I don't know if you've bought Mitre boxes from the store the hardware store
and they are always out in these gaps in here about 1/8 of an inch and they never
work well and when you're cutting a miter
they're always ragged terrible so here's what I do I've got three scraps of wood
this I've used this one already I'm going to show you how I make mine the
first thing you want is dead square stock so these faces need to be dead
square no question about it double-sided tape this is the fastest method for
making a I know it's not I don't know if it is enough but it's definitely fast
for making a miter box I'd do this every time I make a miter box but
sometimes I'll keep them for a while for sure go into the double-sided tape take
this off take your these stock has to be flat and not twisted to take this we've
got the wrong way didn't uh this goes equal too the bottom edge just like this
give it a quick bang here just to get that situated pull off your double sided
again take your second piece of wood flush it here those are now the top rim
is not twisted because we made them exactly the size this one is one and
three quarters by two and a quarter that's big enough for what I want the
side pieces are 3/4 by four inches that's exactly what I want and my
overall length is twelve and a half inches and that's all I need I take this
now and clamp it in the vise and that will stay together believe it or not
that's just mounting tape double-sided mounting tape
that will keep it together make sure this is cinched up like this you can put
screws in it if you want to that's entirely up to you from here on I take
my dead-on square decent square here somewhere to where you pass the middle
make a knife wall here and a knife wall here make sure there is no movement do
the same on this side here somewhere about the same distance make a knife
wall across the two sides without allowing the square the beam to shift
and that really gets us where we want to be so in here now we make a little step
down here knife wall what a difference that knife wall makes to accuracy then only
doesn't matter which side I'm going to go on both the inside of this one and
the outside of this one so I've got a visual constantly to keep me so I'm
going down here right inside the miter box and I'm going right inside here and
I'll take this one apart so you can see where we are so I went right down this
wall right down this wall and now I'm going on the outside here
right on that wall there and right on that one there and it doesn't matter
which side of the line I'm on because there's no line it's just a cut wall
that's all it's not really got any thickness to it these are my guide lines
no point putting guide lines on this side because I can't see them so I'm
going here into my vise above the steel part and I'm taking my tenan saw I'm
going to take my mid-size one because this is the one I'm actually be going
to be cutting with so I'm going to go into the knife wall on that side
just to get started and then I'm going into the knife wall on this side here
come on drop into that one and now I've got my exact 45 I'm perfectly happy that
that's going to be 45 now I don't have to worry about my 45 at all now I'm
focused purely on my vertical cut that's what I want so now with each cut I drop
my hand working very carefully to those knife walls keep dropping the hand don't
worry about the top edge here just keep working down that wall
now see this is generally only a rough cut once you've done this cut you cut
your mitre say you're cutting a mitre on here like this
drop your saw in there that's the first stage in a two-part process the next
process would be to put this on a shooting board but look at this we are
dead on forty-five so when we take this now or close to 45 we put this onto the
bench I don't know where my 45 piece is it's gone missing this goes on here we slide this
on here and then we take the plane and we run this along that edge and we've
got a true 45 perfectly crisp and everything so this is a combination so
nobody should be under the impression that we generally use a 45-degree cut on
here and that's the perfected cut but in this case we do want that because
cornices are very difficult to plane once you've made them so we want these
to be as accurate as we can possibly get them so we're working down the cut here
keeping it dead on the line just like this
so now I've got my 45 if I'm cutting a cornice I just take a piece of cornice a
section of cornice like this and make this corner vertically a line that means
the bottom edge is aligned as well press this into the cut drop my saw in here
drop my hand down to the bottom that's going to guide my cut there is my
cornice and my cornice then goes up here like that and I've got my first miter
then I cut the counter miter for the other end and that comes in from this
end and I have a very nice crisp cut and I can still plane this if I need to but
usually you get it straight off the saw you won't need to and that's how we make
a miter box you can cut cornices like this you can cut flat stock with
molds on the face any type of miter generally you can cut using this simple
mitre box
you