It’s not possible to find old moldings in the big box stores, and local lumber mills that stock historic moldings don’t always have the exact style you want. One option is to reproduce moldings based on existing boards.

Here’s the profile for one of the door and window moldings that’s common in our house.

Molding profile
Molding profile

Using a Wixey digital caliper and a 30-day trial of AutoCAD LT, I was able to create a drawing of the molding profile. I averaged my measurements across a few different boards and tried to round those averages to a nice fraction.

Profile diagram
Profile diagram

Printing the drawing at full scale, I could check its accuracy against the molding profile. When the center radius didn’t quite match, I thought I could tweak it a bit for a better match.

Checking fit
Checking fit
Checking fit again
Checking fit again

None of my existing boards were a perfect fit, but they’re also 120 years old. I expect it will be close enough that I can create new moldings that can’t be distinguished from the old.

I’ll follow the same process for some baseboard moldings.

Baseboard center profile
Baseboard center profile
Baseboard top profile
Baseboard top profile

Once the designs are complete, I’ll use them to order custom molding knives for my molder.