Shaper/stock feeder questions

[John Ziebron]

I have a small shaper that I don't really use that much. In fact, it's use so far has only been for making rails and stiles and raised panels. I also have a small stock feeder with mounts for my shaper and router table.

Now I am intending on making a bunch of baseboard moulding and have the knives and head to do so. I have 2 questions I'd like answered before I start on this project. The first involves setting up the knives. The molding head is 2 inches high and the knives are 3 inches high. My common sense would be to mount the knives so 1/2 inch is above and below the head. Would this be correct?

Second question involves position of the stock feeder. All the times I've used it my stock is parallel to the table with the rollers pressing down and slightly angled toward the fence. In this case the stock will be positioned vertically along the fence. Again, my sense tells me that I should position the feeder on it's side so that it is pushing the stock against the fence with slight down pressure. Is this correct? It seems that trying to position the feeder so that it contacts the top of the wood, 3/4" thick in this case, would be a little difficult.

[Kevin Jenness]

Are your knives and head corrugated back? You can probably get away with 1/2" projection above and below the head, depending on the knife thickness and depth of cut, but it would be safer to use a head at least as tall as the knives. What size is your spindle and how deep is the molding? A drawing or photo would help.

The feeder should be set up parallel to the fence and angled down slightly to the table. You may need to attach blocks to the outfeed table to support the cut section of your baseboard and keep it from rolling or sniping. This sort of face cut is best done on a moulder but can be done safely on a shaper if set up correctly. Generally speaking a shaper is better suited for edge work. Again, an illustration would be helpful.

[John Ziebron]

The knives and head are corrugated. The knives are new but the cutterhead is borrowed from my brother. I understand that a taller head would be ideal but we both have shapers with 3/4" spindles and Grizzly only sells a 2 inch head for that size. They sell a 3 inch one but it's for one inch spindles. I'm also a machinist and could easily make an adapter bushing to use the taller head but this one doesn't cost me anything to use.

Any of us that have made picture frame moulding on our router tables have to feed the stock vertically. I've done this twice since getting my power feeder and have positioned it so the rollers are 90 degrees to the fence. This has worked well for me and I figured it would be the same sort of situation on the shaper. Here's a pic of the shaper with the cutterhead installed; the feeder is still on the router table.

shaper.jpg

[Richard Coers]

I would definitely not run 3" cutters in a 2" head. Mainly because I heard of a local shop that threw a knife and it went all the through the guy's abdomen. I don't remember the details, just the gory details of the end result. No tooling cost is worth cutting corners and risking serious injury.

[Greg Quenneville]

Let me add to the voices advocating the proper head. There may even be commercially available 3/4:1” bushings available.

You are correct that you’ll need to rotate the power feeder 90°.

I did my own baseboards this way. I made infeed and outfeed support tables because my stock was 14’ long.

[J.R. Rutter]

I used to run a similar setup years ago and made a sacrificial fence to screw onto the shaper fence that had a shop made feather board pushing down on the top edge. For this profile, I would glue an appropriately thicknessed "shim" to the outfeed side to run the longer flat section of the moulding on as it exits. Other than that, the feeder setup has been covered. I personally would hesitate to run heavy oversized knives on a Grizzly cutterhead (is that aluminum?), but the knives look thick enough.

[John Ziebron]

Thank you all for the replies, especially about the stock feeder position. Yes, the cutterhead is a solid chunk of aluminum. I talked to my brother about the knives and found out that he has one set that is 3 inches in height. He told me that he made several passes when using it which sounds like a safe way to go by putting less stress on the knives, so that is way I will go.

[Kevin Jenness]

Thank you all for the replies, especially about the stock feeder position. Yes, the cutterhead is a solid chunk of aluminum. I talked to my brother about the knives and found out that he has one set that is 3 inches in height. He told me that he made several passes when using it which sounds like a safe way to go by putting less stress on the knives, so that is way I will go.

I guarantee that if you asked a cutterhead manufacturer or a knife grinder about using knives 50% taller than the head they would say "Absolutely not!" As I said before, you can probably get away with it and two passes will be safer, but shaper tooling is not a great place to cut corners. A 3" tall cutterhead and a pair of tee bushings don't approach the cost of a trip to the ER.

Shapers are like a lathe in that if you use it much the cost of tooling soon surpasses that of the machine, and that's just the way it is.

Aluminum cutter bodies save weight but are less strong than steel and easier to strip threads. Using oversize knives in an aluminum head is just that much more sketchy.

[andrew whicker]

~ $ 30 and you're ready to go with a bigger head. https://www.amazon.com/Amana-BU-926-...001PTU1DQ?th=1

~ $ 100 for the new head (and free shipping!). https://www.grizzly.com/products/woo...h-1-bore/d1701

Pretty cheap considering the tooling I've been getting for my 1.25" spindle machine! I don't think I can log onto the Whitehill website for less than $250 : )

I'm curious if you reached out to the mfg and asked them what they think. I have some Weinig beefy corrugated heads that came with my machine. I had some cutters made for me and I was surprised how little protrusion was allowed given the beefiness of both the cutters and cutter head. And those are steel bodies.

[John Ziebron]

Thanks Andrew. Yesterday I did some checking and ordered that same cutter head from Amazon for about half the price. I'll machine a full length bushing on my metal lathe.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000DD16R...roduct_details