Need accurate miters - tips & tricks?

Re: Need accurate miters - tips & tricks?

Thomas Williams - Columbus

>I would make a miter sled for the table saw. Fine tune the sled by cutting some mdf or poplar that is the same size and thickness as your cherry.

Miter sled

John Ergle in SC

>Just saw there is an article on making a miter sled under the "WC articles and reviews" section.

Beyond the Miter sled

Keith Newton

>No mater how you cut your miters, when you start to glue-up, glue the parts into semi / half circles. Leave some of the segments longer than the rest, so that you can make a jig for the sled, to hold the semi-circles indexed so that when you slide it past the blade, each half produces a straight line along that diameter. This will take care of any 1/2� or whatever discrepancy.

Then you can glue the halves together.

Also after you cut your miters, go to the band-saw and cut a little V-notch about 1/2" from the points of the miter. If you plan it right, it will be outside of the circle, and will be trimmed later, but this makes a good way to clamp each miter individually.

Also, you may want to get acquainted with CA glue, if you want to try it without clamps.

shooting board

bill tindal, E.TN

>you may not be ready for this in your woodworking career and if not, file this thought away for when you are. A shooting board and sharp hand plane is THE way to ensure perfect miters or any other fitting operation. It is something I learned about on the hand tool forum and I wish I had learned about it 20 years ago. I fit everything now with a shooting board, especially miters.

Re: Need accurate miters - tips & tricks?

James Dillon in MD

>Hi Joe,

Getting the 45 degree miter is the easy part (at least for me). Use a table saw sled or shooting board as suggested. For me, the hard part is the glue-up. In my clumsy hands, the boards seem to have a mind of their own and want to slide every which way. And I am loath (unlike Norm) to use a brad nailer to help out. Using an internal spline is one way to reinforce the miter joint and help with the glue-up. For spline-less miters I make a temporary jig with tapered sides to hold the box sides in place until I can bring clamps, belts, whatever to bear on the problem. Here is a pic of a recent jig for a small frame. I've done the same for a small jewelry box but don't have any pics of that. One word of caution. Take extra care when getting ready to glue-up the sides to make sure the grain is running correctly - DAMHIKT 8-). Good luck.

Jim

Re: Need accurate miters - tips & tricks?

Ed Mulligan, Cape Cod

>I stick blue tape on the fence to tweak the angle, if needed. Rather than 45 degrees, make your miters 44.9999.... They have to touch at the outside and the slight gap will be bridged by any glue.

For gluing up mitered boxes, IME band clamps do the best job. They are available with corner bridges so you don't crush the corners of your project. For a small box probably two bands would be enough.

Ed

Disc sander trick

Ellis Walentine

>With all the artists in our family, I have had innumerable occasions to make mitered frames and other display pieces, not to mention boxes, drawers, cabinet doors, etc. with precision miters. My trick is to use a 45° sled on my 12" stationary disk sander.

To make the jig, cut a piece of 3/4" plywood for a base. It should have one perfectly square corner. Glue and nail or screw a couple fences to the base at right angles to each other, then screw a hardwood strip to the bottom at 45° angles to your reference corner, such that the corner is only about 1/8" from the surface of the sander disk when the guide strip is in the miter gauge slot of the sander.

To use the jig, place your rough-mitered workpiece alongside one of the adjacent fences and press the miter into the disk as you move the sled along. Sand all the right hand miter parts on one side of the jig and all the left-hand parts on the other. When you're done, your joints will be airtight.

TIP: Be sure you run all right parts on one side and all left parts on the other. That way, as long as the combined angle is 90°, the left and right parts will add up to 90°, regardless of whether the guide strip is precisely at 45° to the disk.

'NOTHER TIP: Make sure the table is at exactly perpendicular to the table of your disk sander.

Ellis

So whats the problem with your saw?

Bart Goldberg

>I use my cabinet saw with the blade set to 45 degrees to cut miters for boxes all the time, and all I use is the table saw fence. I haven't had any problems that require a sled or any fancy jigs. I guess if I was really particular, I'd follow Bill Tindal's suggestion and use a shooting board. Thats about the most accurate method I've ever heard about and its fairly easy to do (assuming you know how to use hand planes).

My 2 cents

Bart

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