Tips to Cope Kitchen Cabinet Crown Molding
By Jim MalleryRefacingCabinet.com Columnist
If you're installing crown molding around your kitchen cabinets, you should learn to cope with your inside corners. That would be the kind of coping you do with a saw, not the emotional variety.
Kitchen Cabinets & Molding: Cope Your Inside Corners
Your alternative is to cut both pieces of the molding at a 45-degree miter and wedge them into the corner. But this method is not as secure as a coped joint, and it can be a real trial if the corner is not a perfect 90 degrees, common in drywall corners that are distorted by levels of drywall mud.
In making a coping joint, you are simply cutting the end of one piece of molding to fit the profile of the adjoining piece so that the two fit snugly together in the corner. Crown molding is a little trickier than baseboard because of the multiple angles involved.
Tips for Coping
- Tools and supplies. An average do-it-yourselfer will have most of the necessary tools. You will need a variety of files, especially a round rat-tail file and a triangular file. And of course, what better to cope with than a coping saw, purchased for a few dollars at the hardware store. Pick up a variety of coping-saw blades, too. For easy cuts, a blade with 20 teeth per inch will do fine, but if you are cutting thick wood, you may want to use a coarser blade. Sandpaper, 100-grit, will finish the job.
- Power tools. If you are installing your own crown molding, you must have a power miter saw (chop saw) with a new, or newly sharpened blade--probably a 96-tooth blade for a super-smooth cut.
- Cutting the molding. To begin, one piece of molding is cut straight at 90 degrees. The other piece, the one that will be coped, is cut at 45 degrees as if the joint were going to be a mitered joint. To cut a piece of crown molding at 45 degrees, turn it upside down on your power miter saw so that the top edge of the molding is on the table of the saw, and the bottom edge of the molding is against the fence. Then make your 45-degree cut. Don't get confused when cutting these angles--with an inside corner, the top of the molding is the shorter side of the cut.
- Highlight and define. With a pencil, highlight the front edge of the crown so that you have a clearly defined edge. If properly coped, this pencil line will just barely show when you are finished.
- Coping style. With your coping saw, start cutting along the pencil line, with the blade angled back, following the contour of the molding. Because of the angles involved in crown molding, you have to angle the saw severely; otherwise, the wood will bump into the other piece of molding.
- How to cut. Remove wood as close to the pencil line as possible, but never cut into it. You probably will have to make several cuts from different angles to get the profile cut out. Remember, you are only concerned with getting the visible edge smooth--the back of the wood can be chopped mercilessly, as it will not show.
- Finishing. Use your files to remove the last bits of material, test-fitting the two pieces of molding as you work to identify trouble spots. Use the sandpaper for final smoothing of the edge.
A coping joint takes a little longer than simply chopping the two pieces of molding at 45 degrees and sticking them together in a mitered joint, but the result is a much firmer, more contiguous joint.
Worried about it taking too much time? Learn to cope with it.
About The Author
Jim Mallery, a semi-retired journalist and onetime registered contractor, has extensive experience remodeling, repairing and rebuilding homes.
