Used my new Miter for Crown Molding

[VillageNut]

Put up some crown molding in my bedroom using my new P-C 10' twin laser and PC finish nailer. Worked great. only mistakes were user error. We cheated though and bought the decorative corner pieces to prevent complex cuts. LOML now wants crown in the bathroom with no corner pieces. I have looked at a couple of books and they seem to provide pretty good explanations and pictures.

3 questions
1. Is there a book that is the "standard" for crown and other molding?
2. Is it really that hard to calculate the compound cuts?
3. Already had an aunt hit me up and is willing to pay to have some installed in her house. If our bathroom goes well, I may take the job. How would you charge?

[darrellcraig]

I'm new to woodworking thing and am starting with trim (base, crown, window, door) in my home office as a trial run with all this new equipment. Flipped thru a bunch of books and liked Taunton's Trim Carpentry and Built-Ins book the best. Subtitled, 'Build Like A Pro: Expert Advice from Start to Finish' which seems a good description. Covers project planning, materials selection, windows, base and crown in depth. Lots of pictures, seemed to have all the detail needed to install confidence for this first-timer. Less prescriptive for built-ins but I didn't care about that - not happening for a while. Good luck!

[scorrpio]

Dunno about book, but if your miter's fence is high enough to put the crown against it at install angle, you don't need a compound cut, just a miter. And unless you are installing some humongous 6" crown, most miters should have a high enough fence. Make sure you measure the corners carefully with a bevel gauge - they sometimes are out of square.

For outside corners: Before cutting a long piece, try to achieve a properly closed miter with a short scrap piece. Inside corners, I personally prefer coping to mitering. Unless your crown has some insane profile, Achieving a tight cope is not hard.

Visit Fine Homebuilding website - they have a number of articles on crown moldings. Once you know which issue, you could look it up in a library.

Far as payment... well, I'd definitely cover the materials cost, but beyond that - it is a very personal issue, you know. In different families, finances are handled differently.

[Greg.B]

Its not as hard as you would think.

For crown the trick is to cut it upside down and positioned the way it would sit on the wall. Rockler sells a jig that will hold it exactly in place. Then all you have to do is cut 45's. Unless your corners are not exactly 90, but you can adjust the cuts by a degree or 2 or three depending on what the real corner angle is.

[ErikS]

The most "fun" molding - lol.

Anyway here's a link that shows you how to do it. No need to buy the jig, just make one from scraps (I make a new one for each different type). Key is how the molding fits = repeatable cuts which are crucial. Tom Silva used to have a good step by step guide but it's now in the subscribers section. Same basic process but he just hot glued scrap to the miter saw.

Holding it against the fence is tough, slightly off & the cut won't come close (& it's real easy to not have the pieces in exactly the same alignment).

link: http://woodbymail.com/installcrown.html

[thestinker]

I made my jig out of mdf, works great. Also I trick that helps me is to take 4 small scrap pieces and cut your corrners. Go to your room and where you would start tack up the short pieces so that the miters a re good and tight, pull down the two that will be replaced by the piece you are about to cut and then measure between them. Bring your cut piece in and see how it fits then trim somemore or nail it up. Move around the room using your scrap pieces on one end and the last piece you installed. This way you know how tight you corrneres are before you tack a piece on the wall. I did 2 rooms by just measuring and cutting, re cutting, recutting, buying more molding and cutting some more. The last 2 rooms I did, I used my trick and I didn't miss cut a single piece. One room was the kitchen, which with all the corners and trimming out the cabinets with crown there were 16 corners and not 1 miscut or wasted pice of trim.

[JimD]

I have installed crown moulding 3 5/8 high in our bathroom and 2 5/8 high in our basement. I've also put it up in our previous home in a couple of rooms. I do this infrequently enough that I wrote down some "what I learned" type notes the last time I did it that you may find helpful. I think they are attached.

The easiest way to cut crown moulding is upside down and backwards on your miter saw. On a 10 inch saw, you can only cut on one side of the saw if you are doing moulding bigger than about 3 inches. Otherwise, you have to cut it flat on the saw surface at a compound angle. This is harder, at least for me. I did a small room (the toilet room) in our bathroom coping only the one side of the moulding at each intersection. I don't know how you could do outside corners this way, however. For large mouldings, a 12 inch CMS would make things a lot simplier.

Hope this helps.

Jim

[bebop]

I used the book from compoundmitre.com. I like the book pretty well, that guy is a big template advocate (the templates absolutely save your life and make it feasible to cut the moldings flat without your brain exploding).

Even after I had the hang of cutting it flat, there must have been 25 times I was about to drop the blade the wrong way on a cut and having the template right there kept me from screwing up a long piece.

I also got his protractor tool, but I wound up not really using it. The one I got was 24" long but the plastic wasn't thick and it was useless flopping around when trying to measure overhead.

I learned so much from doing it, I've got probably 10 pages of notes although I'd have to go through it and edit the obscenities out before I could post it

[ssmith1627]

I started in our back bedroom that we use as an office. Doing the same types of things -- framing out the windows, replacing baseboard, replacing two old doors, and installing crown molding.

The crown is the last part and it truly is a nightmare for the beginner who has no one to show him a few times how it's done. I have a book and a magazine article that both talk about coping and they make it look so easy. But all I've done is ruin the end of a few pieces of scrap. I guess I'll keep trying. I just can't see how you get that sharp edge on the end of the piece.

The corners in this 40 year old house are definitely not square so that adds to it. I have five inside corners and one outside corner. It's been a very frustrating experience even though I have the jig to hold the crown upside down at the right angle on the miter saw table.

Should I be cutting it with the back side facing out ? I saw mention of that somewhere but didn't understand it. I have it upside down but not backward.

I swear I'd rather crawl around in the attic with all that insulation running wire than messing with this crown molding. It's definitely got my vote for most aggravating thing I've tried.

Steve

[ErikS]

Inside corners = cope = hold the piece in position & then look at how you would back cut it for the cope. Mark the angle on the piece, return to saw & make the cut.

Another tip - only work in one direction around the room.

(and this is from someone who made 3" pieces from an entire 10' stick of crown molding before I figured it out)

[91FE]

It's not as hard as you think. I built a simple fence like the one described above. I'll try to take a picture of it tonight. You can do a 4 walled room easily in an afternoon. Tips:

1. Put painters tape on the walls and ceiling so that about 1/2" will be underneath the crown when installed. Makes painting and touch-up simple. When finished, just cut the tape off and caulk the joint.

2. Build a simple fence to allow you to cut the crown oriented as it would be on the wall... except upside down.

3. Work in a clockwise direction around the room in a way that leaves the piece over the door into the room for last. Working clockwise means the motor of your saw will be out of your way for most of your cuts.

4. First piece is the easiest, two butt joints. Next two pieces will be coped at one end and butts at the other. Cut the cope first, then measure for the straight cut and cut it a little long. You want to be able to wedge the coped cut against the already installed crown...bow it out in the middle to get the butt into the other corner and then flex it into place. If you find it's too long, just take a little nibble off. The last piece is the tricky one...two coped cuts. Hopefully you warmed up on the first three pieces. Cut one cope, measure and cut the other long. This piece will take some fiddling. If the joints don't come out perfect it's less of a big deal... as this piece is to your back when you walk into the room (see No. 3)




Good luck!
Scott

[Thalermade]

Don't let anybody see you do this, but also check out your saw's owners manual. My 7 year old Delta CMS had great directions and pictures which worked well to get me through a small project.

My wife wants me to install crown molding in our basement. It only took her a couple hours to figure out the per foot cost included a new CMS with the laser. Oh well it will still get done.

Have fun.

Russ

[bigstick509]

Take a look at this site http://cutncrown.com/ ,
I picked these up at the last WW show.