# Moldings



## Ron Russell (Nov 19, 2010)

I have an old Victorian home that has missing moldings. I would like to be able to fabricate replacements for some of the old and all of the missing moldings. If anyone has had a similar situation I would be interested in their story. Especially the specialty tools required to form a finished molding, specialized bits, etc. I have a plunge router and numerous bits but nothing that I can use. I've heard the term shapper but know little more. I'm more concerned about the general plan to produce the molding. I have talked to the people I run into at Home 
Depot, Rockler, etc. with no satisfactory results. My wife is a fanatic when it comes to giving her okay to a final product. She is not happy if some replacement item is not a perfect replacement with the material used the same as what is being replaced. I fall in right behind her since our house is on the National Register of Historic Places, but since I do the work, I'm a little lower key. If you have any guidance or hints on which way to go, I would appreciate your input.

RR


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## LexB (Apr 12, 2010)

Well, you could look at the profiles available for the Magic Molder, which mounts like a blade in your table saw. Another option would be one of the "multi-profile" bits like Freud makes. By raising and lowering the bit, and running the wood horizontally or vertically, you can make many different profiles from one bit. Chances are that you'll need to build up the molding from several different pieces of wood. The most expensive option would be to contact a custom millwork shop that will make a custom shaper bit to match your existing molding and then mill the wood for you to install. The final option that I can think of (and your wife may not like) is to remove some molding from one room to match the missing molding in another room, then put up new molding in that one room. A slight mismatch in profiles won't be so apparent in that case, because all the molding in the 'new' room will match.


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## BearLeeAlive (Mar 22, 2010)

Ron, we have done a few jobs where we have had to reproduce period millwork. A few small pieces we have been able to do ourselves, but 95% of the time we get a local moulding shop to build them. Often they will already have the knives built for a specific moulding as it is quite likely it was used on other homes in the area and other people were looking to buy some, and you save that cost.It can be costly to have to pay to have the knives made for their machines, but in the end it has proven to be way more cost effective (as a company) to have them made for us. They usually have a good supply of the wood you wish to use too. You can source the wood, but even it would have to be milled to the size you want, something you could do easily if you have a jointer and planer.

Lex's idea of robbing from another part of the home to ensure that one area all matches good, then just replace the robbed area with new, similar mouldings is a good idea if you are willing. I am not sure of the make of knife holder I have for the table saw (I assume it is like the Magic Molder), as I inherited it from a great uncle, but it did come with lots of knives. I have found a few older profiles that we have used. This 'blade' effectively turns your table saw into a shaper.

Sometimes it is possible to find the router bits that will reproduce some of the older style mouldings, or to use a combination of bits, but quite often you have to have bits made. Many of these mouldings used to be quite large, and using a shaper would be a better choice. Still, you would have to have custom knives made for the shaper too.

We just did major remodeling on a 100 year old house where we salvaged much of the old casings, but had to make up new sills and aprons for the windows. Salvaging the old stuff carefully, getting it stripped, and then refinishing it so it would match the new was a fairly costly procedure. Just doing new that looked similar would have been way cheaper. Regardless, the customer was thrilled to have used something from the old house in the new modernized renovation.

Do you have any photos of the millwork you are trying to reproduce. A shot of the cross section of a piece would be helpful. I am sure there are many folks on here that have more experience and could steer you in the right direction. I would be eager to hear what they have to say.

Good luck with your project.


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## bobj3 (Jan 17, 2006)

Hi Ron

I would suggest you check out the house wrecking company's in your town, they do take some of the old houses down in parts they don't always just put it in dump truck and haul it to the land fill , they have racks and racks of molding/doors/flooring/etc. they are in it for the money and old molding is big money for them..

My bud worked for one of them and it all surprising me of all the stuff they had in the yard for sale...I once got some Maple timbers 4" x 10" x 12ft long for a song..


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## Ralph Barker (Dec 15, 2008)

It seems to me that your basic issue is either contracting out the replication of the mouldings, or doing it yourself. Although some mouldings can be done on a router table, or shaper, dedicated moulding machines like the Williams & Hussey moulder, are often the preferred method.

Industrial Machinery for Woodworking, Plastics, and Composites - Hermance Machine Company

The problem, of course, is that these machines are quite expensive.

The TV show "This Old House" has done several restorations where antique mouldings had to be replicated. In one, they used a company that specialized in this type of work, and which had dozens if not hundreds of cutters that matched commonly-used mouldings from old houses. Norm took a sample in from the house, and they were able to match it exactly. You might be able to get the name of that company by contacting the producers.


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## Phil P (Jul 25, 2010)

I've found that with older buildings many of the mouldings are specific to the area. Often there were one or two mill shops churning out a lot of standard mouldings in a given area although by asking around you may find a shop which still has the knives for a matching or very similar moulding. One problem with so-called standard mouldings is that in the next town the "standards" weren't always the same so there's a lot of potential variation.  There were also a lot of mouldings which were cranked out by the joiners using moulding planes in the earlier part of the 19th century before machine moulders came along. Later generations of carpenters always seemed to carry a multiplane such as the Stanley 45 or 55 to allow them to reproduce many mouldings with a single tool (and they were still doing so when I was an apprentice), so if you don't want to buy a Stanley behemoth (or boat anchor) and you don't want to pay a millshop to grind you a set of custom knives for their moulder you might like to take a look at Lee Valley's Stanley #55 cutter set. Failing that short lengths of smaller mouldings can be made using a scratch stock or if you are feeling flush there's the super-duper version from Lie-Nielsen. It is also worth remembering that complex mouldings are often built-up from several components which are moulded then fixed together to make the complex moulding


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