Timber Mouldings

Most skirting and architrave in Australia comes in a familiar set of profiles, and knowing the names makes ordering much easier. The profiles themselves vary a little between mills, even under the same name, but these are the families you will hear:

Colonial: the classic stepped, decorative profile seen in older homes and anything traditional. Worth knowing: Colonial is really a family of profiles, and every mill cuts its own version, so two lengths of "Colonial" from different sources rarely match.

Lambs Tongue: a refined curve falling to a step, common in Victorian and Federation era houses.

Bullnose: a simple rounded top edge, tidy in both period and modern homes.

Single Bevel: one clean angled face, a simple look that suits modern builds.

Half Splayed: the angle runs over part of the face only, and there are a few versions of it. They differ in where the splay starts and whether the top edge is rounded or left square, so this is another one where a sample helps.

Pencil Round: flat with a slight rounding on the edge, the plainest and most contemporary look.

Scotia: a small concave moulding, used at the wall-to-ceiling line and to cover floor edges.

Quad: a quarter-round moulding for internal corners and floor junctions.

Add tongue and groove lining boards, window reveals, door jambs, capping and coverstrap, and you have most of the moulding family that turns up on an order.

Mouldings start as dressed timber and go through a spindle moulder, a machine that spins a cutter head fitted with knives ground to the shape of the profile. The timber is fed past the cutters and comes out the other side with the profile run along its length. The same principle covers tongue and groove, rebates and bevels. Because the knives are what define the shape, a machine shop can reproduce almost any profile, old or new, by grinding a fresh set of knives to match it.

This is the most common reason people go looking for custom machining. Adelaide has a lot of houses from eras whose skirting and architrave profiles have not been stocked for decades, and when you are extending, repairing water damage or replacing one broken length, the new timber has to match what is there.

One thing experience has taught us: the profile name is not enough for a match. "Colonial" alone covers dozens of variants, and the same goes for most of the traditional profiles, so what we really need is a sample. Bring in an offcut, around 300mm is enough, or a clear drawing with dimensions, and the profile gets reproduced on new timber.

Got a profile to match? Send a photo of the sample to us through the machining page and we will tell you quickly whether we can run it, and quote it.

For painted finishes, the common choices are Meranti and finger-jointed primed pine. Meranti is the mainstay of our machining work: it machines cleanly, stays stable, and finishes well painted or varnished. For stain-grade work, mouldings are machined from hardwoods such as Tasmanian Oak, Jarrah, Merbau or Spotted Gum. The right species depends on the finish you are after and where the moulding is going, so mention both when you order.

In Adelaide, the answer is Allmat. We carry standard skirting, architrave and moulding profiles, and we machine custom and heritage profiles in-house at our Gillman yard on spindle moulders, planers and thicknessers. Standard profile or a match for something from 1910, send it through and we will quote it.

For the full picture of what our machine shop can do, dressing, ripping, rebating, plating and the rest, see the timber machining page. And for everything else on the job, from framing to sheet products, we quote that too.