I'm trying to reproduce a relatively simple molding for our home. The old doors have a reverse ogee for door stop molding. I'd like to reproduce it. I asked and some folks said "you can use some old hand planes to reproduce that". I like the idea, and I'm working on it, and getting reasonably close but having a small issue that I think I should be able to solve, but I'm not sure of the best way. I'm curious what you guys think.
I think this may be a bit of an obscure way to go about it, so I'm not really expecting much, but there's always someone that's got DEEP knowledge. And several of you are pretty deep in woodworking.
The molding is ½" thick.
This is what a regular reverse ogee would look like. ½" molding, w/2 90º arcs of ¼" radius circle. I actually have an old wooden plane that cuts this exact profile.
But the existing molding in our house is a little different.
It's basically the same, except that it's stretched by 1/4" in the middle. The two ¼" radius arcs are not directly joined. I think these may actually be called "ovolo"s.
Some woodworking folks said, "you need a rebate plane and some hollows and rounds and you can cut that. You should check out Matthew Bickford's book 'Mouldings in Practice'."
I got the book and it is great, and does pretty much spell it out-ish.
In the book he basically says "You can cut pretty much any complex molding with a rebate plane, hollows and rounds, and snipe-bills and maybe some side rounds." I made a plan following his theories and have come really close.
His theory is like this. Use a rebate to remove as much material as possible because it's easier to sharpen a flat/straight blade than a curved blade, and the rebate will give you multiple points of reference for the rest of the curves.
Use a rebate to first cut the green rectangle, and that gives me a depth and width of cut for the 2 curves. Use the rebate again to cut the blue rectangle and that gives me the depth to cut the concave curve and 2 points for the round to reference off of.
Then use the rebate to cut the bevel on the lower curve (again, cut as much with a flat blade as possible) and that gives the round 2 points of reference to cut against vs trying to balance it on a single high point.
What I ended up with is something like this, with the extra red bit. If I try to get rid of the red bit with the rebate, I have to be super careful or I end up cutting a groove in the concave top portion of the curve. If I use the ¼" radius hollow, it's far too easy to go too far and end up with a wide rounded groove in the middle where it's supposed to mostly be flat. I think maybe a much larger radius round might be a better option, in between the rebate and the small round that I have. And the plan would be to get it close and then either use a homemade scratch stock or sandpaper to finish it.
Anyone got any thoughts or encouragement or think that I'm nuts or any comments at all? (besides "buy a CNC machine"
as cool as that would be)