Question
I'm looking for a new rail and stile cutter set for my Powermatic shaper. Does anyone have suggestions for a quality set? What are the pros and cons of the reversible single cutters? Anyone else have trouble with getting a good fit with their Grizzly set?
Forum Responses
(Solid Wood Machining Forum)
From contributor A:
I use LRH and have been pleased with them. Freud and Amana make nice cutters also but they are usually more expensive. I find the reversible sets to be a pain in the butt. If you only have a single shaper they might be fine, but I have three shapers - cope, stick and panel. I have a reversible sash set and I only have the one set so I am constantly switching back and forth from cope to stick. The next time I will buy two sets of reversible cutters and use two shapers. One of the pros about reversible is they are usually half the price.
Regarding your question about reversible cutters, contributor A makes a real good point about the set up time. A lot of times we look only at end cost and neglect to look at labor cost and set up time, and in the end we end up paying more. I would not even consider making the profiles reversible for you. A couple of things come into play when you do that. Most important is safety. Two profiles back to back increase the depth of cut, making a bigger cutting circle, and the further your fences are away from each other, unless you cut thru the fence. Either way I try to keep your cutting circle as small as possible. Also, you reduce the amount of surface area available for the cutterhead and knife to lock into each other, creating a safety concern. I know people do this quite often, but when you look at the safety and labor cost, I do not recommend this and will not produce any of these types of cutters for anyone. Putting cost in front of safety is a risky and dangerous combination. Thanks for asking good questions.
