Question
(WOODWEB Member):
I'm entering new territory and need advice. The work involves fabricating casings, frames and sashes for doors and windows, both having double-glazed glass panels, including the moulding. A few of the designs call for solid wood panels, essentially rails tenoned into the stiles. Wood is primarily red cedar, from 1 3/4" – 2 3/8" thick by 3 1/2"-4 1/2" wide. Ten to thirty units a month. Some of these Euro-profiles are quite complex. All installed with European hardware.
I don’t have a shaper, nor have I ever used one. My budget is $3,500 although I could push it to 5k. I’ve gained a lot by going through the Knowledge Base and I’ve ordered a couple of books. I'm in Mexico City with limited used equipment available. There’s a Griggio TC-2000 available for $5.9k (out of my budget). I’ve also available an Invicta DS-15 for $2.5k, fair condition. It has a 1.25” spindle, lacks the miter slot on the table – although I don’t know how important that is. The dealer says the motor, non-reversing, is 5hp, but I think it’s 7.5 (there’s a lot of nomenclature missing). Purchasing used in the US is not viable for the freight and import duty involved.
Also of course is the investment in cutters (Oertli/Leitz?) and a power feeder. So I was thinking, at least for starters, that the Invicta and a Festool Domino XL DF700 might be the way to go.
Forum Responses
(Solid Wood Machining Forum)
From contributor D:
Joe Calhoun of Cascade Millwork in Colorado is the man to talk to. He has even been running a few seminars at his shop with Rangate Supply and Garniga tooling. I think the challenge will be to do this on your budget.
10 to 30 units per month is possible using a shaper. Minimum shaper for profiling is 7 1/2HP with minimum 1 1/4” shaft . 40 or 50mm shaft is best for this. A pull out extension bar for outside profiling of assembled sash and frame is another desired feature. Without this you will have to build extensions around the shaper. A 5 hp could work but would require 2 passes on most profiles. Minimum 4 roll feeder. 6 roll is better if you find one.
For tenoning, again minimum 7 1/2 HP. Best is a side mount sliding table typical of the heavier Euro shapers, a tenoning hood because the tenon heads are too large to fit in a shaper fence. Tenoning and profiling can be done on the same shaper if set up right. It's better if the shaper does not have a miter slot. You don’t want to make these cuts with a sled.
I started out coping and doweling the joints using a bolt on sliding table for the shaper. It was marginal but worked to get a start. Your idea of the Festool Domino XL is a good one. We have been testing one of these and are pretty impressed with what a handheld machine can do. I did a review using it on Euro doors and windows on the Festool Owners Group.
It would be possible to start with coping disks instead of the big tenon disks and use the Domino for corner joinery.
It sounds like you're making a pretty big jump here though. Going from having never used a shaper to doing small production runs of doors and windows is quite a step! How confident are you that this work will be steady after you make the investment? A shaper has unlimited uses in a shop. The specialty tooling you'll end up buying, though, is a different story. Plus you'll be making numerous jigs for all that specialty hardware you mentioned. I would want to be fairly confident there was enough work to pay for a good chunk of that investment before rushing in.
You're absolutely right about this being a big jump for me and I need to have the confidence that my investment will be well-returned. The manufacture of these frames is a niche market, no one else is doing it here at the moment, and the architects, believe with their salespeople in short time they can be giving me 30-50 units a month.
The profiles are for the hardware. I gotta say though, that all my work has been custom designed; although perhaps a little more boring, I look so forward to setting up a portion of my shop into production lines.
That said, since you are in Mexico where the winters are not very cold, you can use a cutter set for thinner 58mm to 68mm sash and frame thickness. Very nice sets are available used from Europe as they are obsolete there. Now some places require 78 to 92mm thickness so the old sets are available for large discounts at machineseeker.com under woodworking machines, window production machines, other. You will see several tooling sets available for good prices and these sets will accommodate double glazed panels.
Your budget may not allow it but I highly recommend going to Joe Calhoon's class on Euro style windows before you start to spend money.
Are you in fact building to print using European drawings? If it's the standard German T&T window, they're typically made with a European single-end tenoner, jump counter-rotating, very long stacked-tooling spindle, with a single-sided moulder set up for automatic transfer at 90°. I set up door factories in Guyana and Costa Rica using this sort of set. You could do 30 units a day with that and it's obviously too much machine for your production. But if that's the drawings you're looking at, they call for the 350mm-400mm diameter stacked insert tooling; it'll be difficult to do with a manual single spindle shaper and hold the tolerances required for windows. Doors aren't so demanding - are they Euro flanged doors, or US cope and stick?
Is your red cedar also known as Spanish cedar, like what's used in cigar boxes? It makes a nice door. I've had Central American customers doing Euro window parts in mahogany too.
