hey all,
please share your favorite,best and most accurate method for cutting 45 degree miters. when i cut angles for,say, a picture frame i use a dedicated sled. when cutting an edge, i tilt the blade and employ an auxiliary fence etc. mostly my greatest concern revolves around improving or maintaining dead-on accuracy.
i look forward to,and thank you for sharing!
eef
Replies
If your looking to create perfect dead on miters for picture frame work and furniture trim work, you cannot beat a miter trimmer. This armstrong powered tool leaves a glass like finish on the ends. Nothing else cuts like one of these. You can shave a 64th of an inch off any miter joint in most trim.
When working with bigger pieces, I, like you, use a dedicated panel sled and tilt the blade on the table saw. On pieces up to about 14" wide, I use my radial arm saw and a thin kerf blade.
union,
does this miter trimmer work with a handled,slicing-motion,type blade? also, how do you miter the edge of a face frame where it meets the stile of the end frame of a cabinet (i hope that made sense.)
eef
Sorry for the delay, Yes, it is a hand drawn lever slicing motion. The other question, are you talking about the rail as it meets the stile?
Edited 6/5/2008 8:04 am ET by unionlabel
union,
ive seen, but have never used, one of those devices. i intend to explore that method.
where the verticle edge of the stile of a front face frame meets the verticle edge of the stile of a finished end...
i tend to miter rather than butt these parts of a cabinet. and i was (am) curious as to how others do this.
but at this point am a little concerned that im still not being clear enough in my explanation.
eef
I own one only because my better half is a photographer and she likes everything in nice frames. This device allows me to finely shave each end and fine tune the miters for a perfect fit. A little stainable glue and you can barely detect it.
Eef,
do you miter the edge of a face frame where it meets the stile of the end frame of a cabinet (i hope that made sense.)
Here's a glimpse at a chisel jig for mitered rail & stile parts. I've seen all sorts of variations on this one.
As to the mitre slicer the first ones were called Lions and are made by Pootatuck.
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
mornin' bob,
where stile meets stile. one perpendicular to the other and mitered along each connecting edge. i attach an auxiliary fence to my tablesaw fence,tilt the blade to 45, fine tune the set-up and then rip the edge of each stile to 45 degrees.
jeez, i hope all of this is making sense.
eef
Not sure if I'm mitre challenged but are you talking about the long edge of two stiles that meet at a corner?
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
THAT'S IT!!!!
it is i who is, at times, verbally, as well as descriptively challenged.
now, am i clear enough about the auxiliary fence part?
eef
Eef,
OK, now I'm wondering if you were to make the initial rip on the TS @ 45° and then fine tune it on your joiner with the fence set to 45° to just skim it? Then perhaps a sanding block for those intsey tinetsy winetsies!?
Also, is there some sort of post block behind the stiles, like for a leg? I'm visualizing raised panels wrapped around a post block like on the top of a leg......
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
bob,
you're pretty much describing how i go about ripping these edges. ive not used my jointer to cut 45's.
if i get your drift, a support block could be wrapped as you describe.
i guess what im fishing for here is other woodworker's struggles and techniques in getting to as perfect a 45 as is possible. for some reason, im often searching for ways to do this better and there are those odd times when even though ive duplicated a set up as best i can, the end results are not the same. or maybe as i get older i mind less and less pursuing perfection. i know, by now, ill not achieve it. it's just so damn much fun chasing perfection's call when i hear it. and also,these days, i hear it more when i go after what i love the most to do-and i do love making tight joints!
eef
eef,
I've used that method for quite some time now making what I call full mitered keepsake boxes, i.e. all sides are mitred to each other, top & bottom. Works pretty well but that may be because I'm using relatively short pieces that are usually not more than 16" long.
Sometime I need to clamp a straightedge on the joiner outfeed bed to keep the board from slipping though. I'll also use a disc sander with the table set to 45° and/or the old faithful block of wood wrapped in sandpaper. Whatever gets me there.
No doubt square stock has to be milled or all bets are off! And the glueup was a nightmare till I made some jigs. Splines or dovetail splines go in then cut off the top.
Hey man, that's the fun right,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
bob,
yep.
and thanks for your time.
eef
Hi eef ,
You seemed to be the only one that answered your own question .
You asked about joining the stiles of an angled face and ends cabinet . I make these types of cases and also use the aux fence and crank the 45° , are they not working out or are you having a tough time clamping them ?
I spline the joints quite often the full length with a saw kerf er @ 1/8" this helps with alignment and adds some glue surface like a tongue .
You can make some simple wood clamp blocks to aid in assembly , some faces get glued together before I glue them to the case .
Hope this helps dusty
dusty,
nice.
i was alluding to the same joint, but at 90 degrees by means of two 45's.
hope you're having a good saturday!
eef
dusty.
by the way, the more i pay attention, it seems that if i just hold my horses, eventually i answer my own questions...
almost as if the answer was sittin' there waiting the whole time.
but i do enjoy talking and sharing these little matters with others.
eef
Have one (Lion) and can't say they are worthless but they are a pain. Very crudely manufactured. Bumps, casting pits, coarse bed milling etc. I think of them more as one of Norm's great industrial picture framing machines. The blade really has to be honed (and it's a big wide double edged puppy) and if you set to much of a trim (more than a 1/32), the tear out is fierce. On mine, there is just enough slop between the blade groove bearing surface and the blade to increase tear out as it slides across. Can work fine on one side then go to opposite with reversed grain and ...#*@*%, more tearout. Must hold stock very tight or clamp when trim or can get miter "feather" on outside end. Have to recheck the angle indents every time on each side. Poot used to offer a resharpening service.Maybe it would help if I used straight stock...
Other than that, it is the right piece for some jobs.
It can yield an almost invisible miter...sometimes,Most jobs - plane and shooter.
I cut small miters with a homemade (crude) miter box and larger pieces with the mitre saw. I cut them about 1/32 to 1/16 oversize.
Next, I trim them to length using a shooting table and a very sharp low angle block plane. The shooting board uses a chunck of plywood cut at 90 degrees fastened to a bench hook at 45 degrees to guide the plane. It gives essentially perfect results (although the human factor, me, doesn't always use the set up to its fullest). If the block is not set at a perfect 45 degrees, I know that the deviance for one piece is offset by the deviance on the other piece resulting in 90 degree miters. Note that I always cut the workpiece a little big in the miter box and return to the shooting board once or twice to shave off a little more until the fit is good. For larger miters, you might try a miter plane. With a sharp plane, the face of the miter is too smooth to be hidden!
For more info, get Garrett Hack's handplane book. It's great woodworker reading even if you don't use handplanes. In fact, you will use handplanes after you read it.
Edited 6/5/2008 1:00 am ET by Telemike
T-mike,
thanks for your response. ill look into that garret hack book. i tend to be more inclined toward machine-type methods when pursuing perfect cuts. although during the past few years ive explored hand-cut methods and stumbled right into greater woodworking joy.
eef
I use a mitersaw and attach a stop on the auxilary fence for lengths.
Set the swing for 45 1/2 °,lock and cut. Repeat for the other miters. You will find that the miters fit tight, the 1/2° extra assures this and cannot not be seen .
mike
My recently retired neighbor has been going bananas with this problem. He wants to frame and sell his photographs as a retirement hobby/business. His photography is excellent, but his woodworking skills are "developing". - lol
A few months ago, he came over and was asking how three of his miters could join so well but the fourth was so awful. I walked him through the process explaing that there were two parameters that had to be dead-on for a frame to look right:
He was hoping to quickly master four sided frames and move into hexagons and octagons. He tried a hex frame and that really underscored the need for very high precision. - lol
hey dave,
ah, we make it look so easy to the newbie. i agree, perfection is called for when making miter joints. im enjoying everyone's in-put. miters are one of many techniques that i always seek to improve the doing of.
thanks!
eef
A couple of years ago, I got the Makita LS1013 SCMS and spent a couple of hours dialing in the stops to a knats whisker. Since then, I have little trouble with miters - as long as I'm careful with the placement of a stop block for length.
A few weeks ago, I made beech frames with mitered corners for two bathroom vanity mirrors. One was 36" square and the other was 36" x 60". Thanks to my trusty SCMS, every miter was dead on.
Sometimes, there is a god.......................and she isn't mad at me. - lol
For many years I 45'd panels on my tablesaw... either using a sled or aux. fence. On large panels (anything over 5' long, or so) this is daunting. Last year I was about to do this again on a panel that was 2'x8' and 1 1/4" thick... not a happy thought. Then I looked at my newly acquired Festool T55. I thought, why not see what it will do. Bottom line: perfect miters and with no back strain. I'm currently making a large piece that has a lot of fancy veneer that has to be mitered to keep the lines flowing. The Festool is wonderful.
I didn't write the above to start another Festool debate. For me, it's just a tool. It's a well made one, so I like it. If something else comes along that's better, then I'll get it.
For the record: I'd think that I'd prefer a sliding tablesaw to do these cuts.
hey sapwood,
large panel mitering has, at times, given me pause. is that festool tool a router? ive not been in the real world of production cabinetmaking for 16 years because i teach woodshop for the lausd (los angeles...). keeping 120 kids busy on a shoestring budget is about as daunting as it gets these days.
thank you.
eef
No, the T55 is a hand pushed circular saw. The beauty part is it runs in a track that requires no clamping to stay in place. (I didn't believe it at first either.) Festools are very nicely made. The track has a splinter guard that keeps top surface veneer from chipping out. (I didn't believe that until I saw it, either.) When the saw is tipped to 45º it stays aligned with the track edge, so chip out is still eliminated. You have to see these things in action to believe in them. The downside: Festool is very very proud of their tools. They are expensive.
I'm no Festo nut either but it is a remarkable tool.
I'm a carpenter for my day job, and I'm always finding new uses.
But anyhow, your post kind of opened my eyes to it's bevel
possibilities. Thanks. One thing they don't get credit for often is durability. I have
really abused mine (badly) and it still works fine. Back to the topic-
Lots of good methods have been brought to light here.
To me the bottom line is. it takes some diligence and care
to have tight 45's.
henley,
ive found the same. there is no getting around a well-tuned attitude of diligence and care when one wants to do something creative. it's interesting that my chosen past-time keeps me coming back to this very healthy state of mind.
and i may yet look into this whole festool thing.
thanks,
eef
Whew!, you got some hi-tech solutions there. Here's what I use; from WOOD mag, I think. It's called the Universal Table Saw Jig. Good for short tapers too.
View Image
knuts,
er, so... that's not high-tech?
id be hours at the owner's manual!!
im enjoying this.
thanks,
eef
I have a saw/shaper with a slider so this may not be useful to some. I use a lock mitre cutter to make the joints. With this cutter one piece is fed flat and the corresponding piece is cut with the stock vertical. The slider allows me to rigidly clamp the stock to the table, so the cuts work great. To make the vertical cuts I built the same jig as David Best did shown below.
Brad
brad,
i bought a lock-miter cutter for my shaper some years back. i had a dodgy time using it. some days the joints were tight, some days not. i always suspected that vibration was the culprit. the slider device you use sounds as if it eliminates vibration caused error.
thank you for your response.
eef
Brad
Could you show somw more photos and info on this jig.
Jeff
Take a look on David Best's site. Add a p between his first last name, delete the 's and add a dot com. He actually has a scaled drawing and shows various steps using it.
Brad
Eef,
I work in a school too.
Here's how I do it with schoolkids. I showed an apprentice this trick and his joinery was judged as being some of the best the teachers had seen.
Cut the mitres rough and slightly oversized (a skinny sixteenth of an inch or so - in my language, about a mm)
Clamp the frame down onto a sacrificial board in the correct angle/orientation. A bit of scrap chipboard or ply works well.
Run a fine handsaw through the mitre joint. The exact angle is now unimportant. How straight the cut is is also unimportant, within reason. The shape of one cut neatly matches/butts into the shape of the other, as the saw kerf is constant width and if it moves to the left on one piece of wood, it moves to the right on the other and the net gap remains at zero.
In a classroom, I'd teach this instead of tying up a saw for hours while kids fiddle with something not designed to be this accurate.
The other way I've done it in a classroom is to make a shooting board at 45.00 degrees. Teach the kids how to shoot mitres. The board'll be destroyed when they start canting the plane over and chew out the backstop. When they do get it, however, the results are spot-on and accurate.
Or, if the budget stretches this far, buy a second hand Morso (picture framers' foot-operated) guillotine - should be about USD500 or so, maybe less as the current financial woes would be hitting picture framers as an incidental expense and one of the first to go from the household budget. It's what we use in trade for mitres.
The foot power gives control to the kids, BUT the safety risk is huge as the blade can't be guarded completely and the kids must be trustworthy. I wouldn't trust my kids - the guillotine would take a finger with a silly kid.
Cheers,
eddie
edit - found that you're trying to mitre a stile on the long edge.
I'd buy a 22.5° mitre bit and run them over the router table, if kids were allowed to do so. (the education department where I'm at has banned students from using a router table, unless it's a sliding table router table.)
The festool saw and the dedicated track is also a perfectly satisfactory option - just make sure that the guide is accurately aligned to give you two parallel long edges.
Edited 6/12/2008 5:42 am by eddiefromAustralia
eddie,
very interesting tip. i just might not share that one with the kids. might just save it for those times when i need to purchase a little cooperation from one of them by way of saving their otherwise ruined project.
so, eddie, are you just beginning your school year? pity if ya are mate, im just finishing mine. what age group are you blessed with? mine are all 16 to 18. i can, therefore, reason with them somewhat and the occasional intelligent conversation off-sets the recurring feeling that i work in a mental institution. only 6 more days till summer, but who's counting...
thank you for the intelligent tip.
eef
i am a picture framer i use a hand made miter sled but many shops use a chopper like the one made by morso http://www.tech-mark.com/pictureframing.htm
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