Power for strip cutter

I got in the cutter heads for my strip cutting machine and now I need to figure out how big of motors I need to drive them. The heads are about 3 1/2" diameter and will be used to cut bead and cove in 1/4" thick cedar strips for the kayak I'm building. Each head will be on a separate motor and the completed machine will cut both sides of the strip in one pass.

Question here is, how large of motors do I need?

I had originally planned on 1 HP motors, but now I'm thinking that's way overkill. Will 3/4 HP work? Half HP?

Obviously, the smaller the motors the cheaper the overall project will be, but I want it to work as well.

To answer the inevitable question of "Why don't I just use a router table like everyone else", it's because I don't think I can get the strips as consistent making two passes. With a router table not only will it be hard to get 20' strips to feed straight, but also any variation in the width of the incoming strips will be reflected on the output. With the two head design I'm using the strips will be held rigidly in place as they move through the machine and because the spacing between the heads is fixed, so will be the width of the finished strips.

 

You have manual feeding I suppose? It's mostly depending of the feeding speed, but also some of the shaft bearings size and quality and if it's belt driven or not. If not too much friction so no problem to go down to 350W, just takes a bit more time..
BR Teddy

 

You can cut 1/4" cedar strips with a electric toothbrush motor! You don't need HP as much as you need speed and feed control.

 

I'm getting 3450 RPM motors and planning to mount the cutterheads directly on the motor shafts. These seem to be the fastest stock motors available and getting higher RPMs would require messing about with pulleys and the like.

For feed it will be manual to start with some sort of power "puller" mechanism to pull the strip through the heads. Speed on this can be whatever it needs to be.