ehisey could be right that this was done with a scratch stock. They scratch away wood like scrapers. They are sold by Lie Nielsen and Veritas, and I am pretty sure at least one of them comes with a fence for curved shapes like in your picture. But those scratch stocks seem mainly designed for smaller beading and fluting and such. At least the cutters that come with their scratch stocks are designed for those limited purposes. You can make your own cutters of course, or, for that matter, you can make your own scratch stock from scratch, so to speak. Those can be bigger, as big as you want. There are plenty of directions for making scratch stocks on line. They are easy to make, and even the cutters are easy if you have a bit of spring steel. On the other hand, I wonder whether much of the shaping on your piece was carved withe various carving chisels. Obviously the central design was carved. Is there any reason why the rest couldn’t have been carved?

Larry is right, of course, that machines can make things like this. In fact, in the next video my youtube brings up after the one Larry posted, Mat Cremona has a vid making a Goose Neck moulding for a fancy secretary desk using a normal hand router and a bunch of jigs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0hNKt6kByc. Besides being pretty fascinating, his vid (and many others) show how much skill goes into machine work once you get past the basics. On the other hand, we do know these shapes were made in large numbers long before there were spindle moulders and routers. I wonder how? I do not know how old Wim’s piece is, but no doubt it too could be made by hand. I have a few old moulding planes, and they are only good for straight mouldings. Were there similar moulding planes dedicated to curved moulding? If so I have not noticed them on ebay or elsewhere.

Roubo describes in his book “With All Precision Possible” (Lost Art Press), the use of various gouges and very short curved moulding planes. The latter apparently gave a smoother result.

Mary May has several posts on her carving the top of a seventeenth century Philadelphia Highboy. ( FIVE of them, in fact)

There is very little of that piece that could have been made with even the shortest of moulding planes.

As to Roubo mentioning short planes for curved work, I suspect he was talking about a larger scale. There aren’t any planes I see in his Book Of plates that would have been adaptable to house size pieces that I see.

Even with a set of thes coach maker’s planes, there is maybe only 18” total of the top of that piece that could have been done without hand carving it.

A moulding like that in the original post probably could be done with extensive use of carriage makers planes, however.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Larry Geib.

Great video. I loved the ¡aha! Moments. Wish I had gotten more than 5% of what they were saying.

I wish I could understand Nordic languages.
here is an interesting study with an English version:
https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/35598

Sven-Olof
I have once seen a video about sash windows where they were using the same profile but only at right angle.
Very interesting.
If needed we can cut and paste in a translator but the drawings and picture are nearly self explanatory.
Unfortunately translators are not perfect and the result must be interpreted.