Picture Frame Mitres - Saw or Guillotine?

I'm not a framer by any means, but I like using the guillotine to sneak up on the perfect size. It's harder to take a 64th or so off with a miter than with a guillotine.

snipped-for-privacy@clara.co.uk wrote in news:1117997665.578825.66270 @o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

Both. The guillotine is a miter trimmer, to clean up after the saw.

They are a fine 'old school' tool, in the right hands.

Patriarch

How about the miter saw and a shooting board and plane to sweeten the cuts up?

I did a presentation of shooting boards at the Northeastern Woodworkers Association's Showcase in April and it was well received. When Thomas Lie-Nielson handed Chris Schwarz (Popular Woodworking) the new CD on shooting boards I commented that I thought it was a great CD. They both looked at me... Lie-Nielson asked "You've seen this, it's brand new?" I responded that I saw it on his web site and ordered it about 10 days before. ;-) I told them both that I was demoing shooting boards in the Jigs and Fixtures area... We all had a nice little discussion and I got to handle Schwarz's new half-back saw. It was a surreal conversation. ;-) I think the best line of the day though was when I guy said, "I met Bill Clinton last week but I'm more impressed meeting you." This was directed towards Lie-Nielson. ;-)

Anyhow, back to the shooting boards. If you've got a decent hand plane you can easily sweeten up the miters. Generally, the wider the molding the larger the plane you should use. This as you need the additional mass for good momentum through the larger material. A side benefit is that you can use the plane for something else while the guillotine is useful only for sweetening.

John

A well designed miter sled for the table saw works great. Dead on angles and to size every time.

Thanks everyone, plenty of food for thought there and nothing too expensive. I aleady have a ten inch hand plane for years. I had never heard of a mitre sled, so I looked up this site:Incredibly detailed plans:

Difficult to hold anything near the precision with something that relies on the hand not applying torque, like the miter saw.

I looked at the sled and tried to get the PDF he's provided but it looks like we must have overwhelmed his site. If anyone else got it, would you mind posting it to the binaries group ? Or will this once again cause 'legal' problems ?

jim bailey