Need to build myself a miter shooting board.

[Brian Holcombe]

Setup a shooting board. You can perfect this as much as you like, but a shooting board will allow you to fine tune a cut to thousands of an inch, something that is quite critical to good miters.

I build box frames for prestretched canvas and this is my preferred method.

[Harold Burrell]

Here are 2...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIcIOfQGja8

and...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ypbvcxb-8M

I made the Paul Seller's one. It works well.

[Larry Frank]

This is the sled that I used for cutting the 45° corners.


Box Corners M.jpg

[Pat Barry]

I am also in the process of making some boxes with miter corners with 1/2" thick material 3" tall and about 8" long.

I could not tell from your post if you are cutting them standing up or flat.

I am using a cabinet saw and a sled. The pieces are flat on the sled and held in place with a hold down clamp on the sled.

My sled is flat and I adjusted the blade over to 45 degrees to the sled with a digital gauge. I cut a trial and found I was off a bit so made adjustments until the pieces were 90 degrees. I checked the corners with a machinist square. In addition to getting the angle good the length of opposite sides need to be identical.

For me the sled is a key in getting reproducible cuts and accurate ones.

This is the method that works best IMO. I wouldn't use the miter gage unless those were just something like shoe moldings

[Ted Reischl]

I use a sled almost identical to Larry Frank's. I am guessing he uses an endstop too.

What really makes these things work is a Wixey gage. No fiddling with triangles, no test cutting.

A key to making good fitting miters on a box is to cut all the joints on pieces that are the same length before moving on to the next side. I make some small boxes that are six sided, all joints are mitered. No end grain anywhere.

[Greg Sznajdruk]

If this is going to be a frequently recurring process then this may be of interest.

http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/pag...22&cat=1,42884

Greg

[ken masoumi]

I am also in the process of making some boxes with miter corners with 1/2" thick material 3" tall and about 8" long.

I could not tell from your post if you are cutting them standing up or flat.

I'm cutting them flat .
I really like your sled with the hold down clamp,it seems to be the perfect solution for repeatable miter cuts especially on tall (3" and up)pieces.thanks for posting the picture.

[ken masoumi]

Update: I decided to go with a 45° chamfer bit and router method so I just ordered the bit from Lee Valley ,it has one of the widest cutting length available online(1.1/4"). thank you all for your comments, pictures ,and the links ,for now I'll stick with cutting it with a router which is the quickest way for me to get this project done and out of the shop((anniversary gift), later on I'll explore all the sled/shooting board ideals and take my time building the proper jig.