cutting 8" baseboard

[MrMac]

I am quoting a fairly large baseboard job, and I have a question about cutting this material on my kapex. The baseboard itself is plain boards, primed. It's 3/4" x 7 1/2", no profile.

This means that it has to be cut on the flat. My quandry is do I have to go back to my old school way to set the angles on my kapex? or do you folks have a slick way to do this.

I can't use the kapex angle finder, it's just too tall! darn.

I can do this the old way, but I've been spoiled by the kapex angle finder/laser method

Not a biggie, but the old way is to measure the corner with my bosch angle finder, then divide the complintary angle by 2. It's quick, but the kapex angle finder is quicker, less steps.

How would you do this on the kapex?

BTW practising on some scrap in my garage, and I find that using my domino makes it dead easy to get the boards to mate up perfectly.

 

[WarnerConstCo.]

Why would you miter base boards like that?  I either butt them or run the ends over my dado stack so the other piece let's in.

I try not to even miter the outsides, you can just glue and then run in some trim screws.  Fill and sand and the whole thing disappears.

 

[erock]

I'm with WarnerConstCo.

It's paint grade.  Glue up the butt joints,  wood fill any gaps, sand  and paint.  You'll never see the joint.

 

[MrMac]

Thanks guys, but doing butt joints is not an option here. The HO had a "person" in  to do the baseboards, they got part of one bedroom done - butt joints. She fired him. What he did was a mess even with butt joints (how do you screw that uP??) there were other things as well, turns out he was an out of work framer.

I happen to love doing angles! so it's not a biggie, but I thought if there was a technique that you folks use with the kapex, then I'd sure like to know what it is

 

[Deansocial]

use the angle finder then set the saw the normal way and read the angle the set it square and bevel to that angle maybe?

 

[jmbfestool]

Wa No way man!  

Whats this never be seen?!?!    You cant do da!   Leaving end grain exposed will ALWAYS be seen.    Glue filler wont work. Wood moves only has to move so little and you will see the joint.     ALWAYS mitre it on external corners even if it has no profile.    I dont think just butting the baseboard up on external corners is very good at all.  Seems cowboy way of doing it to be honest like a DIY'er

+1 what Dean said!  But I never use my kapex angle finder cus I dont know where is it lol.    I use my carpenters square  I stick that on and I know from looking at it what the angle is pretty much get on the mark every time.

 

[jmbfestool]

Thanks guys, but doing butt joints is not an option here. The HO had a "person" in  to do the baseboards, they got part of one bedroom done - butt joints. She fired him. What he did was a mess even with butt joints (how do you screw that uP??) there were other things as well, turns out he was an out of work framer.

I happen to love doing angles! so it's not a biggie, but I thought if there was a technique that you folks use with the kapex, then I'd sure like to know what it is

Haahaaa You wanna see some bad baseboard!   Honestly its a joke!  This guy is like at retirement age!  Hes dead nice guy but man  he is crap for his age!  

I feel embarrassed when other trades come onto the job I feel like telling them I have nothing to do with all skirting and architrave window boards door frames!

Der were 3 joiners on the job but I think I have replaced them cus their is still ALOT of joinery to do.

I got my mate to help me out 2 day and he couldnt stop laughing every bit of architrave, baseboard (skirting) he walked past he was like OMG, OMG....... OMG.   I kept saying I know I know shocking innit!

Ill take some pictures to moro and show ya!

JMB

 

[Kevin Stricker]

I don't understand your hesitance to butt joint, that is the only way you are going to get tight joints over such a long spread.  You will generally find that the bottom of the corner is let in at least 1/4 inch where it has not been built up with drywall mud and cornerbead. So to get a tight miter you have to shim out the bottom of each corner to be plumb with the top and as soon as you nail it it will generally open up.  This is why coping is going to be the best option for inside corners, which is a butt joint on square stock.  Add dominoes and glue if you want to prove something to the homeowner.  You are the pro, don't let a misinformed client determine your method. If you miter and they end up open you will be the one who screwed up the job.

Cut the butt joints long and spring them in tight. No caulk necessary and much better results than miters.

 

[jmbfestool]

I don't understand your hesitance to butt joint, that is the only way you are going to get tight joints over such a long spread.  You will generally find that the bottom of the corner is let in at least 1/4 inch where it has not been built up with drywall mud and cornerbead. So to get a tight miter you have to shim out the bottom of each corner to be plumb with the top and as soon as you nail it it will generally open up.  This is why coping is going to be the best option for inside corners, which is a butt joint on square stock.  Add dominoes and glue if you want to prove something to the homeowner.  You are the pro, don't let a misinformed client determine your method. If you miter and they end up open you will be the one who screwed up the job.

Cut the butt joints long and spring them in tight. No caulk necessary and much better results than miters.

YEah butt joint (scribe) in corners is best way but you can do a fake mitre on the top so do a small little mitre at the top and chisel out the other to fit flush and so from above it will look like a mitre but it will actually be a butt joint.

 

[WarnerConstCo.]

I have installed a lot of tall mop boards and wood wainscoting and almost all my outside corners are butt joints, glued and screwed.  For stain stuff I will miter the outside.  When prepped right, you will never see the end grain or what ever you were talking about.  

I will not miter or scarf tall flat mop boards, you will spend hours trying to get them right.

Look at any old house with tall mop boards, all the corners are let in.  

I will find a few pictures of some painted up that I have done, still look great after several years.

 

[mastercabman]

Miter your outside corners! That end grain is going to show no matter what.
For outside corners i look at the corner and if it looks like a 90* i cut 1 piece at 45* and a dummy piece at 45*
I put them together and see if it fit.If not i go back to the saw and move the angle to compensate for whatever gap i have.
After a while you get to know how much to compensate.I alway keep dummy piece to see how my 2 cuts fits.
If i run into an odd angle,i pull my bosch angle finder.For inside corners,just a butt joint will do.

 

[MrMac]

I mentioned earlier that before I owned the kapex, I would measure the corner, then calculate 1/2 of the compliment.
The reason for that is because your saw is calibrated to cut the "shown" angle from the back side of your piece.

It's the front side of our trim that needs to be repeated so that it's exactly the same as the corner.

cut a scrap of 2x4 on your saw. Now measure this with your angle finder. From the back? 45 deg. From the front? it's 45 deg. No matter what angle you cut these two angles have to equal 90 degrees! (your angle finder will actually read 135 degrees, but just knock off 90 so as not to confuse the issue: 135-90=45)

This is assuming of course that we are cutting our material face up, or face out.

We have to compensate for the saws calibrations.

Ok, so what if we have a corner that measures 86 degrees? aha! you say, I'll set my little saw to 43 and my miter will be perfect! wrong skippy, your saw did you in again.

Remember we need to repeat the angle on the FACE of our trim, not the back. If we just set our saw to 43 degrees, then our face angle will be 47 degrees. (47+47=94) So we will be out by 8 degrees! our angle's are reversed on us. We want the face to be 43 degrees, not 47.  (43+43=86, which is our measured angle on the corner)

Ok, so how do we do that? well lets run the numbers. We know that both angles have to equal 90 degrees. We know one angle already,  and it's 43. So 90-43 equals 47. 43+47=90.

I know, you will say that 43 is 1/2 of 86, well you are right. The problem that we have is that our saw is calibrated from the back fence! so whatever is up against the fence, that's where the angle will be cut. It's something that we have to compensate for.

We want to repeat the 88 degree angle on the FACE of our trim. That's why we need to compensate for the saw's calibration.

Having said that, I don't go through the numbers in that way, it's the way I try to explain why miters don't work for many folks.

I use a short cut: whatever happens on one side of 90 degrees, do the same for the other side.

For example, on our 86 degree corner? that's four degrees less than 90. So I add 4 degrees to 90 to get 94. 1/2 of 94 is 47!
This is actually quite fast, you can do it in your head as you walk to the saw, and it's dead on.

so remember: when cutting angles, use 1/2 the complimentary angle.

there will be a test tomorrow. bring coffee.
LOL

disclaimer: this is a shortcut of a much longer explanation involving 360 degrees, and 180 degrees etc. and there will be dozens of ways to explain this, but it's 4:30 A.M. and I'm asleep.

 

[fshanno]

Knowing my limitations I would have to do everything I could to set it up so I could fasten and glue the inside and outside joints before I attached the pieces to the wall.  With any luck I would have long walls and short trim so there would be a seam.  I would try to convince the homeowner to go with hardwood so that I couldn't get boards longer than 9 feet.  "Sorry about the seams but they just don't have this in 16' or even 12' lengths."  Lame, I know it.

For the inside corners I suppose I would fudge the cut so that I could get the vertical seam tight by shimming the top of one or even both legs.  I know this is terribly cheesy but I also know my limitations.  There would of course be a gap between the wall and the base along the top near the corner that would have to be caulked, even if the trim was to be stained.  Again, it's lame, but there it is.

 

[hockey_magnet]

Just finished a job similar to this - 8" flate base. I used scribed butt joints on inside corners and they are fine - I doubt very much that inside mitres would look better considering the walls and they would probably look worse considering every angle is compound - If there was profile, I would have coped it. Outside mitres of course. There is no fast way to do the mitres. This was an old house and the walls were really bad.

 

[MrMac]

Hockey magnet, I agree with you. Scribing and coping are the way to go! As for lining up the miters in the corners, there's a couple of ways to do this. One is to go around and using your square, check each wall near the corners, vertically.

Either scrape off the drywall mud, or run a drywall screw into the base plate, backing it out just enough to touch your square. Now when you install your baseboard it will be very close to being correct.

On profiled baseboard, I cope every inside corner. To close any gaps, I use the "trim adjustor" screws that I got from some place in New York. tools plus. They work pretty good.

On this job (If I get it) I will use my domino to help line up the smaller pieces, saves a lot of fiddling around.

 

[jmbfestool]

Here you go like I said I was going to show some pictures on HOW NOT TO DO SKIRTING! 

(This carpenter was trying to convince the client he will build the units for the wardrobes and get me to make the doors for them units! I told the client basically I dont want anything to do with the wardrobes if he works on them)  Well.........im doing the wardrobes top to bottom  [big grin] and you can see why I wasnt happy with having him doing the wardrobe units from the pictures below!

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You can see the ball ontop of the newel post looks like its going to fall off! haahaa! HE didnt stick da on straight did he!
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[jmbfestool]

by the way thats a small sample! Theirs is LOADS more horrible bits like that!   I have ripped skirting and architrave off the room Im working in cus I want  all the joinery to be good all round not just my bit! Im ripping the skirting off in them pictures I have showed you above cus I cant standing walking past it every day.         This job has been going on for 3years and hes been on it most the time  [eek]

JMB

 

[Deansocial]

wow [eek]

 

[jmbfestool]

wow [eek]

haahaa! I aint seen n e thing like it!  I cringe every time I walk past it dude!  I tell other trades who come in !by the way I have done NONE of the joinery here!    Only the curved arches wardrobes bathrooms bathroom units stairs.

Its a joke

 

[neth27]

You should of seen the door i have been to try to sort out today..... 12mm clearance  [big grin]

John.....