Crown Molding cutting jig

[Joe Von Kaenel]

Hello,

I have been looking at a lot of Crown molding cutting jigs. Rockler, bench dog, are similar. One from Milescraft.com is different. Has anyone used these, or recommend another jig? Which one would be easier to use. I have a Makita 10" compound sliding miter saw. Thanks


Joe

[Matthew Voss]

You could always make one - these are simple jigs.

2 pieces of mdf at a right angle and a stop to hold the molding at the correct spring angle.

Attach jig with screws through the holes in the saw fence or just clamp it down.

[Michael Pyron]

hmmm...with a 10" saw you are limited to cutting crown that sits @ 3 1/2" from the ceiling...

one thing to be aware of is that many times there are variations in a run of crown, many times caused simply by the material cupping...the only time I ever used a jig for crown (and I've run over 60,000 pieces in my career as a trim carpenter...yeah, I went through invoices once and counted just for giggles....to me a piece is 2 cuts, be it a 5/8" piece with 23° angles on both ends to wrap around a bullnosed corner or a 16' piece) is for massive stuff...the reason why is I prefer to simply use a pencil line drawn on my wooden fences (the ones on DeWalt products are cr@p, they don't sit at a right angle in relation to the table and are un-adjustable to do so...I drive wedges behind my plywood fences to true them up) and take the time to notice how each piece relates to that line and make adjustments as needed to make nice joints...cutting stuff flat using the compound angles is a joke in general...trying to make slight adjustments to the angle is way too difficult and usually gives unsatisfactory results...I use a 12" DeWalt sliding miter which allows me to cut crown that sits up to 6 1/2" high (the only reason I own that piece of junk) which covers most all of the crown I have dealt with recently...yeah, there are times when you have to slide cut the stuff and must deal with the compound angles, but I've found those instances to be few and far between...hell, I even had to use a my Skilsaw once for crown that was 16" wide and over 2" thick! (I made a jig for that as there was no way to draw the angles on the material when cutting from the front side, and it also gave me a nice straight cut)...

to cut crown without any sort of jig I find that having a cut station that is a total of 14' to be a big boon, especially when dealing with MDF stuff that is like a noodle....

[Brian Peters]

Most of the jigs I have used stink, all of the jigs. The best ones are ones you make. I use 3/4" maple plywood, about 4-1/2" piece in the back, bottom maybe 8" wide depending on the size moulding and staple/screw it together. Then I setup a sample piece of crown find its perfect angle on the plywood fence, then pin and screw a stop in front of the moulding to hold it in place. Then I screw/clamp it to my 12" scms cut my 45's and 0 in the jig and go to town. Works every time and its usually free I just use shop scraps.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello,
I used a Bench Dog (~ $40.00 @ Lowes) for hanging a living room & hallway.
I had very good results w/it.
The three outside corners are perfect.
Most of the inside corners are Ok. Much better than the bad job I did of trying to cope one.

One thing to watch out for w/the BD is the clearance on the right side of the CMS motor. The jig worked fine on my Sears CMS - but - when the Sears fell apart (the motor housing literally came apart when I lifted it by the carry handle) and I had to resort to my Ryobi 10", the jig was too tall.

The other thing to watch for w/the BD is that it's made of fairly thick material. That limits the width of the crown even more,but, more importantly, it puts the material well up from the CSM table.
You'll "launch" quite a few cutoffs.
One cutoff "launched" and promptly took out the laser of the CMS.
(I was upset at first, but,when I was forced to resort to using stops, the accuracy of my cuts climbed.)

I'd recommend picking up the BD at Lowes and see if it fits. If not, then return it and make one.

Be sure to make a copy of the picture on the back of the jig that shows how to orient the crown. That set of pictures alone is worth the price of the jig.

Two other tips:

- If the ceiling has a stippled or textured finish. Cut a 1' section of crown off. Hold it up to the ceiling and wall. Mark the ceiling where the edge contacts it. Do this at a few points along the ceiling. measure out from the wall to the point on the ceiling where the crown will contact it.
Cut a piece of scrap ~ 10" long the width of that measurement. Wrap a piece of 50 grit sandpaper around that block and knock down the stipple/textrue of the ceiling. When you hang the crown, it will then sit nice and flush to the ceiling.

- Nail nailer boards around the perimiter of the walls. The walls are going to have a lot of bellys and bows. By putting up the nailer, you can pin & glue the crown to the nailer in the places you need to.w/out having to rely on hitting a stud.

[Larry Edgerton]

I just put a piece of painters tape on the chop saw table where the crown needs to be when the saw is at 45 degrees. One for right and one for left. Costs .5 cents.

I looked at these things the other day when I was at Johnsons, and they look like a solution to a problem that does not exist. The ones I looked at were plastic which is too slippery for any jig.

Dispite what someone trying to sell you a new jig says, mitering inside corners on crown is not correct. If we lived in a perfect world where humidity always stayed constant it would be fine, but we don't. Crown is coped because it shows less of this seasonal movement, and a device like this, which is a joke, propagates the wrong way of doing things.

Buy a good coping saw, Sears has a good sturdy one made in the USA, and then get some good blades from woodcraft or simular and practice. It is not that hard. Once you get it you will wonder why it was so hard to figure out.

[Don Morris]

I agree with one thing, if all you have is a 10" scms with a low fence, you'd better do a two piece crown molding technique if you try anything wide. I too don't like doing crown molding flat. Tried it...difficult, and complicated. For that reason most of the scms companies are making their machines with a taller fence...they got the message. The new Festool is a 10" with a tall fence. I have a several year old 10" Hitachi scms. It has a really short fence but is otherwise an excellent saw. I ended up using the Cut-N-Crown system I saw demo'd at a wwing show which has a form you put up against the fence which compensated for my Hitachi's shortcoming. Try convincing LOML you need another and larger scms just for the crown molding she selected in your renovation...you get a very unbelieving look when you tell her what a new 12" Bosch or comparable 12" scms costs. I told her the cost of the Festool, then picked her up off the floor after she got through laughing. The Cut-N-Crown system worked pretty well, not perfectly. Outside corners are dead on. In order to assure the most accurate cuts, you've got to be able to support (keep the sag thus alignment of) the long runs level as you cut, with this system.