Shaping with a Planing & Joining Cutter Head along a Template
The IGM F606 Planing & Jointing Cutter Heads are handy tools for shaping along templates or planing in a spindle moulder. The F606 Cutter Heads are especially handy when creating solid wood furniture, shaped bed-heads, cabinet panels or other uneven shapes from solid wood, laminated chipboard, plywood or MDF.
These tools are not only used for shaping but also for thicknessing (planing) of edges with the help of a spindle moulder fence.
In order to create a shaped piece, in our case its chair legs, we will first need to create a template that will secure the identical shape of all 4 pieces of the chair.
Shape and Material of the Template
The very first step is designing the shape of the template, you can either draw it on the wood or a large sheet of paper that you can glue to at least 12 mm thick plywood.
This plywood will later serve as a template. We recommend making the template out of strong and stable material, even an MDF board, definitely avoid using laminated chipboard or OSB.
The requirement for the template is mainly stability in order to facilitate identical shape for all pieces, laminated chipboard and OSB could start to chip away or get dented in the process. These, although small, damages would start to manifest themselves as imbalances on the final workpiece.
Making the Template
Take the selected plywood and screw the flexible template for shaped pieces into it. Screw the template onto the drawn curve from the inner side of the drawing.
Then cut off the outer side with at least 4 mm to spare, now shape the plywood using a router and a router bit with a bearing on the lower side. The simplest way of doing this is shaping with a router in a table.
Then unscrew the flexible template and repeat on the other side. Make sure the template is by a few centimetres longer than the workpiece to make handling the whole jig a bit easier.
Making the Chair Legs
Cut out the rough workpiece using a bandsaw or a jigsaw. Same as on the template, leave the workpiece a bit longer on the ends (at least 3 cm), this way, you can screw the template onto the workpiece.
Another option is to join the template and the workpiece using a dual-sided tape; however, choose one that doesn't leave marks, this would later cause problems when surfacing.
Put a copy bearing and a planing cutter head into the spindle moulder. If the bearing is under the cutter, you have to shape with the template on the bottom side.
Shape the workpiece from both sides along the template and the bearing and continue with other pieces.
In the end, cut off the ends with the screw holes.
Design of the Cutter Heads
The IGM Planing and Jointing Cutter Heads are fitted with reversible carbide knives in a spiral, this improves the speed and overall quality of shaping and the resulting surface.
The knives are sharpened from all 4 sides and can be therefore reversed up to 3 times. At the same time, they are extremely rigid and resistant making them ideal for exotic woods or composite materials.
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