Matching Old Mouldings

There comes a time in the life of every old-house owner when we need to match a section of existing wood moulding.

- Justin Fink

You might need to replace a section of moulding that was removed or that decayed.

Or you may want to tie an addition to the look of the existing house. If you’ve been there, then you know how disappointing it can be to walk the aisles of the home center or lumberyard trying to find new stock with the same profile as the moulding to be matched. If you do find a suitable match, it may not be the right species or it may not have the right grain appearance. If you need more than a short run, or if you work on old houses for a living and often run up against this situation, then you'll invest in a William & Hussey moulding machine or a shaper. Or you'll subcontract the job out to a millworks. If you just need one or two shorter lengths, however, you can replicate moulding using a few common tools.

Depending on the year of your house, the mouldings were either made with band planes or with profiles based on hand planes. Most mouldings are a combination of flats and curves known as rounds (convex) and hollows (concave). How those flats, rounds, and hollows are sized and grouped determines the final profile. Purists might rely on a set of dedicated moulding planes to do this reproduction work, which is a valid (and fun) option. But making your own moulding doesn’t require a lot of fancy tools—just a tablesaw, a couple common hand planes, sandpaper, and shop-made sanding accessories. It does require some tedious labor, though, which is what puts a practical limit on the amount you can (or want to) produce. It took me a bit over an hour to make the few feet of crown shown here, but I've done this work a lot. Still, for those one-off situations, this technique can be a lifesaver.

<MAKE A CLEAN START