Andrew wrote - You also might find it’s a lot of trouble to run your own trim.
Agree with Andrew - I were doing trim - I’d NOT want to run it on a router or a shaper especially without an auto feed. Seriously talk to Paxton Lumber. After 300lf they usually waive setup fees (unless your wood needs carbide) and they do it for a living. .http://www.paxtonwood.com/Profiles.aspx
@Tiffany
To expand on this a bit, shapers tend to be more industrial tools (and we could buy an autofeeder, which basically feeds in the material at a set rate) or used for furniture. Or at least they used to be before routers got so good. If you look through Freud’s line of professional router bits you see a number of bits with 1/2" shafts that do the sorts of things you used to do on a shaper table, such as door planes for cabinets and the like.
If it is the parallels, they are usually steel, good steel, hardened and ground. If I were setting up with brass standards, and touching the tool… I’d get a plastic shim of a known thickness, and put that between the blade and the standard. That green packaging binding at Big Box department stores is usually obtainable by asking for the scraps. The touch off trick with paper machinists use? I would be leery of damaging the standard through the paper with the pointy edges. Essentially, the cigarette wrapping papers (if I recall) are about .003 to .005 and if you just catch it between the cutter and the standard, then you know where the tool is. I would think though that some spacers/references could be made with Delrin (hard plastic) that would be a pretty good compromise between accuracy and durability. There is a good ebay dealer of cheapy Delrin Heck, you could even set spacings that accounted for half the kerf
Done. I’m at $320 on it, I think that’s reasonable for an auction. Also got $500 on the drill press. We’ll see if we win anything. If we do win the lathe, I’m also going to ask for the funds for at least one extension and some basic tools for it.