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Successfully Cut Baseboard Corners With These Genius Tips
By NICK POLISHCHUK
To cut, fit, and nail baseboards to the corners of your walls for precise alignment isn’t easy. You can use caulking to fill in the gaps with paint-grade wood but not with oak.
However, despite your best efforts to conceal imperfections, corners that lack a seamless joint will stand out. If you're using stain-grade oak, your cuts will need to be good.
With a cutting technique called coping — sculpting the edge to fit the silhouette of the other board at an inside corner — you don't need to make angled cuts in both edges.
First, place the board to be cut face up on a flat surface and put the other board on top, edge-down, perpendicularly. Trace the silhouette onto the board you'll be cutting.
Next, make a 45-degree cut from the outline to the opposite edge of the board and use the coping saw to cut along the outline. The piece should fit tightly against the other board.
For a miter cut, don’t make the mistake of dividing the angle measurement by two, as this leaves a gap because the board edge you're cutting does have a perfect, 90-degree angle.
For instance, if the angle measures 89 degrees, subtracting it from 180 gives you 91. Divide 91 by two, and you get 45.5 — that's the angle at which you should set the saw.