Where are you mitering to? The usual way to fit baseboards is to cope the inside corners and only miter the outside corners. The next problem is setting the saw correctly. Sighted people have to worry about parallax, that is, looking straight on at a ruler or the line marked on stock to be cut. We have another problem, the edge of a tape measure or even a story stick has some thickness and the kerf of a saw blade has some thickness more than the body of the blade. Then, are you measuring to the same side of the blade? Not a silly question but an easy enough error to make and modern carbide blades take out nearly an eight of an inch of material when they cut. Finally, if you are using a talking tape measure you are only accurate to within a 16th of an inch. add to that you could be measuring on the shy side of the 16th and transferring to the proud side of the 16th and you could be off nearly an eighth. Add that to the mating piece and you could be off nearly a quarter of an inch.
Even professionals though do often sneak up on a cut with power equipment. If measuring inside corner to inside corner then the narrowest dimension over the width of the trim is the correct measure on the long (back) side. If you are using the face then you must subtract twice the thickness of the trim material. Measuring the face though is very difficult to do accurately because you can't get your measuring device snug into the angle where the tip of the teeth meet the board. Sighted people look down to the point where the teeth will be just clipping off the pencil line and they will use a very sharp pencil to draw a very thin crisp line. At the other side, because the teeth attack on the outer angle your measuring device will either be nearly the thickness of the blade away from where the outer edge will shave off the wood or it will be the thickness of the blade too short, a distance increased by the 45 degree angle which is the root of the sum of the squares of which the thickness of the blade forms the hypotenuse. Eventually though you do learn to fudge the measure a little to get you very close. With a good miter saw or well tuned and highly accurate table saw and the material well fixed down it is possible to shave a whisker off of a cut which brings us back to that recently and lengthy discussion of inexpensive table saws. It doesn't take long to spend several hundred dollars on waste material. ----- Original Message ----- From: Scott Howell To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 2:35 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] mitering trim ,Folks, I'm in the process of cutting baseboard and the like to install in the living room after the flooring project. Now for some reason I just can't seem to get this baseboard cut properly. I have lets say a measurement of 6 3/4 and I place the baseboard on the miter saw and I have tried both measuring with the blade at a 0 angle and then also at the proper 45 degree angle. In both cases it seems that it's just not coming out right, it comes out to short. So, can someone offer some tips on mitering trim so when I cut the pieces, I get the 6 3/4 I need and the ends will stick out enough to mate up with the other 45-degree angles to cover the corner? If this didn't make sense, please let me know. I'd like to get this right and not waste a lot of material. tnx Scott Howell [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.4.5/1537 - Release Date: 7/6/2008 5:26 AM [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
