Advice on creating a moulding on a massive beam

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am I missing something?
I think the assumption was that the OP hadn't got the plane for the job!
I'd still cut the quirk first with a hand circular-saw, it'd make it a lot easier and reduce error
 
am I missing something?
See post #18

Yes, the beams are 7m long and he'll spend more time sh@*pening than planing, if the prep isn't done with a jack plane first.

It's also highly likely that the will to live will be lost before the job is done.
 
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An interesting thread with some good suggestions. The method I would choose is to apply the quirks with a small plunge saw. I would them round over the outside corner with a 3/4" Radius ovolo cutter. The only bit then left to do is the rounding over against the quirks. This could be tackled, by first chamfering the corner with an undercut chamfer bit on the router, before rounding with a bullnose/shoulder plane, and that last little bit at the base of the quirk. with a side-rebate plane.

The order of tackling the tasks might have to be revised so that one doesn't snooker oneself by cutting off the stock the router cutter, bearings need to run against.:confused:

Edit ........ Well blow me! I've just spotted a cutter called an 'Inverted Roundover Bit' which would suit just fine for rounding over against the quirk. 3/4" Radius as well. Only downside is it looks to be available in USA Canada only!
 
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I’d be inclined to try cutting a square section out with a tracksaw, form the bead on the outer corners on a router table and glue the section back into the host beam. This way the timber, grain pattern etc will be uninterrupted and should stain uniformly.
 
In case anyone is interested, I thought I'd update this thread to show the results.

To recap, we have two pine beams, 40 cm square and 7.1 m long. We want a half round moulding on the bottom edges of the beam, where the moulding is about 2.5" diameter.

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First job was to plane the beam to remove sawmill marks, first with a Dewalt planer, then the trusty No 4.

Next cut off the two arrisses on the bottom side of the beam with the track saw. Obviously I couldn't balance the track on the edge of the beam so the saw was screwed to a 3" x 6" block to act as a fence. A track saw set to cut a 45 degree angle screwed to a big chunk of wood is an unholy mess that won't balance anywhere and it fell on the floor a couple of times.

Next, move the fence to cut the far side of the quirk. Nice and easy this one, apart from the bit that ended up being cut at the wrong angle due to dropping the silly saw and not checking if it had moved the angle setting.

Final saw action was to cut the other side of the quirk using the track saw on its track, almost relaxing.

Ending up here:

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To try and maintain my sanity, I did the same operation on each side of the beam, before moving on the the next operation. I made the the ends of the beam round with chunks of wood cut out on the bandsaw and screwed them on, so it was fairly easy to roll it from one side to another:

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Now I had the moulding shaped like half an octagon, the next job was to plane the half octagon into a half sixteenagon. You can see the four little triangles that needed to be planed off on the drawing at the top of this post:

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The final stage was to plane off all the sharp edges to make the moulding round, followed by hand sanding at 80 grit to blend the whole thing:

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Done and oiled:

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Lifted into position with Skyhooks (tm):

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Although I first posted about this back in February, we've had a few other projects and distractions so this has been on the back burner for months. Once we got around to it, each beam took about two days to prepare and we probably spent around half a day each messing about with equipment and lifting into place.
 

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