On Wednesday, July 2, 2014 8:25:19 AM UTC-5, Swingman wrote:

The deceptively simple crown was my only worry as the rest was easily

duplicated with off the shelf material and, sure enough, six blocks away

was the lumber yard/building supply company that had been in business

when the house was built, and they were still milling that exact crown

profile ... no one else in town had a match that was close enough to

cope and fit.

A one in a million shot! It is good for people to speculate about getting something close, or making something close, or modifying something close, as they simply don't understand what it takes to make a really good joint in molding.

^^Close^^ might as well be a total miss. Many years ago we had an old, old lumberyard that specialized in moldings, and from time to time you could go over there and find something they had left from years ago. This place was old enough they actually made all their own moldings (except large crown) from clear white pine, starting back in the early 1920s. They had a giant old 12" table saw, a 12" radial saw (the same DeWalt ALL lumberyards had pre HD) and a couple of home made sanders. Try matching their moldings! They had an old man that sharpened the cutter heads with little stones every few hundred feet!

It was suggested somewhere in this thread that Doug have cutter heads made. I had a client that insisted that his moldings match exactly, and he was "willing" to pay for cutter heads to be made. There is only one place here in the city that will do that, and they charge by the size of the bit made, and his was $1200. OK, but it was only for a couple of hundred feet of small crown. After that, he still needed to buy the wood, have it cut sanded and prepped before running the profile, and then pay them to do the handling.

He decided within 30 minutes of the quote from them that a new profile would be acceptable, and the new profile would become a "feature of the room" rather than blend in.

IME, brick moulding patterns are, if not standard, at least widely used

and can usually be matched pretty closely, but I've never seen one like

Doug's profiles. It appears to be custom.

I agree. I haven't see one that wide before. I have personally made extra wide crown before with saw and router, but didn't have to match anything when I did it.

Robert