Replies

1. 
   lat_axe | Jun 25, 2020 04:58am | #1

   It would take a humongous router bit to do that profile. It was probably made with a shaper rather than a router.

   A fine book by Graham Blackburn concerning hand tools mentions that even the large range of router bits available today is unlikely to be able to provide all of the profiles found in older furniture made with hollow & round handplanes or one-off handplanes made by a plane-maker and providing a unique profile dreamt up by a cabinetmaker.

   WIth hollows & rounds, a profile of some complexity can be built up by taking several passes over the edge to be profiled with different cove and rounding profiles as well as a rabbet plane used to remove bulk before applying the round or hollow profile. You can do the same with router bits of a fairly simple profile - multiple passes with different bits on different sections of the edge to make a complex overall profile.

   That profile you picture is large but not that complex and could probably be made with a few simple router bits and multiple passes. The trick is to get the sequence of bits right as well as their position when routing what's already been routed by the previous bit's profile.

   Time consuming, mind. :-)

   Lataxe

2. 
   esch5995 | Jun 25, 2020 08:59am | #2

   As Lataxe stated and I tell my customers who want existing cabinetry matched you are asking for the near impossible. I'm guessing you are trying to match existing commercial kitchen cabinets in order to add additional cabinets to your kitchen, but you need to understand that commercial cabinet makers work in an entirely different league than local word workers or hobbyists. They think nothing of custom ground profiles for their shaper cutters because they defer the costs over thousands of cabinets. The time and impossibly finicky set up required to cut that profile using multiple bits and operations, where one slip could ruin weeks worth of effort, cause me to advise to you to think of something else. In fact given the effort you appear to be putting into stripping and refinishing the existing cabinets you may have been better off buying all new cabinets. Barring that I would check out commercial door manufacturers such as Elias Wordworking out of Canada and others for a suitable facsimile.

3. 
   stantheman | Jun 25, 2020 09:43am | #3

   Check with Eagle-America. They have a lot of unusual profiles, and that one looks similar to one I have seen on their site for picture frames.

4. 
   geedubbee | Jun 25, 2020 01:08pm | #4

   Agreed. Shaper cutter. You may be able to build that profile with multiple passes of different bits. I wouldn't want to do more than 1 or 2 doors that way. How many do you need?

   
5. 
   kcgolfer | Jun 25, 2020 02:08pm | #5

   Thanks for the input guys. There are two doors customer wants to match to existing kitchen cabinets. These will be for recess in the wall right next to the fireplace in the living room. Kitchen cabinets are visible from there, but not in the same room. So perfect match isn't necessary, but I haven't found anything close. Building up the profile with multiple cuts is probably the way to go, but might be too much work for this. I don't have a shaper, so that's not an option. I may try to track down who originally built the cabinets and see if they are still in business. Thanks again.

6. 
   mikaol | Jun 29, 2020 08:04pm | #6

   could be a roundover/roundunder bit. Found mine at EagleAmerica.
   Mikaol

7. 
   DRBWWing | Jun 30, 2020 11:07am | #7

   Check with some local cab shops they may have a close enough shaper profile.