Carpentry and Woodworking - Making crown/base moldings

adding up my handy man hours of experiences, wood working would probably come at the bottom of the list.
I do enjoy working with wood I just don’t have the experience on it
(last time I used a router was in 7th grade wood shop class to make a clock with a mirror on top).
I plan on adding lots of mouldings throughout the house and I am debating wheather I should carve my own or buy them off the shelf.
And I don’t have any of the tools for it either.

1: Generally speaking Is this a project worth considering from a cost point of view since I don’t plan on going heavy with wood working besides this project.

2: What tools would I need and how much should I figure on spending for each tool. ( I buy tools that I plan on leaving for my kids)

Thanks in advance for your time.

At a minimum, you will need a table saw and a router with bits and blades to make moldings. That's at least $700, if you go in cheap. You can buy a lot of molding for $700. Just buying wood of sufficient quality for molding will start to approach the cost of off the shelf molding. When I was building custom church sanctuaries, I had my molding made by a molding shop. I supplied the wood and let them do the work. A lot of specialty work, shapers and such. Too much work and expensive equipment for me.

heck no! I am not gonna to spend close to that much on molding tools; I am just talking about straight curves nothing super fancy.

I was shoping at the membership warehouse and saw an 18 pcs bit set for $50, carbide tipped with ball bearings-Alltrade. They 'look' quality to me-except for the name. since I have no idea how much they go for I decided to drive to the nearest blue warehouse to do some comparitive shopping on carbide tipped bits and found Bosh- way too expensive.

Just for the sake of comparison, I have several router bits that cost more than $100 each.

Good luck with your research.

chfite makes a good point in stating that "just buying wood of sufficient quality for molding will start to approach the cost of off the shelf molding."

As for cheap router bits, well, you get what you pay for. I have even heard stories about the carbide tips flying off of the cheap bits when the router gets to be around 2,700 rpm. That could cause a serious injury.

I have made molding with a planer and a special blade ground to the profile that I wanted to accomplish, but again, it is cost prohibitive for most people to do this. A 10" benchtop planer won't do the trick, you need a more substantial planer for that kind of work.

I'd say save your time and the hassle, and go with off the shelf pieces. Buy them unfinished and stain them yourself, to save money.

Chfite and Herm,

you guys are great!
Thanks a bunch for your veteran advice; I will take it.
hey_
and thanks for not throwing a book at me-
or throwing me to a book.:D

1. Since I never did mould cutting before, can you shed some light on the subject? for tools as far as I can see I need those plastic guide and saw set. or should I get the wood cutting set.

2. I took precise measurements for each wall(~69 feet total for kitchen/breakfast area)
I am not exactly sure how to cut using the measurement numbers since crown moldings appear more complicated to cut than base moldings.? any advice?

3. am I going to have: mould to walls/ceiling gaps?

4. do I nail into walls or ceiling?

5. what mistakes can a wood dud like me make?

They are certainly more difficult to install, because of the angle to the ceiling/wall.

Here are a couple of websites that may help you...

http://www.compoundmiter.com/

http://www.wwforum.com/faqs_articles/crownmld.html

These websites have a bunch of info on installing crown molding.

You will have to copy and paste these addresses into your browser window. This website has stopped parsing url's for a very good reason.