Home Improvement - Cutting the Crown Molding

Hi, I am Bill Frishman with BGB Builders. Our project today is installing crown molding, and right now we are going to go over some cutting techniques. You are going to have three types of cuts; an inside corner, an outside corner and a splice. An inside corner looks like this; it is when two walls come together, like that. You have an outside corner, where two walls will come together like that - and you have a splice. A splice is going to occur when you have got a wall longer that the length of the wood that you are going to get. Sometimes that is 12, 14, or at the most 16. If you got a wall bigger than 16 feet, you are going to end up with a splice cut. That is what a splice cut will look like; its two pieces joined together. Let us actually cut these now. On the inside corner, you are going to actually put the crown on the saw the way that you would see it on the wall. You are going to put it upside down in this case.

So what we are going to do is, put the bottom of the crown mold up against what we call the wall of the saw, and we are going to put the top of the crown mold done at the base of the saw here. Now with an inside corner, you are going to want the bottom of the molding to be the longest edge. So Im going to open the saw to the 45 -- you are going to be going back and forth between 45 degree angles basically. So that first cut will be done as so. And you could see as I said, the bottom of the crown molding, the longest part of it will be the bottom; and if I hold up these pieces again, you could see how that works, the inside corner. Okay, you want the bottom to be the longest part. Basically, do the same thing on the other side, and we can just flip the crown molding around and do the same thing. We are going to reverse our 45s and do the same thing. Now, you see both the bottom of my crown mold, both ends, the bottom is the longest - thats your inside corner. Now if we do an outside corner, we are going to want the exact opposite to be true; we are going to want the top of the crown mold to be the longest edge. Put the top of the crown molding at the base of the saw and the bottom at the wall. Now flip it around and do the same exact thing; switch it 45 and do the same thing. As you could see, the top of the crown molding is the longest edge and the bottom is the shortest; thats your outside corner. Now to do a splice cut, you are going to hold the wood up against the wall of the saw and do a 45. Now that you would be cutting into that, you do the exact opposite. Youd cut the same cut with a 45 the other way. That would give you your splice cut. Top and bottom are the same; the cut is actually into the depth of the wood allowing the two pieces to join together. That is your splice cut. Now I have already cut one side of the piece we measured upstairs. The measurement was 121 and three quarters, and I have already cut the inside corner, so now let us cut the outside corner. Place the crown molding on the saw upside down and backwards, so the bottom of the crown molding is at the top wall of the saw. Now, in this cut we want the top of the molding to be the longest edge, so I have set the 45-degree angle to make that so. And let us make our cut. That is your outside corner. Coming up next on our crown molding project is going to be the nailing, layout and installation of the crown molding itself.