Making your own Spindle Moulder cutters WIP

[Jacob]

Absolute lunacy, it’s easy to see how the machine has gained such a vicious reputation over the years from being used by Cowboy Joiners that think like this.

It's the square block which gave it a bad reputation, quite rightly, but they are obsolete.
Then it was the intro of spindle moulders to the amateur scene - hence "accidents that frequently involved the loss of several fingers" - completely avoidable with push sticks and guarding, or better still power feed.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/wis18.pdfSurprisingly the HSE regs talk of "hand feeding" and the need for limiters. Hand feeding should be totally deprecated - the regs are behind the game here and their recommended push stick design is very poor, yet this is a prime safety measure! Things have moved on.
Basic rule: hands should never be nearer than about 10" from the cutter.
PS just had a flip through the regs - there's quite a few odd details in there. Looks like a committee job!

 

[Spectric]

Cope and stick is modern machine joinery needing two very precise cutters as you say. This is avoided by just using one "stick" cutter, much as you would with hand moulding planes, then joining stile to rail the hand joinery way.

There is always something new to learn around here and for me it also shows how some skills can be lost because I thought that cope & stick joints on doors was a modern way using matched cutters and that before this they did not use this type of joint but it looks like they did, but had the skills which maybe are not as common these days because we want everything done quicker.

 

[deema]

@MikeJhn I love your irony.

 

[Jacob]

There is always something new to learn around here and for me it also shows how some skills can be lost because I thought that cope & stick joints on doors was a modern way using matched cutters and that before this they did not use this type of joint but it looks like they did, but had the skills which maybe are not as common these days because we want everything done quicker.

I don't think they used "cope and stick" except relatively recently. That cross grained "cope" on the ends of rails would be extremely difficult other than by modern machine. I've demolished hundreds of old bits of joinery and never see it except on modern work.
PS unless I've misunderstood completely - "cope and stick" seems to be an American term maybe I've got it wrong

 

[Housey210]

The practice of grinding one's own cutters will continue. Big tool room at the college I learnt my trade, 1980, and although they had a profile grinder many were ground by hand. The use of the old whitehill style blocks will also continue as the demand for the odd metre of matching skirting remains. In the day I had two 8" twin wheel grinders with three wheels shaped / dressed, with diamond point, to suit my needs. I know of one sole trader who stripped his collection of blocks down, trued up in lathe, ground all the faces and jaws and rebalanced. They are still in use today. Single profile cutters need to be balanced and as mentioned a good spindle hand will know by the sound.

 

[Jacob]

The practice of grinding one's own cutters will continue. Big tool room at the college I learnt my trade, 1980, and although they had a profile grinder many were ground by hand. The use of the old whitehill style blocks will also continue as the demand for the odd metre of matching skirting remains. In the day I had two 8" twin wheel grinders with three wheels shaped / dressed, with diamond point, to suit my needs. I know of one sole trader who stripped his collection of blocks down, trued up in lathe, ground all the faces and jaws and rebalanced. They are still in use today. Single profile cutters need to be balanced and as mentioned a good spindle hand will know by the sound.

I did all mine with a 6" bench grinder. Two 1/2" wheels one square one half round, two 1/4" wheels ditto. Small shop doing period joinery, not much like the big industrial stuff referred to earlier.

 

[Spectric]

"cope and stick" seems to be an American term

Yes I believe that to be true, it is strange that here in the UK we were woodworking long before people decided to evict the indians and create America yet they now seem to rule the roost, looking at my woodworking books they do seem to be American in origin but if nothing else they are some of the few things around without some connection to China! I will have to look into how they made doors and such before we had routers, I find the past can teach a lot.

 

[Against_The_Grain]

It's the square block which gave it a bad reputation, quite rightly, but they are obsolete.

While the square block by its nature wasn't the safest instrument as compared to the modern pinned limiter block, the absolute key to whether it was a useful tool or a lethal weapon was the machinist at hand. Common practices by Cowboy Joiners include using pipes on spanners to tighten the cutter bolts to holy hell with a potential to either splay open-ended cutters or shear bolts during running, using cutters that have been ground to the point where only a small section of steel by the slot end remained with the potential for the cutter to split in half during running, using cutters that are clearly damaged with bends, cracked steel, or splayed slots, using blocks that are clearly damaged from chip packing and are no longer perfectly flat...

The machine is never the culprit, it is always the one that operates it that causes issues, the HSWA 1974 and PUWER 1998 regulations were introduced solely to prevent Cowboy Joiners from injuring themselves and others.

 

[Jacob]

While the square block by its nature wasn't the safest instrument as compared to the modern pinned limiter block, the absolute key to whether it was a useful tool or a lethal weapon was the machinist at hand. Common practices by Cowboy Joiners include using pipes on spanners to tighten the cutter bolts to holy hell with a potential to either splay open-ended cutters or shear bolts during running, using cutters that have been ground to the point where only a small section of steel by the slot end remained with the potential for the cutter to split in half during running, using cutters that are clearly damaged with bends, cracked steel, or splayed slots, using blocks that are clearly damaged from chip packing and are no longer perfectly flat...

The machine is never the culprit, it is always the one that operates it that causes issues, the HSWA 1974 and PUWER 1998 regulations were introduced solely to prevent Cowboy Joiners from injuring themselves and others.

Agree.
I don't know what the figures say but I'd guess that over and above the mechanically caused accidents cuts to the fingers would be number one and keeping hands always 6 or more inches away would be top safety measure.

 

[Jacob]

Yes I believe that to be true, it is strange that here in the UK we were woodworking long before people decided to evict the indians and create America yet they now seem to rule the roost, looking at my woodworking books they do seem to be American in origin but if nothing else they are some of the few things around without some connection to China! I will have to look into how they made doors and such before we had routers, I find the past can teach a lot.

According to this Door Construction "cope and stick" is that very tacky joint you see on modern cupboard doors, without M&T.
I thought it meant ends of rails machine "coped" to match the mould on the stiles, but still with M&T. Neither being traditional.

 

[Against_The_Grain]

I thought it meant ends of rails machine "coped" to match the mould on the stiles, but still with M&T.

Cope is simply the American term for what we call a Scribe, "Cope and Stick" in cabinetwork is called "Rail and Stile" here.

On the subject of full scribes, they are a result of machine work but they've been around since the mid to late 1800s, though they don't start getting very popular in Britain until machinery is more widely used as in the 1920s and '30s. Beforehand, the moulded sections of joinery would either be "Part-Scribed" by cutting a mitre on the rail on the moulded section to achieve the shape required much like scribing skirting in a house, and then using chisels and gouges to create a short scribe as deep as the moulding mitre, and the shoulders of the morticed stile would be flat rather than moulded through, the second method of "Mitring" would be to simply mitre the rail and stile but this is an inferior method of construction as with timber movement the mitres will develop a gap, whereas the part scribe conceals timber movement.

 

[Jacob]

...... Beforehand, the moulded sections of joinery would either be "Part-Scribed" by cutting a mitre on the rail on the moulded section to achieve the shape required much like scribing skirting in a house, and then using chisels and gouges to create a short scribe as deep as the moulding mitre, and the shoulders of the morticed stile would be flat rather than moulded through, the second method of "Mitring" would be to simply mitre the rail and stile but this is an inferior method of construction as with timber movement the mitres will develop a gap, whereas the part scribe conceals timber movement.

Exactly. What I was taught and have been doing since I started. Also what I've seen in the hundreds of trad bits of joinery I've pulled apart over the years. A mitre or preferably a mini scribe picked out with an incannel scribing gouge if you happen to have one, or any old small gouge if you haven't