Cornice

[Richard Hutchings]

My daughter wants me to build 2 cornices for her 2 sliding doors. She found some instructions on This Old House website. I don't have a miter box and suppose I should make one for this project, along with a donkey's ear shooting board. It was suggested to make the box out of poplar. Any advice on hand tooling this will be appreciated. Other than making the nolding, I don't have any molding planes yet.

[Jack Dover]

Archive.org has a public domain book on picture framing by Paul Hasluck. Among other things there's a drawing of a miter block (sic!) that is better than a regular box type in my opinion.

https://archive.org/details/mountingframingp00hasl_0/page/10/mode/2up - page 10 and 11.

Edit: if moldings are not too crazy and you have some straight grained wood like oak, beech or maple, a scratch stock makes a really good job and can be made in an hour or two. On these woods scratching will be very smooth. On stringy woods like poplar you might run into wild grain and it's a pain to clean up that particular area. So moderately dense straight grained wood like oak is best.

If moldings are wide, you could "build it up" from simpler moldings. Alternatively make a French type molding plane or even a laminated type - it doesn't require excavating a mortise and doesn't require floats