# bought 7 hp woodmaster, want to sell custom molding



## fge (Sep 8, 2008)

Pulled the trigger on 725 tonight, mainly because we have 3 kitchens on schedule with estimated 800.00 in custom moldings I was going to have to purchase. We also do a lot of walnut kitchens and my suppliers price small walnut crown too expensive, so I began cutting crown on my shaped, which is not ideal.

Now, the machine will pay off with savings from cabinet moldings. But I want and intend on selling whole house customer molding trim packages. We can cut any of the hardwoods and any profile. Any ideas how to market myself to builders and home owners.

Unlike kitchens home depot and Lowes cannot compete with me on hardwood custom moldings.

So the potential excites me.


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

Yeah, I've got ideas. There's a lot to the process of establishing
local market dominion with any commodity product. You have to
know what your real capacity and costs are, especially if your
better sources of raw material let you down and you've got 
promised deliveries in your pipeline.

The other end of it is being able to show contractors how dealing
with you puts more money in their pockets, which is all that really
matters. In B2B persuasion you have to show how the product 
pays for itself, just like you're convinced the Woodmaster will pay
for itself. For the end customer, the payoff is emotional in terms
of feelings of satisfaction and superiority to peers. There's a bling
factor in selling custom work in fine woods.


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## Petewood (May 14, 2010)

Loren nailed it. I'd add that increasing capacity (to a point) is a good idea. I'm running three 725s on the moldings side of my business; one set up as a molder, one a 4-blade gang rip, and the other a 25" helical-head planer. Additionally, I have a Diehl straightline rip saw. For a one-man shop, I can put out a lot of product. One important aspect of my B2B marketing is based on the fact that competition among general contractors is particularly high in this bust economy, and so it's important for those contractors to be able to quantify WHY they're better than the other guys. I can help them to do that. That doesn't mean that any general contractor has an exclusive on me…..that would be foolish on my part.
What it DOES mean, is that if one or two of them have me as a resource, then they have abilities that the ones who don't use me don't have. Sort-of "upping the ante" among them. Knowwhuddeye mean?


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## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

Wow, you guys are bigtime. I had a big shaper when I remodeled my New Orleans shotgun (no power feeder, sigh). I paid for the machine with the money I saved on one room. The cutters were expensive but they'll probably outlive me. I downsized to a lowly 3 1/2hp router table but I still miss that big shaper. Congratulations!


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## helluvawreck (Jul 21, 2010)

We've been in the molding business since 1991 and now have 5 Weinig molders. We started with a small Profimat. We always tried very hard to please the customer with value, quality, and delivery and did custom work from the beginning. We have never advertized but have always grown by word of mouth. One of the most important things we have done is to get to the point where we purchased our lumber by the tractor trailer load to hold down cost. If you work hard and do these things, building on the customers you already have, there is no doubt that you can build a molding business. Obviously the present business climate is not a helpful thing, however.


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## fge (Sep 8, 2008)

It is great to get the responses and they are very encouraging. I am actually just getting ready to pick up the machine tomorrow so I am getting excited. I stopped and bought 10/3 wire and a 40 amp breaker to get it wired. I also got my knife cutter to cut us our first custom knife to cut our custom cabinet corner moldings. In our kitchens, we add a corner molding that transitions from the face frame into the visible finished panel. On our current kitchen that one molding alone was going to cost me 500.00. And that does not count the crown molding cost, which I have actually been cutting on my shaper since I do not like to pay the high costs for crown which used to run me between 300.00 and 700.00 per kitchen job.

So I hope the installation of the machine goes well. The machine comes with two gang rip blades, an extra shaft to carry the molding knives, sander attachment (I don't plan on using this part since we have a nice 26" dual drum sander) and also the planer knives.

I do want to add the helica head down the road.

Questions I have:

Is the helica head worth the 1000.00 cost to add to this planer? What kind of finish does the helica head leave, in comparison to the hss knives that is typical. My jet 15" always left a lot of knife marks but I would then sand out the marks. I've heard helica heads can leave a very pretty finish with minimal sanding afterwards.

At this time, or at least until we can afford another one of these machines, I plan to use the machine as a planer, molder and a gang rip saw. We rip a lot of wood for face frames, we rip a lot of wood for stiles/rails and of course we rip a lot of wood for moldings. So I plan to set up as gang rip during those phases, then set as a planer whenever we are planing our glued up door panels, then set up as a molding machine at the end of the job to cut the trim for the trim out of the kitchen. How reasonable will it be for me to allow this machine to complete these three functions. We complete most of our kitchens in 1 to 3 weeks. So switching from one to another will only happen a few times during the course of any given job. The current owner tells me switching out is not that bad but told me the belts have to be removed every time a switch out is made of the shafts.

And, will a 10/3 wire on a 40 amp breaker be fine for this 7.5 hp motor, I think it is 31 amps but it is a 220, so doesn't that mean we are pulling 15.5 amps per hot wire, which in my mind I should have been able to run the motor on a 20 amp double pull with a 12/2 wire. Well, I have already bought the breaker and wire but I could return them if needed to be.

Thanks for the info everyone.

Jerry


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## helluvawreck (Jul 21, 2010)

Jerry, could you give me a link to a picture/literature of the machine so I could see what machine you're talking about?


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## Petewood (May 14, 2010)

My 725s are on 6/3 wire and 50A breakers. Better safe than sorry.


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## SCOTSMAN (Aug 1, 2008)

Watch those fingers I nearly lost my thumb early this year.Get a power feeder if poss. Alistair ps have fun


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