Has anyone used the Cut N Crown System ? As a non-pro and not having worked much with corwn molding I was hoping this could shorten the learning curve and provide quality results.
Cut N Crown
- Thread starter sw1211
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Sorry, haven't used it before. Crown molding is not as difficult as people make it out to be. You don't need the aftermarket stuff. It requires a little patience. Do you have a particular project in mind that we can give you some advice on? Do you have a mitersaw of some sort? What size crown are you thinking of installing?
I'm sure there are a bunch of people here who will be glad to give advice.
Peter
I'm sure there are a bunch of people here who will be glad to give advice.
Peter
Thanks, my wife has been after for me for years to hang crown in our dining room. The crown won't be real wide since the room isn't real big. I have a Dewalt CMS. The main obstacle is that on one wall there is a return vent (not sure if that's the correct name) for the furnace that I would have to work around.
How this set-up handles full length pieces was one of my main concerns too, they do sell extension supports that are supposed to address this.
I'll just give it a go without this and see how it goes.
How this set-up handles full length pieces was one of my main concerns too, they do sell extension supports that are supposed to address this.
I'll just give it a go without this and see how it goes.
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How close to the ceiling is the return vent? I may have a photo of a job i did. Last year where i had to put up crown and the room had 5 supply vents that interfered. Send me a pm if you want
me to look and send to you.
Peter
me to look and send to you.
Peter
Steve,
I bought one of those Speed Cope jigs from Rockler about a year ago. I have looked at the dvd a number of times but have yet to use it. You might also want to check Gary Katz's website. He has some good information there, including showing the Collins coping foot. I think you were in Ft. Collins when I was there for the Katz Roadshow.
A number of years ago I did some crown and took the shortcut of putting plinth blocks in the corners. Didn't have to worry about coping at all. [eek] Filled in the slight gap with caulk. Since it was painted white it looked really good.
The other alternative is to have Peter Halle come to your house. [smile]
Neill
I bought one of those Speed Cope jigs from Rockler about a year ago. I have looked at the dvd a number of times but have yet to use it. You might also want to check Gary Katz's website. He has some good information there, including showing the Collins coping foot. I think you were in Ft. Collins when I was there for the Katz Roadshow.
A number of years ago I did some crown and took the shortcut of putting plinth blocks in the corners. Didn't have to worry about coping at all. [eek] Filled in the slight gap with caulk. Since it was painted white it looked really good.
The other alternative is to have Peter Halle come to your house. [smile]
Neill
chrisrosenb
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Steve-CO said:
In this area, return air vents use stud spaces for the duct & the grill opening is just cut through the drywall. I have had to deal with a grill being above the bottom of the crown on some jobs in the past. I removed the grill, installed the crown. I then cut the grill opening just low enough for the top of the grill to be against the bottom of the crown.
Brice Burrell
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Steve, if I were in your shoes I wouldn't bother spending money on the jig I'd buy Gary Katz Conquering Crown Molding DVD. Scroll down the page a little to find the crown molding DVD. Gary will show you how to make your jig and all the in and outs you'll need to know to do the right. You can watch the DVD as many times as you need to figure it out and if you want you can sell it when you're done to get some of your money back. Trust me this is money well spent. Good luck.
stvrowe
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I purchased the Cut N Crown system at the IWF last year knowing I was going to be doing a home remodel and installing crown. Of course there was a lot of salesmanship at the demo and it looked easy. I have not used it yet but will do so extensively in the next month or so. I did speak with a number of people at the show who did own the system and their feedback pretty much convinced me to buy it.
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I thought I lived on a steep hill?
Tom
Tom
Tim Sproul
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Cut the crown upside-down on the miter saw. All you need is a few blocks of wood fastened to the base and fence (probably fastened to auxilliary fence/base) to help you consistently place the crown on the miter saw.
1. Don't buy cheapo pre-primed crown. Almost always, the stuff has excess primer on parts and that then interferes with placing the crown against the miter saw fence table. If you go this route, expect to spend significant time with a block plane removing excess primer or getting poor miters.
Get the collins coping foot if you're using solid wood (finger jointed stuff counts in this category). Use a fast cutting blade and coping is fairly easy. Take your time to learn - maybe do 5-10 practice joints and you'll quickly know what you're doing. Build the holding jig for the crown. It makes coping easier. Just like almost all wood cutting opertaions, you want the wood to be stable and unmoving while the tool moves (coping) or you want the tool to be stable and unmoving while the wood is fed through the cutter (tablesaw, for example). The holding jig helps you keep the crown stable and unmoving so you can concentrate on the jigsaw.
Get a laser rangefinder. Trying to run tape across a 20' stretch of wall gets old really fast. If a laser rangefinder is out of the budget and you're working alone, you might consider making a jig to hold the tape. Essentially, you want to screw 2 pieces of plywood together. One piece is screwed to the wall. The other is slotted 3 inches (3 is arbitrary, you can make this number whatever you like) from the end and the slot accomodates your tape hook. The 2 pieces are screwed to each other but done so that they can freely rotate.....Use 2 ladders (or more) even if you're working alone. This jig looks much like the commonly available digital protractors. When you write the length of the wall down on the wall, write it with a very large pencil (like a carpenter's pencil) or even better is a thick black marker. A lot easier to see from the floor. If you're coping and relatively inexperienced, layout which pieces will be coped and which will be butted. Mark this on the walls as you go.
Measure your corners and examine the walls. Corners that are significantly out from 90 will need to be dealt with by changing the miters or mudding the walls. Same with sharp concavity/convexity of a wall. You can convince crown to follow gentle bends but a sudden depression or hill can be difficult. How much is sudden? Well, that's where experience comes in.
1. Don't buy cheapo pre-primed crown. Almost always, the stuff has excess primer on parts and that then interferes with placing the crown against the miter saw fence table. If you go this route, expect to spend significant time with a block plane removing excess primer or getting poor miters.
Get the collins coping foot if you're using solid wood (finger jointed stuff counts in this category). Use a fast cutting blade and coping is fairly easy. Take your time to learn - maybe do 5-10 practice joints and you'll quickly know what you're doing. Build the holding jig for the crown. It makes coping easier. Just like almost all wood cutting opertaions, you want the wood to be stable and unmoving while the tool moves (coping) or you want the tool to be stable and unmoving while the wood is fed through the cutter (tablesaw, for example). The holding jig helps you keep the crown stable and unmoving so you can concentrate on the jigsaw.
Get a laser rangefinder. Trying to run tape across a 20' stretch of wall gets old really fast. If a laser rangefinder is out of the budget and you're working alone, you might consider making a jig to hold the tape. Essentially, you want to screw 2 pieces of plywood together. One piece is screwed to the wall. The other is slotted 3 inches (3 is arbitrary, you can make this number whatever you like) from the end and the slot accomodates your tape hook. The 2 pieces are screwed to each other but done so that they can freely rotate.....Use 2 ladders (or more) even if you're working alone. This jig looks much like the commonly available digital protractors. When you write the length of the wall down on the wall, write it with a very large pencil (like a carpenter's pencil) or even better is a thick black marker. A lot easier to see from the floor. If you're coping and relatively inexperienced, layout which pieces will be coped and which will be butted. Mark this on the walls as you go.
Measure your corners and examine the walls. Corners that are significantly out from 90 will need to be dealt with by changing the miters or mudding the walls. Same with sharp concavity/convexity of a wall. You can convince crown to follow gentle bends but a sudden depression or hill can be difficult. How much is sudden? Well, that's where experience comes in.
Eddie Jones
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My answer to the original question is YES! Buy it and never look back. It is so funny when I search out the phone number to call cutncrown to ask a quick question I find these old outdated posts about how you dont need these jigs. Of course you dont need it, but you also don't really need an electric saw, but it sure beats using your great grandpas hand saw(even though I still have it). I purchased my cutncrown a ways back at a wood show and have been happy ever since. I run a few guys and we do higher end remodels and some new construction and our signature finishing touch on all of our jobs is our crown molding! Error free, no time waste with copes, never a mathematical equation passed simple division(90 divided by 2 is...) and most of all and most importantly for me, its a quick learn for some of the knuckleheads I have to hire(you have to take care of family, haha). So I know if they can pick it up any one of you guys can handle it.
I remember when I was excited to try out those kats videos way back in the day and he had me making my own jig and doing those hard coping cuts, bloody fingers and caulk was the norm!! The jig was impossible to keep true, and I promise I made it sturdy. But come on when was the last time you went to a store and bought a jig for anything that was made of wood, I knew when I saw cutncrown it had to be better than the old way I was using, so I bought it. Seriously though, it took me a couple of passes by that dudes booth before I could pull the trigger, damm it was expensive. But he did good selling it making it look easy and like that earlier guy said in this post, it was when there was another guy standing there saying, yep, it is that easy... That is when I was like ok, I do this already and it is a pain in my butt so I might as well try it. One of the better decisions in my business life! Now hiring my brothers kids, not so smart! ha!
so while I dont normally respond to these things I felt obligated to on this, really was worth it and worse case scenario you can re sell it, especially that guy that mentioned reselling some other tool, this would be the one I would buy and resell, that dvd wont resell worth a crap and it doesnt do all the hard stuff like this jig does, so I am sure you could recoop the bulk of your money. Heck I am thinking about starting a second crew so maybe I would buy it!
I remember when I was excited to try out those kats videos way back in the day and he had me making my own jig and doing those hard coping cuts, bloody fingers and caulk was the norm!! The jig was impossible to keep true, and I promise I made it sturdy. But come on when was the last time you went to a store and bought a jig for anything that was made of wood, I knew when I saw cutncrown it had to be better than the old way I was using, so I bought it. Seriously though, it took me a couple of passes by that dudes booth before I could pull the trigger, damm it was expensive. But he did good selling it making it look easy and like that earlier guy said in this post, it was when there was another guy standing there saying, yep, it is that easy... That is when I was like ok, I do this already and it is a pain in my butt so I might as well try it. One of the better decisions in my business life! Now hiring my brothers kids, not so smart! ha!
so while I dont normally respond to these things I felt obligated to on this, really was worth it and worse case scenario you can re sell it, especially that guy that mentioned reselling some other tool, this would be the one I would buy and resell, that dvd wont resell worth a crap and it doesnt do all the hard stuff like this jig does, so I am sure you could recoop the bulk of your money. Heck I am thinking about starting a second crew so maybe I would buy it!
JLB builders LLC
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I have the set of them. My miter stand had a adjustable out feed support and I used a piece of hardwood scrap screwed to it to level the crown. It is pretty simple and easy to use. If you know the spring angle you are set. I let my buddy who is a police officer borrow it and he did his bathroom which had 3 sections in and out (Jacuzzis tub area,sink area and toilet ) Before he used it he burnt up 2 16' pieces of crown.
Worth the money and has paid for itself with many jobs well done.
Worth the money and has paid for itself with many jobs well done.
Ken Nagrod
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- Jul 15, 2010
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- 3,431
Why would you want to glue a coped joint? Additionally, the cope helps hide the wood or structure's movement if there is any, so you wouldn't want to glue that. If it's painted, then add a little bit o' caulk at the coped joint if you want.
Steve-CO said:
depends on what you are gonna cut with. kapex has guides that fit into the extensions on the base,
and hold the crown at the correct spring angle.
so, if you have a kapex sitting on the floor, and two sys one containers for infeed and outfeed, you are good to go.
the kapex comes with a angle finder that bisects any miter wonderfully.
i was doing 6" cherry molding around poor walls... couple degrees out, some worse than that.
with the kapex and the bisector, you can make a miter you can't get a .005 feeler gauge into.
once you get the guides set for the molding you are using, carefully note the measurement,
or if you are like me, cut a piece of molding the right dimension, and use it to set the guides.
then you always get the same spring angle. i have little lengths cut from every molding i use,
with "save this, idiot" written on the back in sharpie.
the whole deal is that you cut the material in place, not laid flat with using two compounds
on the saw. so you are cutting in on dimension only, so to speak.
ONE degree error on an angle, thats half a degree on the saw setting, times two cuts, on
6" crown molding, comes out to .03945" run out per degree of error PER INCH. so a six inch
crow molding, with a spring of nominally 4" out from the wall, will be off .160" of an inch, with
one corner touching, there is gonna be a big ugly gap.
the bisector eliminates all of that, if you set your saw carefully.
the cut n crown is sort of a solution. The issue that I have with this is that they have you cut some of the crown face in. That screws with the angles. 48 deg from the face is not the same as 48 degrees from the back. Its all the chop saw's fault!
take your average 2x4, from the back to the end it's 90 degrees. From the end to the face it's 90 degrees. No matter what angle you cut, remember that they both equal 180 degrees.
cut a 2x4 on 45 degrees. measure the cut: from the back it will be 45 degrees. From the front it will be 135 degrees. add both up and you get 180!
So if you cut your 2x4 at 38 degrees, the complimentary angle (the one that you will use) is 142 degrees.
Why is it the saw's fault? because the scale is set to measure from the BACK! aha! so how do we compensate for that?
We use the complimentary angle! allow me to 'splain:
get yourself an angle measuring tool. You can find some digital ones now for about 20 bucks. turn it on, wrap it around an outside corner (or inside, makes no difference) note the measurement.
Lets say that your device reads 88 degrees. Aha you say! 1/2 of 88 is 44! well yes it is, but the scale on our saw (all saws) measures from the back and not the front. We want the front!
So knowing this we want the complimentary angle. 180 minus 88 is 92. 1/2 of 92 = 46 degrees. That is now our chop saw setting. Set your chop saw to that angle (46) and you will be dead on.
As others here have said, cut your crown "nested" ie rest the crown up against your chop saw fence and adjust it to the angle that it will sit on the wall. Mostly it will be 45 degrees, but sometimes it's a 38/52 degree situation.
use crown stops on your saw, you don't have to spend bucks on this, a piece of 1x4 and two clamps -done.
I've used this method for several years, and it works.
Oh and what others here have said, cut it upside down on your saw, NEVER backward (face in) always face out! if you cut it face in? your angle is now 88 deg (44) not 92 (46) Thats the flaw with the cut n crown system.
I now have a kapex saw, with the included angle finder. It's really nice, but I find that I can only do one corner at a time. I like to measure the whole room on a drawing, mark down all of my angles and then take that to my saw - but this is such a sweet saw that I will learn to be quicker
I don't suggest a kapex, as it's about 1,300 bucks. Lot's of money for a saw that you'd use now and then. But wow is it ever sweet to use
good luck!
Laurie
www.lauriescustomfinishing.ca
take your average 2x4, from the back to the end it's 90 degrees. From the end to the face it's 90 degrees. No matter what angle you cut, remember that they both equal 180 degrees.
cut a 2x4 on 45 degrees. measure the cut: from the back it will be 45 degrees. From the front it will be 135 degrees. add both up and you get 180!
So if you cut your 2x4 at 38 degrees, the complimentary angle (the one that you will use) is 142 degrees.
Why is it the saw's fault? because the scale is set to measure from the BACK! aha! so how do we compensate for that?
We use the complimentary angle! allow me to 'splain:
get yourself an angle measuring tool. You can find some digital ones now for about 20 bucks. turn it on, wrap it around an outside corner (or inside, makes no difference) note the measurement.
Lets say that your device reads 88 degrees. Aha you say! 1/2 of 88 is 44! well yes it is, but the scale on our saw (all saws) measures from the back and not the front. We want the front!
So knowing this we want the complimentary angle. 180 minus 88 is 92. 1/2 of 92 = 46 degrees. That is now our chop saw setting. Set your chop saw to that angle (46) and you will be dead on.
As others here have said, cut your crown "nested" ie rest the crown up against your chop saw fence and adjust it to the angle that it will sit on the wall. Mostly it will be 45 degrees, but sometimes it's a 38/52 degree situation.
use crown stops on your saw, you don't have to spend bucks on this, a piece of 1x4 and two clamps -done.
I've used this method for several years, and it works.
Oh and what others here have said, cut it upside down on your saw, NEVER backward (face in) always face out! if you cut it face in? your angle is now 88 deg (44) not 92 (46) Thats the flaw with the cut n crown system.
I now have a kapex saw, with the included angle finder. It's really nice, but I find that I can only do one corner at a time. I like to measure the whole room on a drawing, mark down all of my angles and then take that to my saw - but this is such a sweet saw that I will learn to be quicker
I don't suggest a kapex, as it's about 1,300 bucks. Lot's of money for a saw that you'd use now and then. But wow is it ever sweet to use
good luck!
Laurie
www.lauriescustomfinishing.ca
I don't know why, maybe it's after years of participating and moderating internet forums, but whenever I see someone suddenly appear out of nowhere, with one single post and no followup, and their one single post transparently supports a product that's for sale, I get a little suspicious. Just a little.
I'm sorry if Eddie cut his fingers while coping. I haven't heard that complaint from too many carpenters--professionals or serious DIYers. In answer to Eddie Jones, if you want to cope your inside corners--which is the best way to install running molding (baseboard, chair rail, and crown molding), then you have to cut an inside corner miter first--whether you use a plastic jig/fixture or whether you use a sacrificial crown stop on your miter saw or whether you cut crown on the flat: building a wooden coping jig for crown molding, and cutting miters on a saw are TWO separate chores, both of which are necessary if you're coping your inside corners. Of course, you don't need the crown jig for coping baseboard or chair rail, just a coping saw or Collins Coping Foot on your jigsaw. But you also don't need a plastic jig or fixture for your miter saw.
Like an experienced carpenter and wood turner recently said: "You don't need more gear. What you need is practice."
I've always been against carrying tools or equipment that didn't pay for themselves in terms of weight, storage in my van or truck, usefulness on a jobsite, etc. The tools and equipment I build or buy must work hard and be useful in a variety of situations. That's why I practiced with a Collins Coping Foot for a long time...so that I could get good at it and use it for ALL my coping needs.
But Eddie's fixture isn't something I can use for ALL my needs, and it doesn't even do the job if the crown has a spring angle other than 45 or 38 degrees, and it doesn't work if the face of the crown is not parallel to the back--which is often the case.
That's why I continue to use a sacrificial stop on my miter saw for crown that can be cut nested against the fence; and I continue to cut crown on-the-flat if it can't be nested against the fence.
Gary
I'm sorry if Eddie cut his fingers while coping. I haven't heard that complaint from too many carpenters--professionals or serious DIYers. In answer to Eddie Jones, if you want to cope your inside corners--which is the best way to install running molding (baseboard, chair rail, and crown molding), then you have to cut an inside corner miter first--whether you use a plastic jig/fixture or whether you use a sacrificial crown stop on your miter saw or whether you cut crown on the flat: building a wooden coping jig for crown molding, and cutting miters on a saw are TWO separate chores, both of which are necessary if you're coping your inside corners. Of course, you don't need the crown jig for coping baseboard or chair rail, just a coping saw or Collins Coping Foot on your jigsaw. But you also don't need a plastic jig or fixture for your miter saw.
Like an experienced carpenter and wood turner recently said: "You don't need more gear. What you need is practice."
I've always been against carrying tools or equipment that didn't pay for themselves in terms of weight, storage in my van or truck, usefulness on a jobsite, etc. The tools and equipment I build or buy must work hard and be useful in a variety of situations. That's why I practiced with a Collins Coping Foot for a long time...so that I could get good at it and use it for ALL my coping needs.
But Eddie's fixture isn't something I can use for ALL my needs, and it doesn't even do the job if the crown has a spring angle other than 45 or 38 degrees, and it doesn't work if the face of the crown is not parallel to the back--which is often the case.
That's why I continue to use a sacrificial stop on my miter saw for crown that can be cut nested against the fence; and I continue to cut crown on-the-flat if it can't be nested against the fence.
Gary
