Nice work.

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Paul - Absolutely no offense taken. I really do appreciate the things a CNC can add to the craftsman's toolkit, even if I do not use one.
Being digitally defiecfive, I spent a few years trying to draw with a computer and just cannot get comfortable with it as I do not find it intuitive at all. Making two radii fences, on the other hand, is intuitive to me and a joy to discover as the solution to a problem.
Fortunately, it is a big world, and plenty of room for us all to find our way.

I'm sorry, I don't see why the compound curve? I do see a flat, plan-curve, but I don't see how the crown also needs to curve to meet the curved ceiling? Wouldn't that just be a beveled edge to meet the slope?

Looks great!

David, thanks for the post. Very interesting, and well illustrates the direct approach you bring to challenging millwork tasks.

B.H. Davs, would you mind elaborating on how you milled the profile on that complex serpentine piece? It appears that you used a cnc router to cut the initial shape in elevation. Did you then go to a bandsaw to cut the curve in plan, and what machinery did you use for the profile?

Great work David.

I always appreciate the old school new school argument. The harsh reality is they don't build cars the same way they built the model t, why would you expect wood working to be the same way. I find myself some where in the middle, just old enough to have had to do it the old fashion way, young enough to know I would never go back!

I do take some exception to the notion if you use cnc or any other new technology you are any less of a craftsman. The cnc doesn't repair bad glue joints, hide flaws in the wood or grain, or cover up any other flaws in what you present it. The only difference between how you executed your product or how we would have on the cnc is probably the countless hours of labor. Same thought process, same understanding of how to layout a compound curve, same careful selection of material, it's just drawn in the computer .
The guys that did think cnc would make them an instant premier woodworker are selling address plaques on Craig's list.

I wouldn't look at this as David is an old world craftsman and some guy using a cnc is a high tech operator.

As in any business you should own the proper equipment and skills to use them for 95% of the products you produce in a year.

There is no point in having a $100k cnc that allows you to do one complicated moulding once a year, if you can use your experience and basic machinery to produce the same result with no more investment. Obviously, most of the cnc work is 2D on panels and they are sometimes used for 3D work.

BH's business is a very good example of how you can fully embrace new technologies as another tool in addition to your old standard tools. He is still using a modified WH moulder daily along with a couple of cnc routers to produce complicated mouldings. Most of the templating is done on the cnc. Depending on a speed/quality ratio he determines how much of the project will be milled on the Super Hussy or the cnc. Very smart business and craft.

Jim- My thoughts exactly as the room progressed - the crown would follow the perimeter radius and run from beam to beam as a nice single radius.

However, once we put the 1/4" cherry ply ceiling on the 'top of the pie slice', the ply was defining a rise in the center of what is a 4' length along the edge where the perimeter crown was to go. We could have added a filler of some kind, and tried that, but it looked like a get-over. The plywood was bent where it would go, and basically it bent onion plane and was forced to bend to the outer perimeter.

So we either had to figure a way way around the problem, or make 12 concave, 3D formed, ceiling panels. Somehow. We decided to try to make the crown work, within the parameter of "no compromise".

We canted a single radius piece up in the center and it looked better. We calculated the radius needed to 'tilt' the piece up and made up a quick blank. That radius was 170", so rather flat in comparison the the 92" radius of the room at that point.

My concern, and your first thought I bet, is that the crowns were not 'laying' flat and would look like a scalloping as it went around the room. And in fact they 'scallop', but it iscompletely undetectable in the finished room. Whew!

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View higher quality, full size image (800 X 533)

View higher quality, full size image (800 X 533)

The factor that came into play is that the beam crowns intersected the perimeter crowns at an angle - like trying to run crown on a cathedral ceiling. That would require what is called a 'developed' molding of two different widths, profiles stretched or compressed, etc. We needed to have the two crowns miter at a vertical (like a flat ceiling).

Since we could not have a flat ceiling, and we needed that miter to meet at a 'flat', we had to tilt a single radius perimeter crown down in the center. That would look very bad, so we forced it to a second radius to lay flat. And appear flat.

David -Beautiful work-Thanks for sharing some of your knowledge. I have nothing but respect and admiration for your skill.

Kevin,

First, my apologies for not responding sooner. Many months ago I changed my email address and didn't notice that the Firefox autofill feature had put the old one in as the notification address. As such I didn't receive emails notification of the responses. I didn't see your question until I came back to the thread today.

Yes, you are correct on the cut out procedure. We did the shallow elevation view (face) cut on the CNC to define that shape. Then since the blank was too tall to fit on the CNC for the plan view location cut we made the template shown in the photo on the web page. That template showed us how much wood had to be added to the top/center of the blank to achieve full horizontal projection depth.

After tracing the template we then did all the rest of the cutting on the band saw.

Profiling was done on our custom tilting Williams and Hussey (Tilt-O-Hussey) using a fence system similar to David's.

Since it was serpentine in plan view though the only curve to the table (bottom) fence could be the plan curve radius at the center of the cabinet. That gave us bottom support along the back of the curve for the center of the moulding. However for the reverse curve and straight ends the moulding had to ride on the single apex point of that curved table side fence. There is no automatic guide for this........it took the 15 to 20 years each of skilled Williams and Hussey experience of my two shop guys to pull it off.

BH Davis

Awesome bunch of information in here. Phenomenal work David (and also B.H.). Crazy stuff.

Thank you for posting david. B.H. What drove you to make a tilting head williams and hussey? How does the tilting head williams and hussey differ from a micron machine?

Hey thanks Dave,

I think I finally see what you’re doing. The crown moldings are really functioning as large, panel molds, running along the ceiling beams and the top of the horizontal cornice detail? The problem, as I see it, occurs at the joints. This is understandable since any connecting joints, coupled with a turn, between a raked ceiling and a level one, is theoretically impossible, at least between two identical moldings (as you're aware).

You’ve addressed this by turning the horizontal crown molding, flatter along the wall (thereby, increasing it’s profile length) and forming a better mate to the raked, beam-crown? Since this action moves the curved, cornice molding, out of a horizontal plane, you’ve made it “double-curvature” and brought it back down? Is this correct? Very clever and perhaps the best way to approach this!

It is however, still theoretically impossible. Congratulations to you and the installer, for ferreting this one out. I do wonder though, if it might be possible to accomplish the same thing, without asking trim-carpenters and ourselves to jump through hoops, awhile pulling rabbits from hats? Doing “the impossible” always ends-up being expensive and time consuming.

Here are a few ideas of my own, which may (or may not) prove useful.

I’d leave the raked crown molding which runs along the curved ceiling-beams, unchanged, with the possible exception of milling it all flat (like any straight crown). These moldings are curved but only in the vertical plane and should be able to be cut from ¾” boards, especially since you have a W&H machine? A tilting shaper-head would also allow for an all flat, profile cut, that, or an Arch-Molder. (This is significantly safer and uses less material, than any horizontal milling-plan, with big propeller shaper knives etc.)
The profile of the horizontal, crown is altered to mate with the vertical crown and miter-joint. This is a “developed detail” (as Dave has already suggested.) Instructions for doing this, are in books or in the knowledge-base. This will require some custom tooling.

I might try a flat-cut, “spring molding” first, before surrendering to big glue-ups and horizontal milling. This is a process of making flat arcs, lay around a horizontal cone. All you need is a little trigonometry to determine the required radius and a bending-test to ensure success. The test is simple. Take a straight piece of crown, lay it flat, against the curved surface in question and bend. If it bends without breaking, “your in business” otherwise steam or kerf-cuts may make installation easier. Either way, the curved molding is bent and secured between the beams and actually “wants” to lay right.

These curved pieces of spring-molding, are milled exactly the same way as the ceiling crown. while paying attention to the profiles up-down orientation. They’re also the first to be installed and bent or “sprung” into position. The ends are left square. Next, useing a compound-miter saw, the raked moldings, are mitered and then coped to the mated horizontal detail.

Anyway, this is my attempt at “doing the impossible.” I can be more specific but I’m already writing a book here, sorry. This is an interesting problem, with excellent results already demonstrated by Dave. I just don’t like asking employees (or myself) to do impossible stuff. I'm interested in opinions and don't mind folks telling me that "I'm so full of it that my blues eyes are turning brown.

To: Dave, and all the other awesome craftsmen.
This is one of the best post I have read in a long time. To have so many of the best in the business chime in on Dave's post is remarkable. All of you do amazing work, thanks for sharing the pics and the information.
Jim I hear thru the grapevine you retired, good for you! enjoy
Have a great weekend
Russ @ MR

Jim,

If I understand your description correctly there are two problems to your solution.

First you can't really bend a standard straight run crown to a curve. I know you have tons of experience with curves so will defer to a more detailed explanation of why this should work if you can provide one. However my experience is that the top edge and bottom edge of the crown are bending at different radii and subsequently the crown stick will lay itself flat up against the ceiling rather than stay out at 45° or 52° angle as it bends along the curve of the ceiling.

Second is that if you bend a straight stick to a curve it will curve the center section in a non-true radius arc while the very ends will remain straight. Theoretically you could force the center to a uniform radius, and start the stick overlong to have it bend far enough out to do the job. However in this situation I doubt either could be done successfully.

Thanks for the long and detailed explanation of your theory. I too find it scary to run overly large knives on the shaper. Years ago I heard of a fellow designing a cone shaped shaper head. He made two of them as prototypes and I bought one. It made things a lot more sane for deep cuts on the shaper. Once we built the Tilt-O-Hussey though the cone head went on the shelf has has rarely been brought back out over the years. While it was safer than a cylindrical shaper head the geometry involved in making knives was complex. CT Saw & Tool got it down and made a lot of knives for that head. However it's been so long now that they would be scratching their heads again to come up with the forumlas they used back then.

BH Davis

I don't have any experience with it, but it seems like a C axis would have to be considered for this.

Tyler,

I never bought the Micron because I felt it took the one downside of running curves on the WH and incorporated it as the primary drive method in their machine.

Running curves on the WH means the rollers are pushing the moulding straight while the centering fixtures guide bearings are trying to force it to a curve. The two systems are always fighting against one another. For true radius mouldings this is not a major issue so long as you make a curved fence. In daily production though curved fences take too much time to make plus most of our mouldings are non-true radius or have tangent straight legs. Only eyebrow shape mouldings continue to curve on the full length.

For curved crowns though when the head is tilted we don't use the centering fixture. Instead we use a single point full blank height block and or rubber roller. This holds the moulding at the correct distance from the post side for consistent cut position. It does however take a good deal of experience to get the feel for keeping the curved blank on the correct path into and out of the machine.

This is where machines like US Concepts and Stegherr have an advantage. They have outrigger roller pinch systems on either side of the entry and exit point to the cutter head. These outriggers float and can change their position as the shape of the moulding they are pushing through changes. Very nice feature.

The downside to these large machines, including the Micron, is the the 4" diameter cutter heads. The WH has the 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" square head that makes for a very small knife cutting circle by comparison. We've cut curves all the way down to a 5" radius without blow out on the WH. I doubt you could get anywhere near that small a radius with a 4" cutter head. The obvious advantage to those heads though is that they take standard corrugated knives so one set of 1/4" or 5/16" thick steel knives can be used for both the curves and straights.

BH Davis

Pat,

For shaper head profiling on the CNC I believe you would need both a C axis and an aggregate head. This is something I too have never undertaken.

We do profile crowns on the CNC on a regular basis. The Tilt-O-Hussey will cut down to a 12" inside radius. Below that we use 3D carving programming with Enroute to extrude the profile on screen and then create the code. This works for everything except where under cuts are involved. Then we'll typically split the moulding and do some of it on the shaper.

BH Davis

Tyler,

I should also mention that I'm pretty sure the Micron WH feed roller system is always parallel to the table. So when you tilt the Micron head the rollers don't tilt with it. As such on a crown moulding you only have the upper thin edge of the crown in contact with the feed rollers.

On our tilting WH the rollers of course tilt with the machine head. This mean that on a curved crown, depending upon knife design, the knives are either parallel to the face of the moulding or at least close to parallel. This gives better feed roller contact to the moulding.

I will confess that the Tilt-O-Hussey is not my own original idea. I have a friend in the same business in the mid-west who built one before I built mine........and he had seen one someone else had built.

BH Davis

Thank you for the explaination B.H.
We have a belsaw machine that we use for matching historic mouldings in our shop and do make curved fences as you describe, however the first cut can be fairly heavy sometimes depending on knife projection/ depth of cut. On straight runs we usually waste out the excess with the shaper but this can be tricky with curved profiles. Floating infeed rollers would be nice. We also make alot of glass bead on our machine using angled sleds to avoid damaging the roller/ mouldingwith the sharp point left when run flat to the table. I can see how the tilting head could be an advantage. Thanks again

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B.H. Davis, I've heard about the tilting hussey but have never seen one, would you be kind enough to share a picture or two ?And thanks all of you for sharing what is sure to become a classic post in the knowledge center.

Tim,

There is a super crude setup on Youtube. I had to build a fixed table one like it for a big job of one shape and size curved crown(2.5" x 2.5"). Once you get your head around it there are many ways to do it. All depends on how adjustable you want it.

I have collected all the different machines and they all have there special place. I own a couple Belsaws but the haven't seen the light of day in 15yrs. The WH is strictly tight radius stuff and sees infrequent use. Most of our radius stuff is done on the Mikron with the cnc as support and some 3D profiling.

Also, you don't always have to tilt the head to run radius crown!

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B H Davis,

The hypotenuse of a right triangle, whose short or vertical side of the triangle, equals the radius of the curved wall, as calculated from the pitch-angle of the spring-molded- crown molding, and the short,vertical leg, will yield the radius for flat arcs or circular segments.

These flat but curved segments (after molding) are bent around, or into the curved-wall and voila, the curved crown molding is revealed.

This is early,19th century stuff but still very good. Believe me.

This is a very interesting thread, but the last post by Jim is a head scratchier.

I found this thread where Jim AKA contributor J goes into this in more detail.

Conceptual understanding of the Cone.