Checked out an old woodworking shop in Durham and saw something cool

I was in Durham last Saturday visiting family and stopped by this old cabinet shop that's been running since the 70s. The owner showed me how he still uses a shaper with custom ground knives for his raised panel doors instead of a CNC like everyone else. He told me he gets about 800 doors out of one set of knives before they need resharpening. It got me thinking about how much I rely on modern tools and maybe miss some of the old methods. Has anyone else gone back to older tool setups for specific jobs?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendyk5624d ago

Have you ever compared the actual cost per door between resharpening knives and CNC bits?

the_mila24d ago

I did a breakdown on a run of 500 doors last month and resharpening came out to about $0.12 per door while CNC bits averaged $0.09 per door when you factored in bit life. The catch was I had to touch up the knives more often and lost some time swapping between profiles mid-run though. For smaller batches under 100 units I'd still give the edge to knives since setup time eats into the CNC bit savings pretty fast lol.