Acclimating Trim?

[mrFinpgh]

I'm looking to do some trim work for my parents in a few weeks - redoing an archway that they had done in pine for the sake of expediency and budget when they got an addition put on about 25 years ago.

Everything else in the house is quartersawn red oak and it would be nice to match up the wood as well as the color and profile.  The makeup of the trim is pretty standard - ~4" flat stock for the legs w/ a roundover on the edges, plinths, and then a 6" head casing with a bead and a cyma recta crown. Very much like this illustration:

[attachimg=1]

I'd rather have the material already onsite when I get there, but I doubt thats going to happen. I'm not sure that any vendors local to them (Buffalo NY area) are going to have any quartersawn red oak trim in stock. I also haven't been able to find the crown molding profile readily available, so suspect it might be easier to just do it w/ a router table than spend hours shopping for it.

How much do you folks (who do trim work) let trim acclimate to the environment it's going to be in?  Do you let it acclimate at all?

For me, everything tends to acclimate just because I am much slower to get things done than I am to procure materials. I imagine I'll be either nailing or screwing all of this in place, but still don't want to be fighting with the materials. 

If I can't find the profiles, would I be better off 1: buying QSRO here and milling it flat and to thickness or 2: buying QSRO there and having them get it milled to the right dimensions?  I'd really prefer to avoid bringing my jointer and planer along for the trip. I'm planning on bringing other portable tools as needed.

 

[peter halle]

If I were you, I would buy there and it pre-milled for you.  Simpler and saves the back for another project further down the road.

I typically want to acclimate in place for two weeks prior to installing.  With expensive trim as yours I would be extremely careful about allowing plenty of time.

Peter

 

[mrFinpgh]

If I were you, I would buy there and it pre-milled for you.  Simpler and saves the back for another project further down the road.

I typically want to acclimate in place for two weeks prior to installing.  With expensive trim as yours I would be extremely careful about allowing plenty of time.

Thanks for the feedback. I did some investigating and I couldn't really find anyone who had that kind of trim on hand. The shop I was thinking might work out doesn't have those profiles in stock and needs to get them via order.

At this point, I am thinking I may just focus on enjoying my visit with my family and carefully measuring everything to figure out exactly what I need.  I will be visiting later in the fall and hopefully that time, with more planning, this project can get done.

 

[Bob D.]

If it's not a stock profile you could track down a shop with a molding
machine and send a sample off to have custom knives made to match.

 

[mrFinpgh]

If it's not a stock profile you could track down a shop with a molding
machine and send a sample off to have custom knives made to match.

Yes - I'm aware.  Royalton Molding does produce the profiles (flat casing w/ roundover on the long edges, 1.25" cyma recta) but they don't stock it. The issue w/ a custom knife/custom grind/custom run of molding is that we're only talking about a single archway - so for 2 profiles I might be running $170 just in setup fees before buying the trim.

If it were the whole house, I'd probably go that route, but for 16' of cyma recta, I can do that on a router table in less time than it takes to drive to the shop.  The challenge is just getting the material acclimated since I'm 4 hours away from them.