the spindle moulder is a far better investment that a router table (IMO) and once you have one, a machine that you will truly value for its versatility and practicality.

As you rightly say the spindle moulder is an incredible versatile machine, but the other hazards you mentioned, are not likely to launch pieces of steel at you, mainly by user error.

I think the router a really good tool, and used with the router table, is as good as a spindle moulder but surely cutter ejection and balancing, are not so likely, unless in the hands of the village silly person, with only one nut to do up!

I tend to use the router as its light and with the bearing depth control, very quick to set up and the best part could be the bits are all now TCT, at very little cost each time should you be able to use the more common shapes and sizes.
but as Jacob said earlier, the larger rebates and window mouldings, a spindle every time for me, a lovely machine!
Regards Rodders

 

[Sgian Dubh]

In amongst all these stories relating the grinding of one-off cutters, balancing them up with a non-cutting heavier cutter in the block, French heads and the like, an operation I saw just two or three times back in the '70s was moulding things like curved banister rails off a dumpling block and use of a French head, although I did see a similar set up using a ring fence and a Whitehill block. The wood machinist I saw doing it must have been in his late fifties or early sixties even then and bore some of the typical scars of old wood machinists probably trained back in the 20's and 30s, e.g., less fingers and thumbs than the average bloke. I never fancied having a go at moulding off a dumpling myself, ha, ha. Saddle templates used for things like door architraves curved in just one plane were less daunting, but not by too much. Slainte.

 

[Jacob]

I've done saddle templates for curved architraves - bodged up from mdf etc. No particular risk as I recall. But some of the other old stuff is very scary! One old woodworker near me ended up as a saw doctor as he had no fingers left on either hand. I guess it was one incident as anyone losing one is unlikely to risk losing another.
Safety is mostly about two things - having the cutters out of sight so that if anything flies off it hits something else first, and having them out of reach - behind shaw guards etc making push sticks essential.
Push sticks should be wood - plywood copies of the common standard plastic is ideal. Plastic shatters, save it for a pattern, plywood just gets trimmed. Have several lying around all the time so you can always put your hand on two (always use two).
Another safety measure is to cultivate the "hands up" reflex - if anything goes wrong back off immediately with your hands up, don't be tempted to poke or grab the workpiece even (especially) if it's getting chewed to bits

 

[RogerS]

.... Personally I think they are expensive and sometimes not as precise copies as you'd expect.

....They don't have to match exactly and it's OK (within reason) to have just one cutter cutting and the other balancing

Make your mind up, sunshine.

You haven't understood what I was saying Roger, as usual.
Copy machined cutters should be identical to each other, but are sometimes not quite spot on with the sample moulding being copied. It's quite easy to fine adjust one of them to match the profile exactly (offering it up etc) but not easy to match the other one by hand and eye so that they both cut the same.
The traditional tried and tested solution is to have just one cutting and the other as close as possible but effectively just balancing, not cutting, or perhaps just cutting a bit.
.......

So to put this to bed once and for all. I asked the experts - Whitehill - this question based on your reply (without the personal abuse).

On one of the UK woodworking forums we have been having a discussion regarding the accuracy of machined cutters that have been made to match a given profile.

I maintain that the machined cutters will be identical to each other and to the sample profile as near as dammit.

Another member says
'Copy machined cutters should be identical to each other, but are sometimes not quite spot on with the sample moulding being copied. It's quite easy to fine adjust one of them to match the profile exactly (offering it up etc) but not easy to match the other one by hand and eye so that they both cut the same.
The traditional tried and tested solution is to have just one cutting and the other as close as possible but effectively just balancing, not cutting, or perhaps just cutting a bit.

I think he is talking nonsense but would appreciate any comments from an expert viewpoint.

This is the reply. My bold.

We only make exact prs & exactly to shape.
The only problem can be information from the customer is not that good.
That is a very old fashioned idea.

No doubt you will try and wriggle out as per usual.

 

[Jacob]

I thought you'd abandoned us Roger - I think you'd be happier if you stayed over there with your friends at the shaven (where everybody is a mod :lol: :lol: ) instead of stumbling about erratically in public.

 

[RogerS]

Grow up and admit you gave incorrect advice.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

So to put this to bed once and for all. I asked the experts - Whitehill - this question based on your reply (without the personal abuse).
This is the reply. My bold.

We only make exact prs & exactly to shape.
The only problem can be information from the customer is not that good.
That is a very old fashioned idea.

No doubt you will try and wriggle out as per usual.

Actually Roger, I think Jacob has a point. I suspect there is a tendency for one cutter to provide the lead cutting action during a moulding (machining) procedure, even when using matched moulding cutters. The leading edge could change from cutter to cutter. Let's say that the profile length is 45 mm long, and one cutter may be the lead for, say 10 mm, then the other cutter is the lead for the next 20 mm, and finally, the first cutter leads for the final 15 mm of the profile length, all due to tiny variations in the profile made. The discrepancy is miniscule I'm sure, and no doubt with some unevenness in wear the lead varies from cutter to cutter as a profile is run, but I think this is probably the case. However, in the overall scheme of things I suspect, through my experience of using blocks of this type anyway, such variations in matched cutter profiles in spindle blocks add up to nothing noteworthy or significant. Slainte.