Coping

You have to cut the protruding end point off.

To miter you have to split the difference equally on the cuts to have the same projection.

It sounds like you are not coping with the world very well this morning. ;-)

If it were my problems I would do as suggested and cutting off the tip. However if the tip is big, I would flare the pieces together by cutting it in an eye pleasing line to connect the two pieces together.

Once the bottom edge looked correct, I would use a sharp chisel to carve both pieced to make the profiles match.

I realize this is not a practical solution if you have many joints, but if there are only 2 to 4 it would be doable. Since they are across the room from each other they only have to match to the eye, not be perfect duplicates.

Which works if working on the same plane. What are you going to do if one molding is going from one elevation to another, at an angle, stopping and immediately turning 90 degrees and proceeding horizontally?

If I understand you correctly, this is similar to the problem of cutting crown moldings for vaulted/cathedral ceilings?

There are a couple of ways to do it, one using a transition piece. If you DAGS "sloped crown molding", you should find some how to articles.

I can't envision precisely what he's after from the description (nor yours :) ).

If there's an out-of-plane direction, the same is true--it takes splitting the difference in the direction normal to the surface between the two to get an equivalent projection on the two pieces; not necessarily simple to measure or compute or cut... :)

It may be simpler to put in a butting-block to meet the ends against from the opposite directions.

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Let me try again.

Consider a room with a ceiling sloping up to a peak at one end. That would give you, for example... East wall - 8' high West wall - 12' high North wall slopes- 8' high at one end, 12' at the other South wall slopes - 8' high at one end, 12' at the other

You now want to put a molding all around the room at the wall/ceiling corner. You want to cope the corners. If you cope the sloping wall molding to the non-sloping walls, the cut which is to butt against the non-sloping molding is going to be greater than the molding width. The same is true if you try to cope non-sloping to sloping. Ditto if you try to miter. Ditto if it were around the outside of a piece of furniture configured in the same manner as the imaginary room.

There must be a way to do it and don't tell me "crown molding"...this is complicated enough :). The only way I can think of is the make the sloping molding narrower so that the angled end cut will be the same length as the molding it butts to is wide.

Exactly but flat molding, not crown.

OK, that helps. Looks like one has to sort of "round off" the corner with a piece cut and beveled to fit both the horizontal and sloping pieces.

Not bad for a drummer :)

Who's the drummer? :)

Yeah, the transition thing would do it. Same with cutting off the point except that any routed detail wouldn't match. That's what spackle is for :)

Thanks.

Rather than try to explain, look here,

How about this?

will have a gap, as it does in the drawing.... The corner will not match up either.

Right! I was trying to understand the OP's situation.

I think you nailed it... ;~)

John

You have to make do the best you can. It is a tough one to deal with. Been there done that. ;~)