Where to start with molding planes

The short answer...

David Barnett

>Hollows and rounds to start, and preferably (but not absolutely) cabinet pitch. Most importantly, though, you need to ask yourself, and presumably answer, some important questions.

What period and style will influence and inform your project design choices? You'll want mouldings that are appropiate for the period and style.

What pieces would you make and what scale would be appropriate for their use? The mouldings should be appropiate for a desk, a clock, an �tag�re, whatever, and should fit the scale of the pieces you're most likely to build. The smaller crispy profiles, simple or complex, with the highest pitched irons almost always get my spondulicks.

How many pieces will you likely make? Making a suite of something? A limited edition, maybe? Then maybe it's worth popping for the more complex, pricier, sexier profile.

Keep a collection of renderings and tracings of interesting moudings. Hit the library. Buy a nice set of hollows 'n' rounds and mimic some profiles in something straight and forgiving (I like mahogany). I wish I could say "buy 'em as ya need 'em", but the day for that is pretty much gone, IMO, so buy on speculation if you can afford to.

Re: Where to start with molding planes

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>For starters, you need a catalog. The Wooden Plane, Its History, Form, and Function by John M. Whelan will explain what is out there, the nomenclature, what they look like, and what they are used for.

Beyond that, you need to match the planes to the type and scale of furniture you want to build. Different styles and periods used different moldings. Different size pieces require moldings in proportion to their size.

For starters, a half set of hollows and rounds and a rabbet plane will provide much versatility, but will require more setup and more steps for creating complex shapes than a dedicated complex molding plane for a particular molding.

I think you would find a selection of side bead planes in different radii useful. Side beads can't be made with hollows, but can be done with a scratch bead. Even a style as simple as Shaker employs these.

A plane to raise panels, especially if you want to create fields with anything more complex than a plane slope, should be useful. Again, the complexity of planes to do this varies from the very simple to the very complex. The more complexity, the less skill and fewer steps and other tools required to raise the panel.

All of this is just for starters. Whelan's book is over 500 pages of extremely detailed descriptions and diagrams.

Re: Where to start with molding planes *LINK*

Jim in Burlington On

>I just went thru the same process. Flea market's want about $45 for good working one that they have shellaced and polished up and 20 for the one's beyond help. So I turned to e-bay and try to find someone with quite a few up for sale in good shape so I can save on shipping. Someone out there is collecting Sandusky and bid several up beyond belief for me. All tolled I've bought 35 @ $16 with shipping. I look on The Best Things, e-bay and antique tools in the Uk for idea's as to what is worth bidding a little more money on. You know your in the deep end of the pool when you start buying up wood moulding planes.


http://www.antiquetools.co.uk/tools.htm

Re: Where to start with molding planes

ThomD

>I agree about rounds etc... I figure the best way is to buy them as you need them, just like building a set of router bits, but that is pretty difficult. So I am hoping to make them as I need them. If I was buying I would be tempted by either the Chinese hollows and rounds that Japanwoodworker sells, or certainly the Clark and Williams set. Up here I know where quite a few pristine sets are located, but they are pretty expensive, and in the cases I know of the owners wouldn't sell them to users. Tool markets are as variable as the collectors themselves so you may well find a perfect set. Overall I feel the messing about factor is probably about as big for making the planes as fixing them up.

Re: Where to start with molding planes

Dick Schafer

>You're headed down a slippery road. As other have said, start with a set of hollows and rounds. I've been able to collect a few off e-bay etc., but have recently come to the conclusion that I can make my own for about $12 each (or less).

I make mostly boxes, so my requirements would are small, so I look for the smaller sizes. As other have said, size them to the work you want to do.

I buy from ebay and The Best Things, haven't been hurt yet.

Other than that, hang on, its a long ride.

not h&r- caution: insane rant included

Adam Cherubini

>I don't care for h&r. I find them tricky to use.

BEGIN RANT:

I'm growing increasingly frustrated with experts who use non-relevant demos as validation for their "theories". So you see these guys molding 2 or 3 feet of stock with H&R. "See? Its just that easy".

Well not so fast smart guy. I can count on one hand the number of times I've needed 2-3 ft of molding. More typical is the requirement to have molding stretch all around a piece of furniture. That's usually 8' or more. Using a "non-dedicated" tool like H&R for that sort of work is a whole lot harder (for me at least). Worse is when you haven't got an 8' bench or you haven't got 8' of stock and you need to make two matching pieces using H&R.

RANT OFF

FOR BEGINNER molders, I recommend useful small complex molding planes. They are the true slippery slope because they are so quick, easy, and fun to use. I find great use for beads (as William has said) and sash-sized ovolos, and coves. A small quirked ogee is nice, fancy, and you can find these readily enough. I like using H&R for changing a profile made by a complex molder or fixing areas. But I don't think they are great tools for a guy to just pick up and make something great with.

That's my two cents anyway

Adam

I agree.

Michael Recchione

>I think H&R are very useful if you have to duplicate some arbitrary molding that you don't have the original plane for. It's also good to have a few for the occasional rounding off of an edge or something. But I find having a few side beads is more useful - at least I've used mine a fair amount, and I would love to have just a very few interesting complex molding planes.

Let's face it - I'm not going to produce thousands or even hundreds of pieces of furniture that need different molding profiles in my lifetime. And the few that I do produce would probably work every bit as well with one representative complex molding shape as another, as long as the size more or less matched the requirements. If I had just a few good profiles, they would become "my molding profiles" - my work would use them and probably repeat them. I have a feeling that's the way most small shops worked even back when moldings were made with molding planes.

In any case, I think H&R are probably most useful for people doing restoration or exact reproductions.

Re: I agree.

ThomD

>I somewhat agree with the idea that the complex planes are better. But I think the question was "what do you collect". For me that is subtly different question. Sure if he wanted to plane a particular profile the molding plane for that profile would be easier. But if you were going to have to plane some unknown profile in the future what planes would give you the best shot, which one would you take to a desert island were only planing molding would lead to your rescue.

I bought up some complex planes, just perusing tool sales for decently priced items that look sound. I have a bunch of these and I don't really use them. Unlike router bits where the options are limited and the sizes fairly stock, I am never that sure that the shapes are the right ones for what I am making. There is zero chance they match any moldings or plans I might follow. This appears to be why people have walls of 300 planes. I'm not that sold on moldings anyway, but the thought of putting Queen Elizabeth's head on Henry the 8ths body dogs me a little. I do have sash planes and such where I have let down my guard about appropriate shapes, or perhaps to be more honest, doubt I will ever be called upon to use them.

My rant:

What the heck good is a 6 ft bench! Minimum length is the highest piece of furniture you intend to work on, or standard ceiling height (if you don't live in a castle). Planing beams are easy to build and store.

end of rant

Re: Where to start with molding planes

ThomD

>Seems to me that the gloves are off with molding planes, the Lee Valley jig to sharpen or reset the profile is not soon forthcoming. So if you have to make the blades anyway, then as you say, the cost of making them is pretty minimal. Possibly closer to 2 bucks.

The computer is a great tool to develop cutter patterns on, and to store those shapes.

Well,

Michael Recchione

>I don't actually have any complex molding planes. What I do have is four pairs of hollows and rounds, four side beads and four rabbet rabbets, each "set" sized from narrow to sort-of-wide, and spaced pretty evenly. I didn't plan it that way, it just sort of happened. I've used them occasionally.

I don't think I'd ever be that guy with 300 planes on the wall. I don't have the space, and I've sort of reconciled myself to the fact that the number of major pieces of furniture I'll build in my lifetime will be significanlty less than 100. For those, I will probably continue to create/modify/adapt designs to my skill level and my available arsenal of tools. If I did happen to luck into a nifty and more-or-less appropriately sized complex molding plane, I'd try to figure out a way to feature the moldings it could produce, at least on one piece.

I can't help but think that a country woodworker probably didn't have that wall of 300 planes either. He probably also adapted his designs to what he had available and what he felt comfortable doing. Maybe not. But it makes sense.

Regarding 6 foot benches, I don't know if you were joking or not, but I've used a 6 foot bench for years and never really felt limited by it. Then again, I haven't tried to plane 12' boards on it, either. I guess I'm lucky the ceilings are pretty low in my house :-).

Re: I agree.

Tony Zaffuto

>I'm having a blank moment here. Please excuse me if it is self evident, but please describe a planing beam. Is this something described in the "The Workbench Book", or can you direct me to drawings or plans?

Thanks,

Tony Z.

Re: Well,

ThomD

>Makes perfect sense to me. I was reacting to Adam's view that the pieces would be too long to plane and that H&Rs are a bad idea.

I'm serious about the bench. I have a 5 footer but the main bench is now 8' something, And I have beams up to 18'.

Re: I agree.

ThomD

>I guess mine are based on Japanese ones in the Workbench book. Though the Japanese benches are really similar to western ones when one looks past the hype. One would see the "same" system at use in many timber shops, and other than Odate the guys in the workbench book learned from Imao who is a framer. So I think the style has more to do with framing than anything else. Just put a beam onto a pair of saw horses.

I have a variety of them. One is 8' plywood hollow beam that is very stiff and straight. I have a 10'pine beam, and I have various strongbacks for boat work that extend the length of the shop. I usually hold the wood by hammering a nail in at an angle and then cutting the top off . I just press the piece onto the nail, and plane away from it. Mostly I plane strips for planking this way, or shoji. For narrow strips I have used 2x on edge.

Planning Beam

Barryvabeach

>If you intend to use your molding plane on the molding itself ( as opposed to sticking the profile on larger stock and then ripping off the molding ) it is extremely helpful to have a long beam ( I use a 10 foot long - 1 x 8 on edge) that is held parallel to the long side of the bench but slightly below it ( using a vise and a clamp) . You put a small screw in the board as a stop and you use the side of the bench to resist the lateral force of planing. Harder to describe then use, but it works very well and I think it would be difficult to plane some moldings without it. The distance the beam sits below the bench varies based on the size of the molding. Note that this will also "cure" the problem of making a 8 foot molding on a 5 foot bench.

One long or two short

Jim Reed @ Tallahassee

>When I gnawed my crown moulding using the H&R set, I made one five foot piece and one three foot piece. They matched pretty well. It took lots of walking to do each, but I was glad they were short. One very long piece on a beam may be easier in some respects, but it requires lots of walking and concentration. I think there are some trade offs that make it hard to say which method is easier.

Sticking board *LINK*

Michael Recchione

>What you're describing is essentially a sticking board. You make an excellent point that, while we traditionally think of these as sitting on top of the bench, maybe held between a tail vise and a dog, there's no reason that one couldn't be longer than the bench if it's stiff enough and you have enough room to use it. An 8' or 10' or even a 12' sticking board is a whole lot easier to find a place for than a 12' bench.

This link is to a picture of a traditional sticking board (scroll down to near the bottom of the page).


http://www.ilovewood.com/alburnam2.htm

Re: Well,

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Wow, an 18' beam! And here I was thinking it would be so cool to be extravagent and have a 12' beam in the new shop. :)

Pam

It Depends

Jim Crammond in Monroe, Mi

>Jim,

This thread was going along with some good information then Adam decreed that you should not go the hollows and rounds route because they are difficult to use. Like many other hand tools, the use of molding planes is a skill that it takes some time to acquire. If you want to use one plane and come up with a quick, easy molding, side beads are the most satisfying. They are fairly easy to sharpen and take a minimal number of passes to produce the finished profile.

Producing moldings with molding planes is a process that takes several steps and an assortment of planes. Just using a complex molding plane to make a length of finished product can be frustrating. Sharpening and tuning a complex molding plane is much more difficult than tuning any bench plane. They are usually set for fairly fine cuts, like a smoothing plane, so would take a long time to cut an entire profile just using that individual plane. To make a complex molding, start by defining the places where the molding changes from concave to convex or where a bead is using a plow plane or moving fillister, the next step is removing large amounts of stock with gouges, a drawknife, a spokeshave, jackplane, etc. The next step is to refine the profile with hollows and rounds and finally make every thing uniform with the complex molding plane that matches the profile you are making.

Molding planes work in the way described in Chris Schwartz' article in the last Popular Woodworking, coarse, medium and fine.

When you are looking for molding planes, remember that most of the things we are making are in a much smaller scale than many of the planes you find. They were made for joiners doing architecural work, we are mostly making furniture, so don't really need the bigger bigger profiles.

Since I've already disagreed with Adam, I may as well really stick my neck out here. I don't really like Stanley 45s (I'd much rather have 300 molding planes), but they are something to consider also. They work fairly well making beads and are useful for grooves. If you could find one for a reasonable price with a good assortment of blades, that might be a good way to get started in this area.

And remember, the best tip for making moldings is to always use straight grained well behaved stock.

Jim

Re: One long or two short

Barryvabeach

>Jim, Now that you mention it, the last time I used the sticking board for a long molding, I made one length of about 7 feet ( thinking I would then cut the three peices from it so that even if I varied in the the shape of the profile as I went, since the miters would be from adjacent parts of the molding and would match up really well) and boy was that a lot of walking using H & R's. The miters did line up beautifully,but I haven't done it that way. Instead, the last time I tried to tand at the end and work a small section, take several steps, then walk a small section, etc.

starting out

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>To start out making moldings, I would get a hollow plane and a round plane, both in the 1/2 inch range. These two alone or in various stacked combinations with a fenced rabbet plane (moving filister) can produce at least six or eight different moldings- ogee, reverse ogee. cove, ovolo, etc. If you can learn to handle the planes and make the moldings you will know a lot better what to look for to expand your repertoire. I have seen old pieces of furniture where the maker made all his moldings with a similar kit.

Re: It Depends

Dick Schafer

>I don't know whether I should jump in here or not, but I will.

I would tend to agree with you, that using various planes to remove the bulk of the wood before using the complex moulder is one way to go. You could also use the tablesaw as shown in another article in the most recent PWW.

H&R can also be very useful as mother planes in producing your own complex moulders. They are the basic/starter planes for more complex cuts.

In my earlier post, I never intended to intimate that they were the only planes you would need for moulding. Scratch stocks work well also.