minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Get help and framing advice from the framing community
Post Reply
eWareing
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 24 Aug, 2016 12:11 pm
Location: NG23
Organisation: eWareing Art
Interests: Art & music

minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by eWareing »

I read that with a Morso cutter can get less than 1cm wastage per length of moulding. The only way I can work out how to do it would be if your 1st cut is with the moulding on the left side of the chopping blades, but the measuring arm is on the right hand side. Am I missing something here?
Not your average framer
Posts: 11013
Joined: Sat 25 Mar, 2006 8:40 pm
Location: Devon, U.K.
Organisation: The Dartmoor Gallery
Interests: Lost causes, saving and restoring old things, learning something every day
Location: Glorious Devon

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by Not your average framer »

I always work from left to right, cutting with the left hand blade first a then using the measuring extension while cutting using the right hand blade. I'm not sure why you would do it any other way. I don't understand how this affects the level of wastage. Am I missing something here? While I try to minimise moulding wastage, it is only possible to a limited degree! Excessively small frames are not worth usually worth making. I find that using certain standard mouldings in my shop, is helpful in so far as it makes it easier to match up bits of moulding in my waste bin with each other.

I slice up bits of waste moulding using my table saw to make slips, filets and spacers. It only makes sense where it saves you money and if it involves much in extra labour it's often not making financial sense to do it. I produce quite a lot of hand finished and stacked moulding frames, so it often makes sense to cut up odd scraps to make bits and pieces which I need. My left overs from the scrap bin are sometimes just another source of wood, which saves me going to the local hareware shop for wood and paying money, when I only need a small piece of wood.

If you don't do hand finished, stacked moulding frames, the opporunities for making much money from re-using you waste, are not always profitable use of your time. I based in a small rural town and don't always get to fully utilise all of my normal working hours. Csrtain months of the year can be a little slow in terms of business activity, so when I am feeling bored, I make things which I can display in my shop windows to create impulse sales from passing potential customers. It takes a long time to figure out what's likely to sell at worthwhile prices.

If you are based in a busy town, I don't suppose that you will have the time to spare for doing things like this. Minimising and making use of your wastage takes a bit of thinking about, to know when to draw the like. Most of us only have sufficient space to store a limited amount of waste and it takes time sorting through your waste looking for enough bits to make a ready made frame, so you will need you own strategy to manage you methods of minimising you waste. To many bits of left over waste are of no benefit whatsoever. I've had to learn this from experience.

Much of my waste glass and backing board, is more suitable for smaller frames and the market for smaller frames can be a really limited market. Even when selling medium to larger ready made frames, sales volumes and profitability is not always particularly exciting. Sometimes your waste is best used to fill your dumpster. I mostly buy i some mouldings to make my ready made frames as it's much quicker and easier to work from decent lengths of moulding and to be honest the potential to earn worthwhile money from your waste mouldings in largely over rated, but it can work to your advantage for slicing up bits for slips, fillets and spacers, if you already have a table saw at hand.

Buying a table saw just to recycle your waste mouldings in to slips and the like is unlikely to be worth doing, if you don't already have aworthwhile use for a table saw. Where I make money from recycling my moulding waste is mainly where this enables me to pay money from ordering slips, flliets and spacers, but you need to be efficient with the time that this takes, otherwise it will cost you more! Myself, Prosperro and a few others make stuff like this pay, but we are doing mostly niche market type framing, which is why it works for us! Hopefully some of this will be helpful.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
User avatar
prospero
Posts: 11492
Joined: Tue 05 Jun, 2007 4:16 pm
Location: Lincolnshire

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by prospero »

As far as I know, there is no stratagem by which you can increase the yield when cutting a stick. :thinking:
Watch Out. There's A Humphrey About
Not your average framer
Posts: 11013
Joined: Sat 25 Mar, 2006 8:40 pm
Location: Devon, U.K.
Organisation: The Dartmoor Gallery
Interests: Lost causes, saving and restoring old things, learning something every day
Location: Glorious Devon

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by Not your average framer »

I Agree! Most molding wastage for many of us is just a liability and costs us money to dispose of it! You have to turn it in to something useful for it to be worth anything!
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
eWareing
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 24 Aug, 2016 12:11 pm
Location: NG23
Organisation: eWareing Art
Interests: Art & music

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by eWareing »

Sorry, I'm a novice. My late husband used to do all the morso cutting & I just did the underpinning, mountcutting & finishing. I have the morso manual & have worked out how to measure lengths of frame using the measuring scale on the right but not sure where to start when you have a new length of moulding with no 45 degree angles. I can’t figure out how to get opposing 45 degree angles just using the measuring scale unless I turn the moulding upside down which can only be done with flat mouldings ?
eWareing
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 24 Aug, 2016 12:11 pm
Location: NG23
Organisation: eWareing Art
Interests: Art & music

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by eWareing »

Also if you start by feeding from the left there is only a short piece of table so nothing to support the other 2 metres + of moulding horizontally.
Not your average framer
Posts: 11013
Joined: Sat 25 Mar, 2006 8:40 pm
Location: Devon, U.K.
Organisation: The Dartmoor Gallery
Interests: Lost causes, saving and restoring old things, learning something every day
Location: Glorious Devon

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by Not your average framer »

Wastage will still be something to consider and allow for, but it's not something to get overly worried about. There may be some scope for considering areas in which you can avoid losing sales from customers with limited budgets by having a few mouldings which will help you to meet such customers budget limits without restricting your own margins. This needs to be addressed with care! There's a lot of cheaper mouldings out there which look like they are reasonable quality and will save you money, but this is not always the case.

Moulding quality has a lot to do with how much moulding wastage will become apparent during turning the moulding in to frames. So be a bit choosy, which mouldings you choose for such purposes. Have a good look at factory finishes, which are applied to mouldings which appear to have a price advantage, some finishes are more likely to need touching up, this takes more time and may not be saving you as mich as you think. There are many rubbish quality mouldings hidden by the finish which has been applies, but if the quality of what's underneath the finish is rubbish, getting a clean cut on the mitres may be problematic.

There is always "the goldilocks zone" for prices which works well for both the framer and the customer, but customers on a budget can still be worth cattering for as well, providing that you have an intelligent plan for such customers. Those with a smaller budget will still be looking for good quality framing, so what you buy for such budgets still need to be good and still need to look the busness. Letting a customer beat you down on price is usually a losing propostion and I rarely let a customer do this. Instead I try to show them something else which fits their budget. Letting someone get something at a discount price is just as bad as wastage, in fact it will probably cost you more! So have something like this already in your thinking.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
User avatar
Gesso&Bole
Posts: 951
Joined: Wed 24 Mar, 2010 3:35 pm
Location: Nottingham
Organisation: Jeremy Anderson Picture Frame Maker
Interests: Framing pictures, testing out the latest gismos, and sharing picture framing knowledge
Contact:

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by Gesso&Bole »

If you have no left hand extension table, then the Morso is designed to be used adjacent to a workbench of exactly the same height, which will support the length of moulding as you feed it in from the left hand side. In the meantime you could perhaps use a saw horse or similar to create some support.

Then the first action is to create the first 45 degree cut using the left hand blade only, on the right hand end of your moulding. Once you have done that, feed the moulding through left to right until the newly mitred end meets the measuring stop.

Hope that helps, the posts above seem to have gone off at a tangent!
Jeremy (Jim) Anderson
Picture Framer and Framing Industry Educator
https://www.jeremyanderson.co.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/ja_picture_framer/
User avatar
Gesso&Bole
Posts: 951
Joined: Wed 24 Mar, 2010 3:35 pm
Location: Nottingham
Organisation: Jeremy Anderson Picture Frame Maker
Interests: Framing pictures, testing out the latest gismos, and sharing picture framing knowledge
Contact:

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by Gesso&Bole »

Should read Left hand extension arm
Jeremy (Jim) Anderson
Picture Framer and Framing Industry Educator
https://www.jeremyanderson.co.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/ja_picture_framer/
eWareing
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 24 Aug, 2016 12:11 pm
Location: NG23
Organisation: eWareing Art
Interests: Art & music

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by eWareing »

Thank you Gesso&Bole. What you say makes perfect sense but still not sure what my late husband did as the left hand side of our machine is fairly close to our garage door & I don't remember him having to open the garage door while he was cutting. I will re-position the morso machine in the garage and source a support for the left hand side. Best wishes.
JonathanB
Posts: 164
Joined: Thu 19 Mar, 2015 8:43 pm
Location: Romsey
Organisation: Dovetail Framing
Interests: Travel, music and gardening

Re: minimise moulding wastage with morso cutter

Post by JonathanB »

If you want to support the moulding as you feed from the left, a roller stand works well. Been using it for years and it's a cheap and effective solution.
Lion do one, as do most other suppliers
https://www.lionpic.co.uk/p/8517/Moulding-Support-Stand
Jonathan Birch GCF (APF)
Post Reply