making small trim molding and base boards

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I want to make some molding. I have never made molding... I was hoping that some advice here might save me some experimental time.

I want to make some oak moldings. The first molding that I want to make is essentially this:

delme_316C47W2XWL._SY450_.jpg

I want to make two moldings that are essentially this profile.

I want to make one that will start as 1/2" x 1/2" and the other as 3/4" x 3/4".

Any advice on bit sizes for these two sizes? I can experiment with sizes, but I need to buy the bits to experiment with sizes. It would help if anyone has made something similar and has an idea as to what radius I am likely to need to make these particular sizes.

I can run the profile on my router table then rip the end piece off.


I also want to make some base board. I was thinking about a simple round-over or maybe a profile like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Freud-99-484-M.../dp/B000R4F59U

Any tips are appreciated on this.

[johnny means]

I've had to do quite a bit of this type of work. My advice would be to cut your profile into the edge of a wide board then rip the moulding off the board.

[Scott Brandstetter]

Andrew, I find making my own moldings kind of fun, and quite satisfying. You have total say on the final look based on the router bits you chose. Couple suggestions is to make sure you have a strong enough router (I know, hello Mr Obvious), use quality bits...I personally like Whiteside but there are others out there, use a test piece to determine how much you can take off with each piece, and with your example above, I would start with say a 2 in master board and get two pieces from each board; meaning I would run one side, flip the board, run the other side, keep doing this with each pass until final design is achieved, then run thru the table saw to get the final piece.

[Dave Zellers]

Along the lines of what Scott said, never (usually never) try to do it in one pass. Taking a final finish pass of 1/32 or so is the best way to get a nice clean result.

[Don Sundberg]

That's been the biggest part of my woodworking so far is making trim for my house. A couple of words of advice: When running tall baseboards it is much easier to make if you add extensions to your router table. Also profiles that have no trapped features are much easier to work with, if you have a board tip and not run flat against your router table you can rerun the pass with a profile that is not trapped. If it has trapped features you have a piece of stock to make other trim with or scrap.

The advice of running it 1/32 short and then a finish pass is good though I don't always follow it. I've run the 3/4 x 3/4 cove molding you have shown in one pass many time with a Bosch 1617EVS without issue. Use feather boards to keep it tight to the fence and table. You will have to change your hand position several times as you run a long piece through the table. Be sure your table is secured to something substantial. I usually screw my little Bosch table down to make sure it doesn't shift since I usually have the feather boards set pretty tight.

[Jerry Miner]

All good advice above. I've run lots of moldings on the router table. Cove mold can vary. Decide on the look you want. Here are some possible profiles:

Cove Mold 5-17-16.jpg

[Larry Frank]

I have made oak moldings on my router table. As others have said, sneak up on the profile and make a light last cut. I also have used the Freud Quadra Cut and really like the smooth cut it gives.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Thanks, this is all very useful advice. Multiple passes, sneak up on the final cut, etc...

Jerry, thanks for the image, that is very helpful. I think that I can get by with a single 1/2" radius bit.

Andrew Pitonyak

[Jim Dwight]

With respect to bits, I like whiteside and freud and cmt but my go to brand is MLCS. Their prices are low and include shipping which has always been prompt. I've made the cove moulding you illustrate in oak. I've also made baseboard with an ogee at the top but it was softwood. My MLCS bits worked fine. I judge feed speed by sound of the router and smoothness of the cut. Those cuts can probably be done in one pass but two with the last one much lighter would be safer. Also be a little careful with oak, it splits kind of bad sometimes.

[roger wiegand]

I just made a 4 piece cherry baseboard for my entire house. Two things made it tolerable, first I bought a power feeder for my shaper, just a relatively cheap Chinese one (ShopFox), but it works fine. The moldings came out much more uniform than the hand-fed ones I tried. The second was a drum sander so I wasn't hand sanding some 4000 ft of molding. I was doing an Arts and Crafts style, so all flats and bevels, no curves, so I was able to do all the sanding on the machine. I made jigs to hold the pieces bevel side up to allow me to use the drum sander.

With older 3 hp Delta or Powermatic HD shapers available pretty commonly for a few hundred bucks I'd think seriously about acquiring a shaper for the project rather than doing it on a router table.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

II was doing an Arts and Crafts style, so all flats and bevels, no curves, so I was able to do all the sanding on the machine. I made jigs to hold the pieces bevel side up to allow me to use the drum sander.

I am very interested in seeing the profile that you used.

I am only going to do the molding on the base boards and around the cabinets. I will not retrim the doors and windows.