| My first experience with woodworking was serving as a boat builder s apprentice as a teenager. I enjoyed working with wood so much that I later enrolled ina furniture building program at Boston University. At both places I found that eachof my instructors or mentors had his own favorite tool that could be made to performmany tasks besides the obvious ones. One teacher might use a table saw with an angledfence to cut cove moldings; someone else would fit a radial arm saw with a disk sanderor attach cutters to mill profiles. At the school and in the boat shop, the spindle shaperwas more often used as a sawhorse or a workbench than as a tool. I was left with theimpression that the shaper cuts profiles in the edges of boards and that was about all. It was not until I opened my own shop that I realized how much more versatilethe tool really is. I ,)e had my 3-horsepower tilting arbor shaper for almost 10 yearsnow and I would be lost without it. Woodworkers have personal styles, and I tend tobe very machine-oriented. More and more, I find that the hand tools that I once useddaily now sit idle in my tool cabinet. For me, end results and speed matter most andI find that the shaper outperforms my old hand tools hands down. Combined with a decent powerfeed unit, a shaper can cut dadoes better than a tablesaw and dean up an edge as well as a small jointer. If you have a collet that acceptsrouter bits, you ll quickly find that the shaper outclasses even the largest of routers,with a range of cutters that is unmatched. I recently bought a crown molding cutterfor my shaper. It s a stacking system so I can either use the complete assembly to makea cut or install the individual parts to calve separate profiles. That s only the beginning. Add rub collars and large-diameter bearings and i expandthe range of the shaper even more. With these inexpensive accessories I can make atemplate out of scrap stock and affix it to my good stock. The shaper then acts likea big flush trimmer and I can get perfectly uniform finished pieces every time. |
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