Coping with Coping

By Joseph Fusco

This is always the burning question in many carpenters and diy-er's minds; do I cope or miter that inside corner. I hear it said that the "sign" of good craftsmanship is a coped inside corner. Whether or not that is absolutely true will most likely remain a point to debate for years to come, but the truth is that the cope does offer advantages over the miter in almost every case other than speed of cutting.

Once you have decided that you are going to cope, you will need to add some simple tools to your tool box a list of which follow. The below list is complete and will get you through 100% of your coping needs. There are other "tools" you can use to cope and I'll speak about them later on, but for now will just deal with what we have.

• Power miter saw or simple miter box and back saw to cut the moulding.
• A coping saw.
• A four in hand rasp.
• A set of rifler rasps.
• A rat tail rasp.
• A low angle block plane.
• A utility knife.

The first step in making a coped cut is to cut a 45° miter on the end of the piece to be coped. You can accomplish this with either a manual miter box and back saw or a power miter saw, I used my Hitachi C10FSB slide compound miter saw. When you cut, you place the moulding face up on the table of the saw and tilt the saw head to its left 45° position making sure that the "long point" of the miter is gone away from you after the cut. This is important because that will be the material you will be removing to form the cope.

Once you have made the miter cut on the moulding, I would suggest you outline the cut line with a pencil. This will aid you while you cut. No matter how many times I cope, I always mark this line.

The first thing I like to do is remove as much of the waste as I can with my miter saw. This usually means I can cut anything that's straight and open on one end. Now you won't be able to cut it off using the saw just make a good saw kerf that will be easier to finish with the coping saw. It's also a good practice to tilt the saw head about 1° to the "good side" when making this cut. This will allow the piece to move right up to the mating moulding with no interference. This takes a bit of skill and you should practice on some scrap first to get the technique down.

As a point in fact you should practice on some scrape moulding first all of the coping techniques, as the old adage "practice makes perfect" is absolutely true.

Once you make the waste cut on the straight part of the moulding you can turn you attention to the curves. These require a bit of thought as to which is the best way to cut them. It's a good idea to make relief cuts in the waste of these parts before you begin cutting the curves.

Here I cut one from the bottom up to the spring of the large curve This will allow the curved section to come out easy when I cut it from the other side.

Here I start to cut the small curve at the top of the moulding. I'll make one more relief cut to the spring of the small curve as well.

Once all the cuts are made your moulding should look like the pictures to the left. All you might need then is a little clean up with a rasp of file.

Once the cut is cleaned up it should fit like this.

Now that you have done the work the joint should fit and look like this.

Be sure to read more about Installing Crown Moulding and Coping.

Good luck and just remember that when it comes to coping; "Practice Makes Perfect!"

View the video. . .