Some Basic Woodwork Skills

Step 3 Hand Cut Mitres

Mitres are very easy to screw up. They're certainly much easier if you have a proper mitre saw or chopsaw, but those tools are fairly expensive and take up a lot of space. If you're careful, you can manage perfectly acceptable mitre joints with hand tools.

I'm using the example of a 45 degree mitre here because it's more commonly needed and much more straightforward than odder angles, in that a square is already set up to quickly mark 90 and 45 degrees.

So, working from the corners of a square ended piece of wood, mark your 45 degree lines and join them with a 90 degree one. Bear in mind that only the 45 degree lines will really tell you exactly where to cut, the 90 degree line will just help you make sure you're cutting straight between the 45 degree ones. It's unlikely that it will align perfectly with where the cut needs to be. However, the corner of the piece of wood will reliably tell you if you're cutting straight down or not.

Just like with your thumb on a square cut, use a couple of fingers to keep the saw blade aligned on the top 45 degree line while cutting the first groove.

Once the first part of the cut is in place, work the saw carefully down the back at the corner (pic 4). Then run it down the front, parallel to the 90 degree line. Take care, cut slowly, and you'll get a near perfect 45 degree cut.

Mitre joints are not absolutely necessary to join pieces of wood at right angles, but they're certainly a lot prettier than just butting pieces up to each other.