Replies

1. 
   KeithNewton | Aug 15, 2006 04:51am | #1

   I think you are making this a lot harder than it should be.

   I take the fence off and get it out of the way, then just clamp the board right to the saw table. I like to use a shaper head with a cove or flute shape. I like to feed from the right side diagonally up and across to the left, and tile the blade arbor so that I am feeding onto the top of the cutter, rather than the side. this allows me to take larger cuts per pass, The final pass just is a skimming cut to clean up any chatter.

1. 
   EricAnderson | Aug 15, 2006 06:29am | #2

   Why feed from right to left rather than left to right?  I don't see the difference except when the blade is tilted.  My saw is a right tilt.  if the blade tilts to the right and I feed from the left, is there a problem I should be concerned about?

1. 
   KeithNewton | Aug 15, 2006 01:54pm | #3

   By tilting the arbor, and feeding from the side it is tilted to, you are getting to cut with the top of the cutter where it should be. The blade geometry is better from the stand-point of sharpness and cutting angles on the top than it is on the side, unless you have some sort of special cutter sharpened for cutting from the side.I am right handed, so I would rather have my left holding the work down and my right hand feeding.if you don't tilt the arbor, it should not make any difference, other than which hand you prefer to feed with.

2. 
   oldusty | Aug 15, 2006 05:15pm | #4

   Eric ,

              Keith has you on the right track , do away with the fence for this operation .

            To take some of the danger out you can clamp  a board on each side of the stock to be cut . This way the board can not wander away from the single guide board .

           I use a saw blade and as Keith has stated and take a small bite at a time . Since I am right handed I prefer to push with my right side and also go right to left . I have never tried  tilting the blade .

                  be safe          dusty

1. 
   KeithNewton | Aug 16, 2006 02:37am | #5

   Dusty, I have had that old sears cutter-head for so long that I just take it for granted, and forget that a lot of you may not. I don't even know if they make and sell them anymore. However, I never thought much of just using a saw blade. It just seems so hard on the blade to come into it from the side. If you have a dado head, I would try it, and tilt it over, so you can come at it from the top. I think you will get a lot more aggressive cut. I think I would even try swapping the outside cutters, just to see if you got a better finish cut. It may save a lot of time from sanding.

1. 
   oldusty | Aug 16, 2006 03:29am | #6

   Keith ,

                Your are sure right about being a slow process , but as seldom as needed it works out . I think as a rule of thumb I never cut more then half the thickness of the teeth or maybe a 1/16 per pass or so . A kidney scraper with some elbow grease to clean the cove up .

        I still use an old Sears molding head to cut bead board panels and such .

          I have made some awesome moldings using that method , not fast but nice . Original designs that really look cool . It's amazing the variety of profiles a 10" blade will cut .

                       take care           dusty

3. 
   coolbreeze | Aug 18, 2006 05:30am | #7

   Eric,

   IMHO there is a simpler way. That has been covered. I like to flatten a piece of wood(fir will do), set it at the estimated angle, clamp it and run a couple of cuts and see where I am going. After a couple quick adjustments, you should run until you get to about 90% then you can make a final adjustment if needed.

   My real reson to reply, however is to tell you that I purchasede a cove cutter bit from CMT. I actually got it in a Lonnie Bird kit. They have individual bits.  If you are going to be making a lot of your own moldings, it is worth the price. The time you save in the finish(sanding/scraping) work is well worth it.

   Cool 

1. 
   EricAnderson | Aug 18, 2006 07:06am | #8

   I tried an experiment cove cutting both pine and white oak using a Forrest WWII going both right and left across a blade tilted at 20 degrees.  I did not see much difference and it appeared that going across the blade left to right on a right tilt saw with the 20 degrees of tilt produced a slightly smoother cut.  I did not notice any real difference in the force of pushing the work into the blade.  Not scientific, but it will take a much better test to detect any real difference.  Can anyone give any different experience from tests both ways?

   Anyway, pushing from left to right could be done with the right hand if you were standing near the end of the saw on the left side.  This gives much more room for the canted fence on the table.  See below

   http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/eganders/Fencepositionedforcovecutting001.jpg

   http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/eganders/Fencepositionedforcovecutting002.jpg

   Now if I can attach the canted fence to the Unifence somehow, it would be easy to move the canted fence parallel by moving the normal Unifence.  That way I could create the same cove on different sides of a rectangular piece of stock without complex repositioning.  All I would have to do is move the Unifence, not the angle.

   Any thoughts of how to best accomplish this from my photos?