Thread: I should have charged more

As a "mere" carpenter who has to make a living in the real world, one has to learn how split the difference. The internal mitre as shown could not have been scribed to fit because the original piece of trim was already cut. Trim pieces such as this are rarely coped anyway because there is not enough "meat" to work with.

I am also loathe to comment on the quality of another's work but I can understand the contrast between the effort put into the production of the trim to the perceived effort of the installation of the same.

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

The internal mitre as shown could not have been scribed to fit because the original piece of trim was already cut.

Thanks for confirming my thoughts. I thought I was going mad.

Originally Posted by jack620

I’ve never seen a 45* (or 135* I suppose) internal with a scribed joint. How is that achieved?

The point is that a skilled person would not leave joints like that, they show either a zero care factor or a lack of problem solving skills. With that internal mitre, if they did their best with the original in place, then they should have removed the original left side or at least scarfed in a new piece from further back so they could produce either a tight simple mitre or a scribed joint. I gave them several metres of excess trim for this purpose. And they split the trim because they gun nailed too close to the end.

The process for a scribed joint on an obtuse angle is the same as for a 90º corner. One side is run fully into the corner except it is back cut to fit tight in the corner, the bisected angle is taken to the mitre saw and the end of the other side is trimmed to that angle, this gives you the scribe line which you cut to with a coping saw and or rasp/file/angle grinder etc, you just undercut more. Carpenters have been doing it for hundreds of years on bay windows.

Originally Posted by mic-d

The point is that a skilled person would not leave joints like that, they show either a zero care factor or a lack of problem solving skills. With that internal mitre, if they did their best with the original in place, then they should have removed the original left side or at least scarfed in a new piece from further back so they could produce either a tight simple mitre or a scribed joint.

That's what I was thinking.

Originally Posted by mic-d

The process for a scribed joint on an obtuse angle is the same as for a 90º corner. One side is run fully into the corner except it is back cut to fit tight in the corner, the bisected angle is taken to the mitre saw and the end of the other side is trimmed to that angle, this gives you the scribe line which you cut to with a coping saw and or rasp/file/angle grinder etc, you just undercut more. Carpenters have been doing it for hundreds of years on bay windows.

Got distracted yesterday morning before replying to the quote.

Not the purpose of this post, but how do you get 90 degree 0 symbol to appear correctly in a post?

Back to the thread topic, as you say cutting obtuse angles is the process you described, at least the way I do it.

I was thinking that it's not something I have to do very often on the large obtuse angle in your carpenter's skirt case (and I use the term 'carpenter' loosely), but then it occurred to me that it's not unusual to find walls aren't exactly 90* and that I'm often using a bevel gauge to make small adjustments to skirt angles to match the wall angles.

I tried to improve my efficiency and accuracy some years ago by experimenting with some manual and digital angle finder protractor gadgets. This required marking reverse angles on the scale on my SCMS with texta. It also required a degree of painful brain readjusting as geometry or whatever it is ain't my strong point.

End result is that I didn't find that any of these flash gadgets and their supposed ease of use and super accuracy lived up to their advertising compared with a bevel gauge on the wall, bisecting that angle, and taking the bisected angle on the bevel gauge to set the angle on the saw blade.

Maybe I'm missing something on using the protractor gadgets, but the bevel gauge works on the actual angle and I can see what it's doing rather than relying on some minuscule scale on a protractor gadget and trying to transfer the unmarked and barely visible perhaps 0.75 degrees between the tiny marks on the gadget to a reverse angle I've textaed onto my SCMS scale.

I think there was not long before Masters died, maybe still is, a Bosch SCMS which had the reverse angles cast into its scale. Of the many I've tried in shops it had the best indexing system for standard cuts with absolutely no slop. A pity they didn't have one when I was picking over the bones of Masters in its death throes with some great deals. But I'd still prefer to use the bevel gauge on it over the flash gadgets and a reverse scale, no matter how accurate, on a SCMS or any other saw, including possibly a version of this Stanley adjustable mitre saw (image isn't my saw) I bought in a rush of blood to the head a while back and still haven't cleaned up, never mind used.

s-l1600.jpg

Originally Posted by 419

......Not the purpose of this post, but how do you get 90 degree 0 symbol to appear correctly in a post?......

On my Mac I press Option and the number zero and there it is... º . 90º, 45º, 0.05º etc. I suspect something similar exist for PCs.

I suppose the invention of wood filler was because of useless people in the trades.

Pete

Originally Posted by QC Inspector

I suppose the invention of wood filler was because of useless people in the trades.

Pete

.....No More Gaps. And silicone for plumbers.

Originally Posted by QC Inspector

On my Mac I press Option and the number zero and there it is... º . 90º, 45º, 0.05º etc. I suspect something similar exist for PCs.

Pete

Hold down Alt and type 0176 will give degrees on a PC 90°

Yeah, that joint is far from acceptable in my book. As Micahael said, even if the new moulding was not a perfect match to the old, it can be blended in without very much effort. It's not at all uncommon to have to match old mouldings & it's not uncommon that the new profile doesn't quite match the old. In any case, if there had been a slight mis-match in the thickness of the new moulding, it wouldn't show on a scribed joint. It must be disappointing to put in the effort to get a good match only to have it spoiled by poor installation.

There sure is a range of operators out there. We recently had a bathroom renovated and the finish-work is flawless, I could not be more happy with the workmanship. At the same time, our neighbors had their new kitchen installed & I would have been bitterly disappointed if our bathroom had turned out like that kitchen! One of the things that hit my eye immediately is a cove moulding around the floor/plinth joint on a large island bench. Apart from sticking out like a sore thumb, at least two of the corner joints are even gappier than the one above! It was nailed in place & the painter didn't bother to plug the very obvious holes. Already one corner has been caught by something & torn away from the plinth slightly. There may have been some compelling reason for adding the moulding, but it escapes me. Even if the floor (cast concrete) is uneven as it most likely is, surely scribing the plinth boards would have been far neater & look less obviously cobbled-up than over-sized, gappy coving?! Maybe scribing isn't taught in trade school any more?

Cheers,

Originally Posted by 419

Got distracted yesterday morning before replying to the quote.

Not the purpose of this post, but how do you get 90 degree 0 symbol to appear correctly in a post?

Back to the thread topic, as you say cutting obtuse angles is the process you described, at least the way I do it.

I was thinking that it's not something I have to do very often on the large obtuse angle in your carpenter's skirt case (and I use the term 'carpenter' loosely), but then it occurred to me that it's not unusual to find walls aren't exactly 90* and that I'm often using a bevel gauge to make small adjustments to skirt angles to match the wall angles.

I tried to improve my efficiency and accuracy some years ago by experimenting with some manual and digital angle finder protractor gadgets. This required marking reverse angles on the scale on my SCMS with texta. It also required a degree of painful brain readjusting as geometry or whatever it is ain't my strong point.

End result is that I didn't find that any of these flash gadgets and their supposed ease of use and super accuracy lived up to their advertising compared with a bevel gauge on the wall, bisecting that angle, and taking the bisected angle on the bevel gauge to set the angle on the saw blade.

Maybe I'm missing something on using the protractor gadgets, but the bevel gauge works on the actual angle and I can see what it's doing rather than relying on some minuscule scale on a protractor gadget and trying to transfer the unmarked and barely visible perhaps 0.75 degrees between the tiny marks on the gadget to a reverse angle I've textaed onto my SCMS scale.

I think there was not long before Masters died, maybe still is, a Bosch SCMS which had the reverse angles cast into its scale. Of the many I've tried in shops it had the best indexing system for standard cuts with absolutely no slop. A pity they didn't have one when I was picking over the bones of Masters in its death throes with some great deals. But I'd still prefer to use the bevel gauge on it over the flash gadgets and a reverse scale, no matter how accurate, on a SCMS or any other saw, including possibly a version of this Stanley adjustable mitre saw (image isn't my saw) I bought in a rush of blood to the head a while back and still haven't cleaned up, never mind used.

s-l1600.jpg

I've taken to using a digital angle gauge to quickly give me the bisected angle and set the sliding bevel from it for saw adjustments. Why not use the angle gauge to set the saw? Well the sliding bevel has a more positive lock and it conserves the measuring tool for safer measuring duties only. I saw a manual mitre box the other day that worked a bit like the Festool power saw that has meshed fences so you get the complimentary angles automatically. It was a neat tool. My Milwaukee cordless slide compound mitre saw does double direction bevels and over 45º mitres both ways which has made the job much easier than my old Hitachi drop saw.

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

And silicone for plumbers.

Like this?

IMG_1754.jpg

Originally Posted by jack620

Like this?

IMG_1754.jpg

That's got to be a "handyman's" effort done after knocking back a few beverages!

I wonder what they thought they were actually achieving???

Originally Posted by IanW

It's not at all uncommon to have to match old mouldings & it's not uncommon that the new profile doesn't quite match the old.

New to new doesn't always match either. I was puzzled by a slight difference with mitred butt joins on a straight run of quad trim I was installing, with one marginally thicker than the other and leaving a ridge on the joint. Then I noticed a slight difference in the redicote colour and remembered I'd bought the same nominal size from different suppliers due to COVID timber shortages. Checked the handy labels on the back and they came from different manufacturers.

Should be the same as they're the same nominal radius.

Originally Posted by IanW

Maybe scribing isn't taught in trade school any more?

I don't spend much time in new houses and even less inspecting skirts but I suspect it's fairly common for skirt internal corners to be simple mitres nowadays. Certainly are in the house we built a dozen or so years ago, but generally they've stayed closed which might be testament to the stability of MDF or FJ pine or whatever is under the paint. Overall, they've held up at least as well if not better than scribed hardwood bevel skirts we had in a house we built in the early 1980s and lived in for 30 years.

When you consider the pressure on trades to deliver under tight prices from volume house builders it's not surprising that they'd go for the quickest and simplest method of doing everything. As long as it looks okay and passes the maintenance period, why worry?

Then again, scribing skirts etc with jigsaw vs coping saw came up a few years ago in a discussion with my carpenter son and one of his carpenter mates, who were both at trade school in the late 2010s, and they both knew how to do it and did it frequently with both tools depending upon what worked best on the profile.

Originally Posted by IanW

I wonder what they thought they were actually achieving???

Clearly not a water or air seal, which is a bit of a failure in conventional plumbing meeting sanitary requirements.

Doesn't look like there's any seal with the thinner inlet pipe going into the wider pipe on the floor, either.

In fairness to plumbers and sealers, the good ones do a remarkable job. Watching someone who's good at it putting a neat bead on in one smooth action just makes me realise how incompetent I am in this area. But, I am pleased to say, nowhere near as incompetent as whoever did the pictured disaster trying, among other things, to bridge a gap beyond the sealant's capacity.