Cutting skirting mitres

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By the way, you might find the first ten seconds of this, er, off topic. It's interesting to see a woman's priorities.

I hope you all find youselves stylishly dressed while cutting mitres....

James

Or, do it the 'old' way by cutting one walls skirting to the profile of the other piece it butts up to. One tool required, a coping saw.

Mitres are dead easy with a hand held circular saw set to 45 degs. IME you do need both hands though, so a workmate is handy for holding things steady

or even a rough cut followed by a bit of work with a coarse permagrit tool.

It is somewhat amazing to those brought up on power tools to realise how quick it is to hand shape wood with cheap hand tools

For internal corners, yes, that's the way to do it.

But for an external corner, you need to mitre

IME 45 degrees may not always be the correct angle.....

Jim K

Hmm, good intentions certainly, but as most corners are seldom at right angles and often not even vertical, quite a luxury I'd suggest. One place I went the new conservatory had not bothered to do this at the corners, just shoved one board over the other and capped the skirting with a plastic angle piece, mitred at the corners. Of course the line across and down did not now match, but nobody seemed to care. Is this the slipping of standards, bad plastering or what one wonders. And before you ask why I was on my hands and knees on the floor of someone elses house, I was trying to find an audio lead for their stereo. That is my story anyway! Brian

A vertical plastic angle? Brian

Know what you mean, but a decent sliding compound mitre saw is one of the most used power tools I have. But make sure it is big enough to cope with what you want.

And, of course, it would make light work of constructing that mitre box you want. ;-)

No you dont, you just shape both ends. Piss easy when you've practised a few times.

jigsaw set at 45* degrees + belt sander ?

• or whatever is actually required?

Jim K

In article , James Harris writes

I use the last one because I have one[1] and it is incredibly quick. Old houses in particular can have compound angles from various vertical and horizontal angles together that just don't fit in with a conventional mitre box.

The ability to run a trial joint on a couple of pieces of scrap quickly means that you can get perfect joints every time. Note that the skirting always lies flat when using an SCMS.

eg. cut a pure vertical 45deg for the first part of an internal corner on a test piece and offer up against the corner. Ooops the meeting wall isn't vertical at all so adjust the cut on the scrap and you get a perfect first piece in real material. Then cut a trial mating half on a scrap end and find that the two walls aren't meeting exactly at 90degs. No problem, adjust the mitre on the scrap until you get a perfect mate and then cut on the real material.

Yes, you can meticulously measure, calculate, mark and cut to get the same effect working manually but when you have a lot to do then it can save a lot of time to use the above method. When re-fitting an office with many weird angles and deliberately slant partitions I was gauging initial angles by eye and getting a fit very quickly because I could re-cut and adjust pieces so quickly.

Also, find an interlocking piece between multiple joints is just a mm too long, just run the saw again and it is perfect in seconds. In fact, cut just over deliberately and then second cut for a perfect fit.

Might be 67.5 for a bay, but it's that or 45 in my book. I'd rather tweak the plaster than the mitre

Internal corners can't be mitred in many cases, the skirting has to be cut to the profile of the one ajacent.

What about

Think about it. if you have a normal room with four internal corners how will you get the last piece(s) in with mitres? Especially when making alterations or replacing one part. It's possible to make a better fit too as the profiled pieces force the preceding pieces into the correct position. When removing existing, you will find only external corners are mitred.

In message , harryagain writes

A normal room would have a doorway, so you would do the three non doorway walls first, then two sections of skirting, each from corner to door. The door ends would not be mitred. Probably.

In message , News writes

Slide it down from the top? Normal size room might take more than one length anyway.

I use a 12" rafter square as a guide to keep the saw straight.

Quite hard to find, but incredibly accurate.