The Framers Forum

This article is a brief description of everything you would need to begin manufacturing your own mouldings.
If the mainstay of your business is more general-service picture-framing, then this will only be of passing interest. If, however, you see a gap in the market and want to be able to provide a more specialised service, then this article will show you how to get started.
And the big advantage is that you have complete control over both design and supply.

Space wise you would need a garage sized area, either sectioned off or in a large garden shed.
Moneywise you could get it all in for about £800.

First in is the Spindle Moulder.
Here's one I saw on E-bay for £600 ono. It's the same as the one I use.



This is a very simple machine where you have a vertical shaft which spins at high speed. Attached to the shaft is a 6" dia. solid metal Universal Block and this is used to hold a pair of shaped cutting knives.



The knives are quickly interchangeable and you can access a total of 180 standard profiles.
Knives come in at around £25 a pair with Limiters. The limiter limits the amount of skin you can take off your fingers if you're a bit careless in your work.
And for around £50 you can have knives made to copy any given moulding.



Apart from the on-off switch and the adjustable fences on the spindle moulder, the big black wheel is to raise the shaft/cutter head up and down.

To use a spindle-moulder you will next need a chip/dust extractor.
I saw this on E-bay for £90


The final machine to have is a bench saw. I've been using a builder's site saw for the past 30 years and here's one on E-bay going for around £40. It's best to look for a sawblade dia. of at least 30cm.


Now we can look at what you can do with all this equipment.
I've taken as an example a length of R&H F8 obeche.


Using a simple 'rebating knife' I have cut into the profile as shown.


Next, I have used a twin scooping knife to create a hollow sight edge, a surface detail and a hollow on the outside wall.


The profile is then given a rebate to finish.


I only know of two members on this forum who use this sort of machinery and that's Timh and Fusionframer. I believe both have a more substantial machine set up but even with the light-craft machines shown here you can produce dozens of high value frames to match your own designs, creativity and finishes.
As usual I am more than happy to answer any questions or receive critical comments on this article.
I would however urge NYAF to PLEASE NOT comment on this topic.

Excellent post Dermot! I'll refer back to this if I ever take the plunge. One step at a time! It's taken us all Summer to convert a log shed into a dedicated hand finishing workshop, nearly there though. You'll have to drop in and see it?

Hi Dermot. Great post
You can start with all the above and I have built on that setup.
A few things I would add though is framers with staff would need to look at the health and safety aspects. As you mention,you can lose skin off your finger and much worse. Weighing up cost especially with the price on electric is another factor against buying in. That said the benefits do give you more scope and edge on services offered. Looking forward to seeing this thread develop and I am happy to answer any questions alongside Dermot
Ps, I've been making moulding for 12 years and now no longer buy finished mouldings.

Hi Dermot,

Very useful information. As you mention, like Timh, i machine my own mouldings. It was initially by accident that i took this direction as i agreed to make some very large frames (4m x 3m) and purchased some basic machinery like you posted. Things developed from there and my setup is different now.

The R&H obeche fillets are brilliant for machining mouldings. I believe obeche is very hard to get in the Uk as rough sawn timber. 2 James Latham depots stock it for specific customers, one being near me by chance.

Once you get those machines and find you are hooked, you can start machining your own rough saw timber. For this, you can justify buying another toy, a planer thicknesser. I started with a £500 second hand Axminster machine which did me proud. You can then buy rough saw timber and with a table saw and planer thicknesser. Below is an offcut of oak i used for a job.
One pass through on the planer and it looks like this
If you do go down this path, tulipwood is a good alternative to obeche if it is going to be painted. The other thing to point out that the quality of the pine you can use is entirely different to pine you find in the likes of b & q or even travis perkins. There are 9 grades of pine, B&Q uses grade 7 at best (what they call redwood). Stuff at travis perkins and jewsons is better at 5 or 6. I have not come across grade 1, but i use grade 2 from a local timber yard and it is like a different timber. I tend to get 4.5 - 5 metre lengths This is 2.5 inchs thick and a 4.5 metre length would cost you about £52 plus VAT.
So, with a planer thicknesser added to above items Dermot showed, think how many lengths of mouldings you could machine from that.

The added benefit of the above setup is that if you wish, you have the kit to start making other things, even if it is for your own home. I started by making my own door and a friend cut the mortices for me. From there, i started getting asked to make some doors and then windows. But another easy item to make without a morticer is kitchen cupboard doors, so you can freshen up a kitchen for a fraction of what you would pay. The point is, these are bits of kit that give you the opportunity to do far more than make mouldings.

Crikey, well done if you have bothered to get all the way through. Hope it may be of help to someone though.

Nick

Justintime wrote: Wed 05 Oct, 2022 4:15 pm It's taken us all Summer to convert a log shed into a dedicated hand finishing workshop

Hi Justin.
Thanks for your comment. Now I'm worried - where will the logs go?
I'll have to call in, inspect and sign -off on the workshop.

Timh wrote: Thu 06 Oct, 2022 5:44 am
need to look at the health and safety aspect

That's a very good point Tim. If you have staff then you really need to have someone well trained in using these sorts of machines. In the end you have to virtually smother the machine in safety guarding.
On your own though I believe it's better to have a more unrestricted view of all the moving parts, ie to see the risks is to know the risks.
I'm curious to understand the comment you made about the electrics, though.
It's good to know you no longer buy in any finished mouldings. That always gets my full respect. How do you deal with Mr and Mrs Average who just want something simple for their walls?

Hi Matt.
The electrics comment is linked to rising utility costs. Some of the machines run all day sometimes and can drain power. I should have said that I bought a moretens four sided planer. I can make 200 feet of a plain square section in about 20 minutes. If the Mr and Mrs jo average call in they usually go for painted sections sometimes gessoed, sometimes with gilding added in real or artificial leaf.
Like fusion framer I've also made stuff for home. Lastly being a new front door.
If anyone wants to start ,do like fusion said. Start basic and develop. You soon acquire a taste and then it's onto eBay for an upgrade!

fusionframer wrote: Thu 06 Oct, 2022 8:01 am


you can start machining your own rough saw timber.


Nick

I agree Nick. Therre is something quite satisfying about buying in big lenghts of rough-sawn timber and fashioning a picture frame out of it. I used to have a planer/thicknesser.
It blew up. 'Don't have it anymore.
And the thing is, you can still get away with just pushing the planks through the site saw until you have an acceptable reference face to work off. I know it's not going to be perfect but often the beauty is in those tiny wobbles and imperfections to the shape.
Sometimes getting it too right - is just wrong!

That's fascinating to know about grades of pine. You can tell from the photo that that is a good quality board.
I'm glad you enjoyed the topic. The purpose was really to show how easy it is to get started without getting too wrapped up in machinery spec.

Hi Dermot,

Yes, it does not take much to get going. The other point will be that if you buy decent 2nd hand kit, if you did find it was not for you, you can sell and pretty much get your money back. Spindle moulders like Kity, startrite and similar hold their values much as morsos do.

One thing to add to the health and safety discussion. If you do have staff, any machines will require to meet current regulations, one in particular is the requirement for a blade on a spindle moulder or table saw to stop within 10 seconds. They can be fitted with dc brakes, i recently had my radial arm saw fitted with one which set me back £1000 (parts and fitting). Slightly annoying when i paid £500 for the saw, but it is needed.

If it is just you, then you don't need this.

Nick

fusionframer wrote: Thu 06 Oct, 2022 7:10 pm the requirement for a blade on a spindle moulder or table saw to stop within 10 seconds.

Are you sure it's as long as that?
My spindle moulder stops within about 4 or 5 seconds, though the table saw does whirr away for nearly 1/2 minute.

That is what i was told by the guys who service my machines. They failed my old wadkin radial arm saw which took about 40 seconds to come to a stop and said 10 seconds is legal requirement.
From the H & S rules

"New woodworking machines should all come fitted with some form of braking where necessary. Machinery must be equipped with an automatic brake that stops the tool in a sufficiently short time (defined in European Standards as ten seconds or less) if there is a risk of contact with the tool while it runs down
If working on your own you can get away with it, but if you have staff, it is worth checking if it meets H&S requirements first."

A lot of the older machines do stop quickly so there is still plenty of good choices at the prices you showed on your post.

Cheers

Nick

Thanks for that Nick.
I know that some more modern machines can come to an abrupt halt and I thought the legislation was to cover that.
But, as you would say, that's for others to worry about.
I just work by myself but if I did have anyone in helping out, I'd be very wary about letting them anywhere near the machines - although it is helpful sometimes to have someone collect the timber out of the saw and pass it back to the operator.

I tried to post this the other day but it wouldn't let me.

Anyway, this is the only moulding I've made from a piece of PSE square wood.
I used my router (freehand) and my cheapo table saw. It was for a 'rustic' finish moulding so
it was forgiving of any irregularities but it came out well and was used on a customer job.
I roughed up the face and back with a wire brush.

Otherwise the most I ever tend to do is apply a round-over + quirk to an existing square moulding or
cove or chamfer. I now have a half-decent router table for this.

Yes, A router table is a good way to go for small one -off jobs. It also gives the operator a taste for the concept of carving out their own profiles.
That's quite brave of you to use PSE timber.

I used to use a lot of the pine stretcher from R&H as a base for many of the frames I made.
Because it was much cheaper than obeche, relatively knot-free and felt heavier and more substantial, I thought this was a clever and well considered move.
However - fresh pine is quite a 'mobile' timber.

On thin profiles you can get away with it but on very wide profiles, 3 or 4 inches, then the wood can shrink significantly across the grain, meaning that the nice tight mitres that left my workshop end up splitting open when in the customers warm living room!

Very interesting thread, been thinking about making my own mouldings for a while. I have the space for some more machinery so I might start thinking about it a bit more seriously.

Matt

Another thing, I'd love to make my own ripple pieces too. Does anyone here make ripple pieces using regular machinery? I can make basic some fairly basic stuff on my router table but that's about it.
Here's a frame I made based on some R&H A112.


Matt

As you said, you can make some ripple mouldings with your router table. If you had a spindle moulder then you could have a bespoke knife made to the ripple shape of choice. Either way it's a fairly slow laborious process.

Timh has made himself an original wave machine. Extraordinary feat. It may have been a lockdown project.
But even he says that producing lengths of ripple mouldings is slow and very hard physical work. Perhaps he will come back in to explain it better.

The most obvious way is to keep buying the ripple mouldings in from the USA but then there's the price to think about.

Another solution is to replicate the wood pasta as found on the pasta mouldings from R&H.
The 'pasta' itself can be made from a mixture of fine sawdust/ wood glue and linseed oil with driers. You would have to experiment a bit or buy some wood-filler gel to mix with sawdust.

To shape the pasta you would go to your local wood-turner and get them to make a wooden wheel about 5" in dia and 1" thick. Then get them to cut a 3/4" wide central channel on the wheel circumference and about 1/4" deep.
Now fill that channel with fine surface Milliput.
Using a drill bit as an axle, roll the wheel slowly over an oiled length of ripple moulding. The Milliput will take up the impression of the moulding and should then be left to harden.
The wood turner can then smooth off any excess Milliput to give you a functioning moulding wheel.

To produce the ripple moulding, roll or extrude a lenght of wet pasta onto some wood and then guide the wheel over the lenght and let dry.

Your work with tabernacle frames and ripple mouldings is a credit to you.
Have a look anyone on the insta. page - https://www.instagram.com/northwood_framing/