cutting skirting with mitre saw

May 26, 2007 10 Replies
N

I am thinking of buying an electric mitre saw in order to make mitre cuts in skirting boards, which are approx 100mm high. What's the best way to make the cut - do you stand the skirting board vertically and pivot the blade to the 45 degree position, keeping the blade in the vertical plane, or lie the skirting board flat and incline the blade to make a 45 degree bevel cut?



The other application of the tool would be to cross-cut wooden flooring planks (engineered or solid, typically 130 mm wide x 15 mm thick).



Over time, I will lay wooden flooring and install skirting boards in around 4 rooms. The saws available range in price by a factor of 20 twenty or so. Any recommendations of which saw to buy for this application, within a budget of around 150 pounds?



thanks



Julian



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T

The latter

I have one of these

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well pleased with it. I'd buy another if it went missing.

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G

Cut it in the flat plane position.

ps also purchase an Angle finder as not all corners are true,other than that profiling is the best technique

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S

The former is an easier cut, and certainly easier to mark and measure, but 100mm is probably too high for most mitre saws. I hate using the 45 deg tilt

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Looks pretty useful and, at 18kgs, not too heavy to cart about.

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J

Unless you get a saw with a very big blade (a Makita LS1214 would do it!), then the latter is usually the only option. You only need worry about the external corners as the internal ones ought to be scribed instead.

Some saws don't make using the bevel cut accurately that easy, since they lack an accurate scale. Setting the angle using a angle divider or carpenters bevel gauge usually helps.

All bar the smallest will do that without too much difficulty.

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R

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well pleased with it. I'd buy another if it went missing.

I have the Wickes equivalent of one of these

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which I find perfectly adequate for skirting board up to 4" high. Light, portable, no electricity needed . . .

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G

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> well pleased with it. I'd buy another if it went missing.

These are useless at cutting straight down a 4" piece of skirting...you get half way and the blade starts wandering of the mark.

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R

Not in my experience! Maybe they need a bit more skill than I realised.

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S

The blade is too fine and too flexible. You get a nice cut on small, delicate mouldings but not ideal for skirting

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N

these

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I find

I have tried something similar in the past (I think it was

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. But I found that the blade wore out very quickly. Also I found that if I clamped the workpiece tightly (using G-clamps rather than the clamp that comes with the saw), it needed a lot of force to move the saw blade back and forth. Probably incompetence on my part!

thanks

Julian

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