Met an older carpenter in Nashville who showed me his scribe trick for baseboards

I was working a trim job off Music Row last spring and this guy Bill, probably 70 years old, walks over to check out my miters. He saw me struggling with an inside corner and handed me a scrap piece of trim, told me to scribe it against the wall instead of cutting a 45. I tried it and got a perfect fit on the first try, no gaps at all. Has anyone else switched to scribing for tight corners or do you still stick with coped joints?

2 comments

2 Comments

mark_ward14d ago

My buddy Rick tried this after I told him about it. He's a weekend warrior, does one trim job a year maybe. He was fighting a baseboard in his 1920s bungalow, those walls are all waves and bumps. He scribed it in ten minutes flat, said it felt like cheating compared to the coping saw dance he always did. Now he swears by it for any old house work.

corap2114d ago

Totally agree, once you get the hang of scribing it's a GAME CHANGER for those wonky old walls that nothing else fits right. I've started doing it on almost all my inside corners now, it's way faster than trying to make a perfect cope when the wall is all out of square.