tight miters

[Lynn Reid]

Hi...I am wrapping a mitered projection (like a picture frame with a box inside) around some small boxes. The first three sides are easy...but getting the fourth in...where the miters have to be tight on both ends at once...has been troublesome for me. I would like to hear how some of you folks deal with this issue. What I have been doing is cutting them over-sized then shimming the miter gauge with business cards...playing cards...whatever...until I get the fit. I have a lot of boxes to do (for holding small amounts of cremains for family members) and this sneaking up method is a bit time consuming. Thanks for any help!

[Myk Rian]

I think I got it, but a picture would sure help.

[Peter Quinn]

Well, first thing, if there are any pencils involved in your process, throw them away quick. No pencil line will be accurate enough. I like to measure the distances by using a marking knife or razor and marking off the actual distances. So throw the ruler away too, except for cutting rough blanks. I like to cut my parts about 1/2" or so over sized, so I'm not working with really long stock to cut shorts, that can transfer any twist in the molding to the blade. Better to cut them short. If I'm doing repetition in terms of sizes I'll sneak up on the first one then set a stop and cut all the parts the same size. It helps to have a few short pieces with miters on them os you can place your cut piece in place and check to see how it really fits on both ends and going around the corner. For outside corners, I'll clamp a mitered piece to the adjacent side, cut my first miter, but it up to the clamped up piece, mark the second side, check the length with a short mitered piece. Its really easy to think it looks like its at the corner, but without a piece to verify, often its really not and all goes afoul on final assembly.

Oh, and take a deep breath............in..........out.........whoooooo ooooooooo. One more time now.................you have to be relaxed and exercise great patience. There simply will be a lot of sneaking up, carefully scribing a line to sneak up to can improve your chances of success and expedite them too.

[Chris Fournier]

I think that I understand what you are up against and I would say that "creeping up" is the only technique for tight and tidy work, expecting bull's eyes is unrealistic for every piece. I would suggest that you use a hand plane and a shooting board to quickly trim your mitres to the perfect length. This may sound like a stoopid suggestion but a sharp handplane and shooting board will make very quick work of what you are doing. Cut your mitres a tad long on your saw and then take all of your work to your bench for final fitting. You are moving around your shop less and you will move quickly after a box or two. You can calmly and safely sneak up on the perfect fit with a handplane.

Now, check out this link for the ulitimate mitre clamps for the fine work that you are doing and with these (buy as many clamps as you can afford) you will positively fly!

http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=54189&cat=1,43838

[Andrew Gibson]

A Shooting Board is hands down the best way to go. I don't bother to use my compound miter saw for most things any more, mark with a triangle or square, cut with a back saw, shoot to fit. Takes no time at all and the result is better then any power tool I have come across...

The beauty of the shooting board is setting it up with the triangle for shooting miters... it does not have to be perfect, as long as the triangle is true 90* and your shooting board has both left and right shoots... not to mention when you figure out how to shoot end grain, you will never sand end grain again.

[Clay Fails]

I totallyagree with Andrew. A shooting board is the way to go.

[Lynn Reid]

I have wondered one thing about shooting boards...does the plane not plane away the board as well? Seems like the perfect 45 would be short lived. I use hand planes but never used a shooting board...good time to give it a try.

[Cary Falk]

First thing I do is set up my miter guage so it cuts a perfect 45. I cut 2 pieces for a corner and then I put them together amd make sure the inside corner makes a perfect 90 degree corner. The next thing for a tight corner is the lengths of each side need to be the same. I do this with stop blocks. It the box you need to put the frame around is not square the the best way to do it is us scrap pieces to get the corners right and sneak up on the final length.

[Lynn Reid]

Thanks Cary...I used stop blocks and a newly sharpened blade. The boxes are square...but veneered...there is enough minute differences to warrant adjustments. I made a 45 shooting board this morning...and did some testing with a low angle block plane. It leaves the miter smooth as glass. What I was doing was to leave the mitered molding just a tiny bit proud of the shooting board and planed it back until the plane reached the shooting board. It worked very well. I made left and right shoots as Andrew suggested...but the left side of my plane isn't square to the sole. I suppose shimming is the way to go there. If there is a better technique I'd like to hear about it...it still looks like the plane will eventually plane the board out of 45. Thanks for all your input!

[Ole Anderson]

It would help if someone could post a pic of a shooting board set up for a 45 degree miter, better yet a video. I know not of what you speak.

[Myk Rian]

It would help if someone could post a pic of a shooting board set up for a 45 degree miter, better yet a video. I know not of what you speak.

Google it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjeVPRELe4I

[Michael Mayo]

Here is a fantastic video of a guy making a 45 degree shooting board using nothing but hand tools. Makes me tired just watching it but then again I am not much of a hand tool guy but it was still incredibly impressive to watch someone do a project using nothing but hand tools to route, cut, chisel, screw, drill and plane.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=metUg9fMzbs&NR=1

[Ole Anderson]

Here is a fantastic video of a guy making a 45 degree shooting board using nothing but hand tools. Makes me tired just watching it but then again I am not much of a hand tool guy but it was still incredibly impressive to watch someone do a project using nothing but hand tools to route, cut, chisel, screw, drill and plane.


Myk, ouch.

Michael, thank you. Impressive video. Still not sure how the plane doesn't eat up the shooting board over time. Or maybe it does.

[Bill Petersen]

Myk, ouch.

Michael, thank you. Impressive video. Still not sure how the plane doesn't eat up the shooting board over time. Or maybe it does.

Take a look at the sole of your plane and notice the distance from the edge to the blade. This small distance sets an area on the shooting board that is not cut by the plane. I just made my first shooting board because I was having the same problem with fitting the final side of a mitered frame and it solved all my problems. Well, not all my problems, but at least the ones with mitering.

Bill

[David Nelson1]

It does eat the shooting board but it stops after a bit because the blade of the planes are not full width, that leaves a small ridge on the bottom of the board you are referencing to. Actually the reference is the flat side of the plane on the shooting board (bottom side) and that small lip that rides the sole of the plane. Hope that explanation is a bit clearer than mud!

[larry senen]

a flat sanding disc with a 45 degree jig is what i use. i can creep up on the mitre with very small touches on the disc.

[Lynn Reid]

I used the miter shooting board this morning...pretty good for the first time using one. I glued two small pieces of wood at 90 degrees...to a piece of scrap...to push the first miter into in glue up. The molding is also rabbeted to cover the plywood bottom edge ...which put the reference point out in the middle of the molding. It projects 1/4" outside the box...so the total width is just shy of 1/2"...molding is also 1/4" thick. Just a simple bull nose on the exposed molding. The shooting board worked very well with such small molding...I don't think I could have gotten it as close any other way. Everything seemed to fit well until the glue up...fit was OK but not perfect...guess I need more practice. I always used a low profile plane on edge grain...what I need is plane longer than a block plane...I think. The left shoot was much harder to do than the right...that is probably where I went wrong. A little sanding after glue up and everything looks good. Thanks for the shooting board suggestion...I think that is the way to go in the future.

[Michael Mayo]

Now if I wanted to make a shooting board I would think the most important piece of the construction would be the 45 degree reference you use to setup the angles of the support pieces on the board. Now being that I don't have a high precision measuring tool that I would completely stake my life on as being perfectly 45 degrees how would you go about making sure you had a perfect 45 degree angle for your reference/support boards if that even sounds understandable.........:) I have been eyeing getting some nice machinist grade squares and a nice machinist grade 45 reference tool but I don't have those yet so how did they do it in the old days???

[Cary Falk]

Drafting triangels.

[Pat Barry]

Check out this for an old school method
http://www.mathopenref.com/constangle45.html