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?

4 comments

4 Comments

tessarodriguez1mo 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.

sean481mo ago

So you just mark the angles on scrap wood first?

zarat371mo 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.

thomas.river8d 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.