How to Easily Sand Custom Moldings

One of the things that's cool about my job is every once in a while I run into these problems solving devices or tools. And I feel compelled to tell you about it and that's the case here. So one of the things that's pretty interesting, neat and getting a lot of tension in woodworking is the ability for people to make their own moldings, to make their own trim. And in order to do that, you use a molding machine like the wood master that I've got here. And part of that is making moldings. Part of that is then cleaning up those moldings so that they look nice when you install them in your house. Or if you're doing this professionally if you sell the moldings or install them in somebody else's house. This might come as a surprise to you, but chatter marks are not supposed to be included in your moldings. So the problem-solving device that we're looking at here today is a sanding head. You've seen me use flutter sanders often flutter, sanders, mop sanders. And that's what we've got going here. This sander attaches onto the outfield side of the molder. And what you'll see in just a second is that once the molding is cut and feeds under this it does a really good job of cleaning it up so that you don't have to go back and try to put a custom sanding block or something in there. And God forbid sand all that by hand. The way this works is that there are a bunch of fingers here. The fingers are a variety of different sanding grits. It's not just one grit here. There's, a number of different grits represented on the wheel. The fingers are also in different widths and that's what allows them to conform as the molding comes under this really, no matter what shape it is the fingers are gonna be able to fit into that shape. Now, the head I just took off has got dust collection, port built into it, however so that you can really see where the rubber meets the road how this baby works. We're gonna run this without the dust collection shroud in place. I'm gonna run alder, alder is a great wood. And it's a great wood for an example for this. Because it's got just the right softness density to it. That if we had chatter marks, they'd show up pretty easily. So I think I have spoken enough. Let's make the machine do its thing. That's how it does what it does. But for compare and contrast, let's look at... What you know now is how good it looks. Let's look at how not so good it can look I've got here alder, same material that went through with the sanding head running and another piece here where it's not running. And I can see chatter marks already but what's really gonna accentuate bad spots is if we put a little color on there. And just like finishing any project, unfortunately at the finishing step is where defects tend to show up. If you haven't taken the time to get rid of them. All right, sanded unsanded. And look at you can really see it right across here. All the little ridges that are left behind there. That's really the benefit of this sanding head that we have in place. What we're gonna do change molding knives and run a piece of crown molding. 'Cause I know a lot of you are interested in making crown moldings. And also show you a different species of wood and what that looks like coming out of this machine. What do you think? I know a lot of you have worked with red Oak and as I mentioned, it's a good wood to do a test with this on because it's an open grain wood. It's got a tendency to chip out and boy what a nice cut we have there. So as I mentioned earlier, it's just when I come across these little problem solving devices. Something I like to point out to you and if it's useful for what you do, if you're looking to make molding on a wood master, this is a cool add on to save you the S word. Don't wanna have to do any more sanding than you absolutely have to. So check it out. It's a cool product and a great time-saver to have on a machine.