Joints Construction Photos
There are a number of different ways to build a curved moulding. In the photos below you will see examples of some of these methods. At the bottom of the page there are descriptions of these different methods.
Close up of straight butt joint.
This moulding is approximately 4 1/2″ wide x 3″ thick.
Layered moulding with butt joints offset between the two layers.
Full view of the above moulding.
This is our rear mount wafer joint system where a mahogany disk is let into the back surface of the moulding.
The segments are butt-jointed together and then the wafer spans the joint. Note that the grain of the 3/16″ thick wafer is going across the joint for maximum strength.
This shows our standard finger joint construction applied to a red oak moulding.
Careful grain and color matching help make the fingers disappear into the grain. In this moulding you have to look very closely at the joint in order to see the fingers.
This 2 1/2″ Colonial pine moulding is shown prior to sanding so as to highlight the appearance of the fingers in the face of sloped profiles.
With wood species such as pine and maple, which have uniform color and minimal grain pattern, we recommend investing a bit more and upgrading to the rear mount wafer system displayed above.
This is a laminated moulding that will be applied to a curved wall.
The lamination strips are typically 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick depending upon radius, wood species and moulding thickness.
This is a mohagany moulding made with no visible joints or seams.
Its construction is similar to a strip laminated moulding but the natural grain pattern across the face of the moulding is more pronounced. In thin strip laminations the grain pattern disappears because the strips are not much wider then the material removed by the saw blades cutting the strips. In this process the blade cuts are only a small fraction of the final moulding width. We call this process “steam-lam” because it combines steam bending of wider strips with laminated constructon.
A full width shot of the mahogany steam-lam moulding.
It’s hanging on the wall above our digitizing board. The board is used to digitize tracings of windows, doors etc. into AutoCAD with extraordinary accuracy. This assures that we will produce mouldings that accurately fit the templates provided by our customers.
Typical custom made double wall corrugated shipping carton.
This type of box does a good job of protecting our mouldings during shipment. On the rare occasion we experience shipping damage we will rectify the situation immediately.
A group of poplar moulding sitting on our CNC router.
This computer controlled machine precisely cuts out our segmented mouldings.
