Moldings – Double Arbored Sawing

Brooke: Now George the molding wing is where the varying shutter profiles take shape. Is this a typical molding operation?

George: Well, Brooke, in many ways it is. But we do a few unusual things, like the way we get our Louver profile.

We use double arbored sawing. We get 3 louvers out of a 5 1/4″ blank. The double arbored sawing allows us to reach out even on our 5 1/4″ louver width. That gives an excellent profile yield.

Brooke: The saw is very small.

George: Yes it’s less than 1/16″. That’s why we have to keep the blades so cool. But the small curve is the key to our profile yield.

Brooke: Double arbored sawing is unusual. What else do you do that is unique?

George: The way we get our Z frames. They’re a real challenge — we don’t just mold out the Z shape.

Brant:They’re a great way to install shutters, but they have these large hollows at the inside corners. Hogging these out at the molder would be a real waste.

Instead we take a smaller blank, and we create this L-shape sawing out a stop.

George: We use thin-curved saw blades to cut the stop out to minimize waste. Then we rotate the stop around and glue it to form the Z shape.

Brooke: That definitely shows careful stewardship of your lumber.

George: We have to be good stewards of our lumber — that’s the only way we can be profitable.

Brooke: George, I’ve always heard in Shutter manufacturing that’s it’s difficult to get a good yield on styles due to warpage.

George: That’s true. We use Weinig machinery and the Weinig method for straightening our styles. The blanks have to be very straight and ours are because of the edge-grain, edge-glued process. The small amount of warpage that remains is straightened in the molding.

Brooke: I see your operator using some kind of a guage.

Brant: We don’t just eyeball our styles but the guage gives us an exact definition as to how straight is straight.

Brooke: Is there anything else unusual in your molding operation?

Brant: We use a Sandbrushed^TM process to supplement the molded profiles.

Brooke: What’s Sandbrushed^TM?

Brant: Sandbrushed^TM is like sandblasting the wood to get a natural grain relief look, but instead we use an abrasive brush so we get a more natural look and a cleanable surface.

It looks great on stain finishes and also on white-washing – it turns out nice. Painted finishes come out good, too!

Brooke: What architectural styles are you promoting Sandbrushed^TM shutters for?

Brant: For the longest time we sold it as a desert look out west, but more recently we’re promoting it as a beach look in the coastal areas.

Brooke: It adds another dimension to your product line – very distinctive.

George: Let’s take a look at our Priming Process.