More Molding Madness

When last we met, I had managed to get two good pieces of cove crown molding cut to proper length for the front of the base & upper cabinets. The problems mitering and applying this molding weren't over yet. Not by a long shot.

After getting the front pieces cut to length, I started working on the side pieces. I mitered one side piece on my table saw using my Osborne EB-3 set to 22.5° & with the blade at 90°. I then put this piece next to the front piece. Instead of going back along the side of the cabinet, it turned 45° in the same plane as the front of the cabinet. I realized I had placed the piece flat on the table instead of holding it in the position it would be in on the cabinet.

So I mitered it again. The side pieces were extra long, so I wasn't worried about running out of material. This one looked good. Then I did the other side piece.

Next, I beveled a piece at 45° to form some blocks to attach to the back of the molding. These blocks would help keep the molding at the right angle & would allow me to drive brads into the cabinet through them. This last bit would allow me to keep from driving brads through the actual molding face.

I cut some blocks from this beveled piece & glued them to the back of the molding. I drove one or two 5/8" brads through the blocks into the back of the molding to help hold the blocks in place. One of the brads ended up protruding through the front of the piece of molding, so I decided to put that aside & replace it later.

I glued the front piece to the base cabinet, driving 3/4" long 18 gauge brads at an angle through the glue blocks at an angle into the carcase. I found that the bottom edge of the molding on one end wasn't in contact with the face of the cabinet. This is because the top rail of the face frame isn't flush with the stiles but stands proud of it by less than 1/32". I've been meaning to sand the face flush & never got to it, and right now it was too late. So I grabbed a clamp & that fixed that.

But because the molding was no longer lying flat, the miter angle changed. I found this out after I attached one of the side pieces & found that it didn't wrap around the corner correctly. In fact, it didn't follow the top edge of the cabinet but angled down. I wasn't very happy about this. I ended up cutting off this piece of molding because I knew I could do better.

So now begins several days -- yes, several days -- of trying various different combinations of angles. I'd try a few cuts, get frustrated, and walk away. Mind you, it wasn't 8 hours a day of trying this. Usually just 30 minutes of so after work & dinner at the end of the day. After all, I'm not in a hurry to finish this.

And yes, during this interval, I also planed & sanded the part of the face frame rail that is still visible flush with the face frame stiles.

I figured that since the piece was angling down, I needed to use a compound cut. After a couple of days of trying this & not getting good results, I set the bevel back to zero and just played with the miter angle. And that's when I found that a miter angle of about 23° did the trick.

The photo above shows the joint and the mitered piece after I finally got everything right. And the photo below shows the completed base cabinet crown molding.

Earlier in the week, I stopped at the Tool Nut on my way home from work & I picked up a Bostitch 23 gauge pin nailer. I went with this nailer because:

• This nailer allows you to adjust the counter sink depth at the tool. The Porter Cable nailer requires you to adjust the regulator on the compressor.
• The Bostitch can shoot pins 1/2" to 1 3/16" long; the PC shoots pins 1/2" to 1" long.
• They didn't have the Porter Cable nailer in stock.

When I got the nailer home, I used it to pin the molding you see in the pictures above. There was a problem, though. It turns out that Bostitch had shipped a number of these nailers with a plunger that was too short. As a result, the tool will not counter sink the pins. But turning up the pressure on the regulator, I was able to get the pins just flush with the surface.

After posting about this on WoodNet, I called Bostitch customer service and was told that a new plunger assembly is on its way to me. I should get it on Monday or Tuesday. Once I have it, I will replace the assembly & I'll be able to use this nailer again.

Now that I finally got this molding finished, it was time to put a cap on top of the crown. This was a lot easier -- the cap is just a piece of 3/4" stock about 1 3/8" wide, mitered around the corners. Getting these miters right was a no brainer after dealing with the crown molding. The photo below shows the top of the base cabinet with the cap just clamped to the base molding, but not yet glued.

When it came time to attach the cap rail, what I did was apply glue to the crown molding & the glue blocks. I then used the spring clamps to hold the rail in place. I took my 18 gauge brad nailer and drove a brad at an angle through the back edge of the cap and into the glue blocks. This keeps the brads from showing, since the upper cabinet will be right behind them.

The photo above shows the finished base cabinet. That's a shadow on the lower right hand side. All I have left to do on this base cabinet is some more finish sanding.

That's enough for now. We're almost up to date. All that's left is to update you on the moldings on the upper cabinet.

Crown Molding Woes

I've read lots of posts on WoodNet about mitering crown molding, but I had no idea how difficult the stuff could really be until I tried it myself. Between special events at my church and trying to get this stuff right, it's taken me several weeks to get where I am right now. And I'm not done with this stuff yet.

After routing the moldings, there was a fair amount of rippling on the surface that needed to be sanded out. So I got out my 80 grit paper & went to town. Due to the shape, I just used my fingers to back the sandpaper. This took a couple of nights of work to smooth. I didn't work on it continuously, mind you. It was too cold in the garage to work on it continuously.

After getting two pieces of molding that I felt I could use & sanding them smooth, I took one piece & cut a 22.5° miter on one end. I then took the larger piece of molding over to the base cabinet and marked where I thought I needed to cut the miter for the other end.

And I got it wrong. The piece ended up being too short.

The picture above illustrates what I think happened. I marked the place to cut the molding on the front face, where the cove ended, instead of on the back of the piece. And when I cut it, I lined my mark up with the kerf in my zero clearance insert, forgetting that the back of the cut would be further inboard because of the miter angle. So the piece ended up too short.

Now I had a problem. I need to attach two of these moldings to the cabinet, one at the top of the base cabinet & one at the top of the upper cabinet. I didn't have enough material to make another piece from the molding I'd already made, and I didn't have any material from which to make another molding. What to do?

Remember I said I munged up another piece of molding in my last update? Well, the picture above shows how badly that was munged up. I figured I had to salvage this piece, which was almost exactly 5' long.

So I chucked the bit back up and set everything up. I carefully set the fence's position so it would only remove a very small amount of material from the thinnest portion of the molding. And I set a piece of plywood (actually the template for the arch on the base molding) in place of a feather board to hold the stock against the fence. I used my CMT feather board to keep the stock flat on the table.

When I pushed the stock through, I tried to keep it against not the fence but against the "feather board". This worked great and I was able to salvage the piece. The picture below shows the two good pieces of molding I ended up with when all was said & done.

Now that I had two good pieces of the molding, each about 5' long, you'd think I would cut the second piece properly. Well, some how, I screwed it up again & cut the next piece even shorter!

Frustration sets in. Hang up the apron, shut off the light, and go cool off.

The good news is the third and fourth times were the charm. I got both pieces for the base & upper cabinets from the remaining 5' long piece & they were both cut too long! I could now sneak up to the right length.

That's all for now. See you soon.

What a week!

This past week has been extremely busy for me. I didn't get much time to work on my project, though. I spent the week going to work, leaving there & coming home, having dinner, and then traveling to my church to listen to a special speaker. He was at the church from Sunday through Friday.

I have done some work on the cabinet about which I have to update everyone, but I haven't had a chance to do any writing since the week before this. I will get some thing written up this week & post it as soon as I can, I promise.

In the meantime, please bear with me and I will get something written up soon.

Tony

Making Crown Molding

I've been working on the cove / crown molding for the past two weekends now. I've had some ups and downs with this molding. I was able to make two good pieces, out of three attempts. The third didn't turn out too good. And then I had problems when I went to miter the finished molding. But that's getting ahead of where I'm going.

I started out by mounting the crown molding bit I bought into my Bosch 1617EVS router, which was still in the router table after making the ogee molding previously. I then set the height of the bit, as you can see in the photo above. The workpiece is actually cut wider than the bit is tall. I did this so that there would still be some uncut material left that could ride on the fence & keep the board from sniping.

When I was done setting the bit's height, I then put my new fence onto the table & found the hole I'd cut in it on the band saw was too short for the bit. So I enlarged it, as you can see in the photo above. Initially, I just turned on the router & pulled the fence through the bit from back to front. At first, it seemed that the bit was binding on the fence. There was a lot of vibration & noise evident as the bit spun. So I enlarged the hole. But this didn't have any effect on the vibration. In fact, at one point, I thought that the bearings in the router were shot.

Well, it turns out that the vibration was caused by the combination of the runout in the router itself, the mass of the bit, and the speed at which it was spinning. At just the right speed, the router hit a resonant frequency and the wobble in the bit was maximized. The vibration was so intense that the clamps holding the fence in place actually loosened.

And this is what caused the first board I was running through the bit to get screwed up. The fence was moving away from the bit as I pushed the stock against it, causing the cut to get deeper & deeper. Lots of chip out occurred.

I ended up reducing the speed & the vibration was greatly reduced, though not completely eliminated. I was able to get the other 5' board I had finished without any mishaps. But the vibration did leave a rippled surface on the molding that had to be sanded smooth.

Carefully looking over the first board, I decided it wouldn't be useful. So the next weekend (this past weekend), I made a third piece. The photo above shows the third molding after the first pass. The photo below shows the same board after the first pass from the end, so you can see how much of the profile has been cut.

The photo below shows the end of the finished molding. The pencil lines show the material that has to be removed from the molding to form the final profile.

Finally, the photo below shows the surface of the molding after the final pass. You can clearly see the ripples I mentioned earlier.

That's enough for now. We'll pick this up next time.