best way to make 1 1/2" and 2" quarter round?

[Terry Teadtke]

I need to make a couple or pieces of 1 ½” and 2” quarter round from birdseye maple. What would be the best and safest way to do that? Would you use a shaper or turn the pieces on a lathe?

Thanks,

Terry

[scott allen]

I would shape the edge of a board with the profile you're after, then rip the piece to the desired width. Rinse and repeat.

Scott

[Jamie Buxton]

If you only need a couple of pieces, you can do it with a tablesaw and a handplane. It turns out to be fairly easy. I'm mostly a power-tool guy, but this is one of those tasks where a hand tool does just fine. Use Scott's approach of shaping the edge of a board. The remainder of the board gives you a handle to clamp on. You don't have to use your precious 10/4 birdseye for the handle. Glue the maple to some scrap wood, or even plywood. Shape the maple, then rip it off.

Use the tablesaw to rough out the shape. Then draw the quarter-round profile on the ends of the maple. Clamp the board to your bench, and go after it with a plane. You can get quite close to the profile quite easily. A power sander removes the ridges.

[glenn bradley]

I also favor creating the profile on a larger board and then ripping the result off to create the moulding. As to how to make the profile? BE Maple "trim" of that size might be worth looking into veneering an MDF substrate if they are short decorative pieces. If it must be solid BE then I would favor a shaper if available. What length are we talking about here?

[Ray Schwalb]

I need to make a couple or pieces of 1 ½” and 2” quarter round from birdseye maple. What would be the best and safest way to do that? Would you use a shaper or turn the pieces on a lathe?

Thanks,

Terry

The lathe idea is clever, but ripping a round piece has proven tricky, at least for me. I really like the handplane idea, cheap and easy. I have a big shaper, but no cutters that size. That would be one big, expensive, and dare I say, dangerous, cutter.

[Terry Teadtke]

Thanks for the suggestions. I only need a couple pieces at the moment but may need several more at a later date. I thought the shaper might be dangerous with a cutter that big. If I used a lathe I would have to build a cradel to hold the peice to rip it tnto 1/4's.

Terry

[Tom Matthews]

In one of my Woodsmith magazines, they used split columns on something they built. There was a shop tip about making the columns and they suggested gluing up two halves of the columns with heavy paper between them. You then turn the column and use a chisel to split the column in half.

You could probably do the same thing with four pieces for your turning blank and end up with four pieces of molding.

I've never tried this, but it seemed like an interesting method.

[Terry Teadtke]

I like the paper idea a lot as it would eliminate having to rip the pieces into 1/4's. Any idea on how to separate the pieces from the paper? Perhaps pry then apart and remover the paper remains on the jointer?

Terry

[scott vroom]

Terry, I notice you're located in Portland. There are probably numerous milling shops in the area, have you tried calling around to see what they'd charge? This sounds like a job for an industriual strength shaper. Each to his own, but in my view some tasks are better farmed out.

[David DeCristoforo]

Newsprint works great. You can get "fall down" roll ends from any local printer. They are usually happy to get rid of them and there's often a lot of paper left on rolls too "short" to put back on a press. You can always use printed newspaper sheets but there is a slight risk that the ink could bleed into the wood. To separate the pieces, just use a sharp chisel and a couple of light mallet blows. You will need to do some scraping to get the paper and glue off.

[Tony Bilello]

I like the paper idea...Any idea on how to separate the pieces from the paper? Terry

I have done this 2 different ways. The first is with paper. I just used plain ole typewriter paper and separated the sections with a ,allet and chisel. Slight sanding is required.
The other way that worked good for me was to use a hot glue gun. You can go to Walmart and buy the weakest glue they have. The glue sticks come in several strengths. The weaker stuff will still work fine for turning. The main choices for separating them are A). Mallet and Chisel, B). Heat Gun, mallet and chisel and C). Freezer first for freezing overnight and then a mallet and chisel. I never tried a microwave to heat the glue to aid in separation but I'll bet it would probably work the best.
I speak in past tense because I have not done this in 25 years.

[Frank Drew]

An advantage to using a shaper is that you're not limited to length, as you would be with a lathe. Also, although expensive up front, once you have the cutters you can make more quarter (or half) round whenever you want, bringing down your effective cost of the tooling.