If you like to cut crown on the flat, or your material is simply too big to fit nested on your saw, be sure to buy the Starrett 5-in-1 Tool-it has a crown chart on it, too (see photo, right). If you cut crown nested in position you’re fine. I should say that although the gauge is certainly very handy, it only gives you the miter angles you need-not the bevel angles. This gauge is easy to use, needs no batteries, has no LCD that can break, and isn’t finicky in extreme temperatures, like a lot the of equipment we lug around. My miter saw has a different numbering system than a standard protractor (well, not really, but that’s a different story- see “Miter Angles and Miter Saws”).Ī ‘special’ miter saw protractor-like the Starrett ProSite-is the answer for a mathematically challenged carpenter like myself. But they’ve never worked with a miter saw! I’m a carpenter, not a mathematician. Even better, how do you determine the required miter angles for crown molding when it has to run around an oddly shaped room with unusual corner angles? Use a protractor, right? Wrong. Great, right? Well, how do you know if you need to cut a 45°, 46°, or even a 50° miter for a corner that may be a little out-of-square. Today, miter saws are more precise, miter gauges on some saws have 1° increments, we have laser cut readings, and micro-fine adjustment knobs so we can dial in an angle just right. Is your angle 90° or 45°? My saw doesn’t have a setting for 90° so it must be 45°, right? Fast forward to the present day While both could be great carpenters, they wouldn’t understand what or how the other was describing what the other needed. You could never take two guys that hadn’t worked together and put them on a job. Single cut, miter cut, 45°, 90° (are you talking about the actual angle of the corner or the ‘miter’ setting on the saw to cut a piece to fit that angle?)….
It was like each of us spoke a different language. Get two carpenters going about the problem of using a protractor with a miter saw and forget it! You may as well take the day off. Not knowing what miter you needed, a single cut or miter cut could be troublesome. If you weren’t cutting with the saw locked in a detent at 0° or 45° it was a real crapshoot. chop saw (with a broken or missing miter gauge, I might add) and do my darnedest to intersect my pencil marks through that little plastic viewfinder. I’d draw two parallel lines on either side of the scrap and go back to the monster Hitachi 15-in. Then I’d take scrap material and lay it on top of the final material intersecting the first piece.
I can remember temporarily nailing fascia or trim in place, purposefully making it extra-long.
If we thought an outside miter looked like it was 45°, we’d cut the first piece 22 1/2-we’d gamble to see if the next mate was going to look good at 22 1/2. Nope, back then, we’d cut a few scraps, then eyeball it, check it, go back and cut it again and again until the scraps looked good, and then we’d know the right miter angle and cut the final material. And we certainly didn’t have a small indestructible “idiot proof” gadget that told us the exact miter for a particular corner, so that when we cut our molding, or even our fascia for decks, the joinery would be perfect.
STARRETT PROTRACTOR PORTABLE
No air-nailers, certainly no cordless drills, no portable table saws, no Festool. When I started building, 20-something years ago, we were lucky to have had a ‘chop saw’ on the job site.
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