My first experience with woodworking was serving as a boat builder s apprentice

as a teenager. I enjoyed working with wood so much that I later enrolled in

a furniture building program at Boston University. At both places I found that each

of my instructors or mentors had his own favorite tool that could be made to perform

many tasks besides the obvious ones. One teacher might use a table saw with an angled

fence to cut cove moldings; someone else would fit a radial arm saw with a disk sander

or attach cutters to mill profiles. At the school and in the boat shop, the spindle shaper

was more often used as a sawhorse or a workbench than as a tool. I was left with the

impression that the shaper cuts profiles in the edges of boards and that was about all.

It was not until I opened my own shop that I realized how much more versatile

the tool really is. I ,)e had my 3-horsepower tilting arbor shaper for almost 10 years

now and I would be lost without it. Woodworkers have personal styles, and I tend to

be very machine-oriented. More and more, I find that the hand tools that I once used

daily now sit idle in my tool cabinet. For me, end results and speed matter most and

I find that the shaper outperforms my old hand tools hands down.

Combined with a decent powerfeed unit, a shaper can cut dadoes better than a table

saw and dean up an edge as well as a small jointer. If you have a collet that accepts

router bits, you ll quickly find that the shaper outclasses even the largest of routers,

with a range of cutters that is unmatched. I recently bought a crown molding cutter

for my shaper. It s a stacking system so I can either use the complete assembly to make

a cut or install the individual parts to calve separate profiles.

That s only the beginning. Add rub collars and large-diameter bearings and i expand

the range of the shaper even more. With these inexpensive accessories I can make a

template out of scrap stock and affix it to my good stock. The shaper then acts like

a big flush trimmer and I can get perfectly uniform finished pieces every time.