If you’ve never seen a world-class architectural millwork operation, we’d love to show you the ropes at the J. Gibson McIlvain headquarters here in White Marsh, Maryland. We give most of the credit to our well-seasoned staff and high-quality hardwood lumber, but we also owe some recognition to our professional-grade equipment. Many tools of the lumber trade can be dangerous to operate and difficult to master. However, without a fully equipped operation, offering the wide variety of moulding applications that we do would be impossible.
Whether you choose from the many options available through our architectural millwork catalog or need to have a custom profile created to replicate an existing piece or create a distinctive new design, we have the experience and equipment to make it happen for you. For more information on our services, feel free to call us at 1-800-638-9100 or visit our website at www.McIlvain.com. The J. Gibson McIlvain lumber company trucks ship nationwide throughout the United States.
Three of the key saws we use on architectural millwork projects include our table saw, our resaw bandsaw, and our two chop saws.
Table Saw
Our 12-inch table saw is an invaluable tool for straight sawing, either across or with the grain of the wood. As you can see here in the video below, the operator of a hand-fed table saw has to adjust the blade’s angle and height and push the stock into the blade, using a guide to ensure consistency. By contrast, a power table saw has a conveyor system that holds the lumber and feeds it into the blade.
Resaw Bandsaw
Our 54-inch resaw bandsaw is a manual-feed tool and its thin, flexible steel strips are used for re-sawing lumber more thinly than it had been cut, originally, as in this example video below. The blade of a bandsaw depends on two pulleys to run it through the work table on which the lumber is fed. The operator of this machine needs to have a steady hand to carefully feed the lumber through while applying enough pressure.
Chop Saw
Our two chop saws provide the best option for achieving precise, square cuts. As you can see below, this piece of machinery is comprised of a circular saw that’s mounted onto a pivoting arm that, in turn, relies on a metal base. To use the chop saw, the operator clamps the wood to the fence with one hand and works the saw with the other, guiding the blade through the stock.
In addition to these important tools, we also routinely use the following pieces of equipment:
- 3 Straight line gang rip saws
- 4 Radial arm saws
- 4 Moulders with various capacities
- 8-inch Jointer
- Custom knife-grinding services
- 30-inch Planer
- Shaper for small jobs and wide stair treads
- 9 HP panel saws with 4-foot by 8-foot capacities
- Precision end-trimming saw
- 46-inch Belt sander
The premier architectural millwork operation at J. Gibson McIlvain is more than a collection of professional tools; it’s a full-service answer to all your moulding needs.
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