Who's making their own Blades?

Paul D wrote:
>Hand grinding a balanced,
> matched pair of knives does take a lot of patients

Really? How many did you have to use? 2 or 3 has always been plenty
for me.

I have always ground all my own knives for use on a spindle moulder mostly
with 1/4" slotted collars or block collars. If your knives are
ground/sharpened and set up properly it should require not more than a quick
rub by hand to obtain a good finish suitable for lacquer finish. Have a look
at some mouldings at local hardware to get idea of off the machine finish.
With running your own mouldings in small production runs you should be able
to obtain equal if not slightly better finish. Hand grinding a balanced,
matched pair of knives does take a lot of patients and practice to master
but it means you are never confined to 'standard' mouldings. If you take
your time into the equation it is much cheaper to purchase of the shelf
knives. The main secret to a good finish is all about balance, cutter speed,
feed rate and limiting any chatter in timber during feeding. I use auto feed
unit on spindle to achieve smooth feed rate and equal pressure clamping.
Surface finish will deteriorate with hand fed material, that is unless you
are good enough to continuously feed at exactly the same rate. I have never
had any experience with using planer/moulder combo which you previously
posted about. But from my experience with similar sized thicknesser's I have
always found that their finish, although quite acceptable, is not as good as
it could be mainly because of size/weight of machine allowing for vibration
which translates into slight loss in quality of finish. Also bear in mind
that each species of timber has different peculiarities that you have to
take into account when machining. As with jointing/planing, thicknessing,
always feed in the direction of the grain.


"HotRod" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> The title says it all, who here is making their own molding blades? What
> machine or techniques are you using. Also while investigating sanding
> molding I've found guys that use a flap sanders and others that are
creating
> reverse profiles of their molding with different materials. How do you
sand
> your molding?
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