Shaper usage

Travis Porter

Member
Messages
292
Location
Wake Forest, NC
The LOML was gracious enough to buy me a shaper for my birthday (back in September). Of course I had to go out and immediately buy some cutters for it, a Freud set with the raised panel cutter and the stile and rail set. The raised panel cutter is straight forward enough to me, but the stile and rail set is not as straight forward. I have done it many times with a router on a router table, but on those cutters you have bearings to go by.

So, what should you cut first, the cope or the rails?

How do you keep the cope from shortening the length of your board? It seems a bit difficult to line the fence up perfectly, or maybe I am not doing it right.

I did my first rails and stiles on it for my dresser (cuts a whole lot cleaner than a router), but it took a lot of fussing and drew a fair amount of blood as I cut my hands up pretty bad tinkering with the fence and the cutters.

I got Lonnie Bird's shaper book, but it doesn't tell you a whole lot about it.

Any insight or suggestions?

Oh, here are the pics for proof of acquisition.

shaper w fence.JPG
shaper cutters.JPG
 
travis, it`s best to cut the cope first if possible `cause it stops tearout .....in order to do so accurately i use a sled, one that rides in the miter guage works well.....cut boards slightly oversized for length and use an index on the sled.......don`t try to index off the fence as you where taught to do with a router.......if you`re feeding with the cutter on your right use stops on your left side to index the board......cope one end on all boards then measure the remaining stock, move the stop over enough to leave the desired length....in practice it`s much faster than discribing it:eek: ......tod
 
wow tod, i never thought of doing it like that. but i bet that does work better and is probably faster. my luck with my bad short term memory i'd forget to cut the pieces long. :doh:

thanks for sharing that

chris
 
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