The Framers Forum

And there's another way -
Take a metre lenght of flat wood, 20mm x 5mm. Mark out with a pencil a series of notches, say 5mm apart. Cut out the notches so you have a toothed length of wood. Call this your register moulding.
Now fix this register length to a blank piece of wood and using a roller guided router cutter, run the wood against a table mounted router and now you have ripples.

Sounds good! I wonder who is planning to build one of these machines? I can't say that I've ever been asked for one of these frames, but making one of these machine would be quite a nice project.

These days it might be easier to make moulding on a flat bed CNC router table.

That's getting you the lateral waves, but not the vertical. This chap is managing the vertical ones:

https://22293-presscdn-pagely.netdna-ss ... dings1.pdf

More reading here on the old way: http://www.wag-aic.org/2002/WAG_02_thornton.pdf

Hi James,

I think that I need to be better at explaining myself. Inspite of that this is meant to be producing vertical waves by means of the movement btween the pair of shaped lengths of wood sliding against each other as the wood to be machined and the top sliding shaped length of wood are moved against the lower fixed shaped piece of wood.

The 45 degree pointed router bit coming in from the side at 90 degrees to the motion of the moulding being cut is angled at 45 degrees, so that the cutter machines a laterally flat cut, but the 45 degree angle of the router means the the parallel shank of the cutter is kept clear of any adjoining ripple which may have been cut out of phase to the current ripple. What I am refering to is where two separate ripple sections start and stop at difference increments so that while one ripple patern is rising, the adjacent ripple patern is descending.

The method of cutting a V-groove between the two adjacent patterns provides a little extra clearance between the two adjacent patterns to provide extra clearance for the shaft of the 45 degree pointed cutter so as to ensure that the cutter does not affect the adjacent pattern. An added bonus of cutting V-groove with this inclined cutter is that both sides of the cutter are cutting through the wood in the same cutting direction relative to the feed direction of the wood through the machine.

This does not happen with a vertically mounted cutter, because one side is cutting in the opposite direction to the other and hitting a hard spot in the wood can lead to a slight deviation in the track cut by the cutter. This is not a new technique, I learnt it from a pattern maker in a company where I was working in the 1970's. Very often cutting a 45 degree V-groove tends to avoid any need to clean up the edges of the machined groove, where as a groove with 90 degree sides may throw up burrs, depending upon the wood that you are machining.

I tried to look at your videos at lunch time, but my broadband was not working properly then. I guess there are too many users competing for a finite amount of bandwidth in the run up to Christmas. I've only just been able to see them now. Thank you for posting them. Most informative!

JFeig wrote:These days it might be easier to make moulding on a flat bed CNC router table.

Yes I think so, but I think we are talking about a crazy amount of money for the equipment. I think that the challenge of producing a machine using the old fashioned ideas and machining your own mouldings would be more satisfying to at least some of us.

I guess that the computer enthusiasts might think otherwise.

These are the mouldings I have... no idea where I got the pale wood one from, might have even come from somewhere like B&Q... the others are from Austria.

As an alternative to carving, you could very easily make a good quality mould from an existing frame or a moulding, and just cast them and apply to a frame.

Here's another web page about these machines, with some diagrams

http://www.woodworkersinstitute.com/fur ... t-century/

And another page here, with a simplified but still apparently very effective machine:

http://flammstock.uk/

This is one of my old fashioned woodworking planes. It is known as a Filister plane and I have 17 different plane bits which go with it as well. I would not say that it is one of the easiest tools to learn to use, fortunately it has a thumb screw to adjust the depth of cut as you cut into the wood that you are turning into a moulding. It's actually quite hard work on some wood types.

To date I have not had much time to sharpen many of the blades, so I need to do this sometime. The people who used to use these planes in bygone years must have been really good at grinding plane blades, some of these blades are about 10mm thick at the cutting end. You would not believe how long these blades take to re-grind and sharpen, but at least they stay sharp for a long time.

The blades are made from old fashioned forged Sheffield steel blanks. You can still buy some of the blanks, but the price is so unbelievably high, I don't think many people would consider paying that much. Secondhand blades come up on eBay and other sites, often quite cheaply, but you may be waiting a while to get any particular sizes that you may be looking for.

I think that blades like this would be good material for re-grinding and making blades for cutting ripple patterns, because they are extremely thick at the cutting end and would be very solid and rigid in use.

RippleMolding.com
It’s my site and it just went live today after years of playing around trying to figure out how these were done.

Amazing Stuff.

Does the free shipping include the UK?

I'm not sure if the files will show as I've not posted any images for some time

As a side hobby almost as I'm fascinated with older techniques, I have been making a dutch ripple making machine, I think called a Flammleisten , so I will be able to make ripple mouldings
still a work in progress and fine tuning but it's starting to work

you have to admire the 17th Century woodworkers
they knew their stuff

Wonderful to see you've made that. Can I ask, how long would it take to run off a lenght, say 3ft of ripple moulding?

I'm still messing about with different ways and profiles yet but and the profile image is just my first effort so difficult to say

the guys that did this originally must have been massive as I was sweating doing it
I will post more as I get chance to do some more on it though

Tinh, I take my hat of to you

Please keep posting your progress.

Peter.

indeed, what a great project. And having just watched all the videos from the start of this thread I now appreciate the majesty of such Dutch frames! A real eye opener. Keep up the good work Timh and do post more results please.

That's such an impressive achievement. I can't tell you how impressed I am. That's wonderfull.

I have been playing about with this machine and have produced a sample corner of a basic reverse moulding
hard to get to grips with but it's still developing
I will probably end up supplying them in frames only as there is a lot of machining to supply in lengths
I should be moving onto the wave style pattern soon

The timber is Swiss Pear
it machines beautifully and takes the ebonised finish very well

It's not hard to realise how many difficulties you have to get your head around to make something like that produce a satisfactory result. That is a massive achievement and the corner samples that you have been able to produce so far are amazing! Are other profiles and patterns planned? I am ever so impressed.