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Vent: I was cutting crown molding for a bay window and kept messing up the compound angles.
After three tries, I was ready to scrap the whole piece. Then I remembered a trick from an old guy at the supply yard about using a scrap block as a guide. I cut a small block at the exact spring angle of the wall, maybe 38 degrees, and clamped it to my miter saw fence. Using that as a backer for the molding, the cuts lined up perfectly on the first try. Why do we always forget the simple fixes? Has anyone else got a weird trick for tricky trim work?
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tessarodriguez5mo ago
Read about using a story stick for weird walls. You just mark all the angles on a scrap piece of wood first. Makes it way less confusing to transfer the cuts. That old guy wisdom is always the best.
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sean485mo ago
So you just mark the angles on scrap wood first?
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zarat375mo ago
Actually, that's a story pole, not a stick. A story stick is for marking out lengths. A story pole is for marking angles and heights. The old guy wisdom is right, but the name is wrong. Makes a huge difference when you're looking for the right trick.
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thomas.river4mo ago
3 feet is the magic number for a story pole in my experience. Anything shorter and you're guessing at transitions, anything longer and it gets floppy. The real trick nobody talks about is using a drywall square to check your pole markings before you cut anything. I've had setups where the angle looked right on the stick but was off by 2 degrees when I squared it up against the actual corner. That little check saves you from cutting a $60 piece of trim wrong. Also, mark both sides of the angle with a pencil line, not just the corner point. It gives you a reference for which way the waste side goes so you don't flip it backward at the saw.
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