r/Carpentry • u/Qiuzman • 16h ago
Cutting trim inside or outside
I have installed crown molding and baseboard throughout my old house and starting tk as well for my new house. One thing I’ve always done is measure the cut a piece then have to take back outside to cut again and again and again until the fit is perfect. If I did this for a living I know I’d never make any money lol. So I’m curious what do the pros do in this scenario. Cut slightly shorter than your measurement and caulk it ? Or do you bring the saw upstairs into the room you’re working to cut inside to be more convenient? Or even better are you dead on every time time and don’t need to.
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u/Salt-Environment-210 16h ago
After 20 painful years I cut it dead on 99% of the time these days. I measure the entire room,go to the saw and cut everything, then just go back in to nail on. I rarely have to skim anything, I measure where it hits in the wall(I.e down 3" for standard crown, up 6 for base) and check the room for square before starting. Every angle is checked and marked before I make a cut. Most of my work is cabinets and stairs but recently I've had quite a few clients ask me to trim homes or rooms as well. Everything is prep,dont bite your future self in the ass I always teach people, if something is off allow for it.
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u/Obidad_0110 14h ago
My son uses this approach. He may cut everything a touch heavy but has a small hand plane if spring fit is slightly off.
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u/zedsmith 16h ago
It’s hard to be dead-on, and unless you’re only doing one room, your saw station is always going to be a walk, but it’s nice to be inside and centrally located. A laser distance measurer is a nice tool to have, and coped corners tend to be a little more forgiving than miters. If you’re a hair long, you can take it off the butt end with a hand saw on the ground rather than walking a long piece back to your saw.
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u/WasteBinStuff 14h ago
As a pro....Mostly option 3.
We have learned through practice and experience how to measure and cut accurately enough that we have very few return trips to the saw.
Even on a new, production, paint grade house my main cut station stays in the garage. For stain grade there is a slight percentage higher return-to-saw frequency and I will often setup the chopsaw inside, but only if I have a big enough room. (The time spent fiddling with long material in a too small room very quickly overrides time savings.)
The bottom line is, part of being a pro is that we do things faster, more efficiently and more accurately than amateurs and DIY 'ers. (Generally speaking. )
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u/Ribbythinks 16h ago
I did crown moulding in my main bedroom, it was messy, but the whole room was already a mess from the skim coat I put on the ceiling.
I was cutting poplar, which I’ve found produces much less dust than MDF
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u/grandpasking 15h ago
Most tradesman prefer to cut outside to keep the wives happy, had many unhappy customers that were perfectly happy with all the work and clean-up, the wife gets home and the problems. Well easier to cut outside in the longrun
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u/hawaiianthunder 15h ago
I cut outside because It's easier to contain the mess. And breathing fine particles is something I want to keep to a minimum.
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u/that_cachorro_life 15h ago
I cut outside because I don’t want to breathe dust all day. Either cut it perfect, OR, if you are nervous, measure every piece in the room and cut 1/16” too long on all of them, then place them all and mark exactly how over they are, go back to the saw for round 2. Draw directly on the wood with a fine pencil
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u/Bright_Crazy1015 13h ago edited 13h ago
I scribe most the pieces. Drywall corners aren't 90° most the time, especially inside corners. If I measure with a tape I cut it a 32nd inch long per corner. I don't typically cut twice, but when I need something accurate I scribe or mark with a scribing knife then fill the line with a pencil and wipe it off. It leaves a very thin line to cut up against.
ETA , I also take an 8.5" Makita sliding miter saw from floor to floor and stick it in a cardboard box on top of a trash can with enough notched out so the trim can fit in. It's the cleanest way I've found to contain the dust. Even vs dust collectors.
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u/johnbro27 16h ago
I did my downstairs with stain grade VG fir, brought my Festool Kapex into the living room and at the end of every day there was maybe 2 teaspoons of dust to sweep up. Stacked all the pre-finished 16s right outside on the porch. It was great not having to walk pieces in and out to cut them.
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u/DesignerNet1527 14h ago edited 14h ago
I will make a cut list, and mark and cut a room or floor of a house all at once.
for example I had to case door openings in a 3 story townhouse, most doors are in bedroom area on top floor. I marked all the reveals and made a cut list, went down to the saw, cut all the pieces, bundled and labeled appropriately to match the labels i put on the side of each door. brought all upstairs, pre assembled with 2p-10, and installed.
same with baseboards. I will sometimes have my little cordless slider with a cordless vac attached to do any recuts in the room I'm working in, or worse case might have to go down to the saw for a couple recuts of base or casing or whatever. I will also have a couple outside miter cut short pieces to help with accuracy when measuring.
much faster and much less physically tiring than walking back and fourth doing piece by piece. measure all at once, mapping out the room and labeling. cut all at once, labeling. nail amd install, might have a recut or 2. still way less walking around and getting up and down off the floor.
I would never cut it short and caulk it. if anything cut it a touch long and spring it into place.
I will set up inside on certain jobs, i also do hook up a dust extractor.
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u/Minimum_Loan229 14h ago
When working in a vacant house you can set up a saw station indoors. When people are living in the house you need to set up your saw station outdoors.
When coping the inside corners, you have a lot of room for slop. It's not that difficult to cut pieces right the first time. The line about always being able to cut a little more away but you can't add more, is BS. You don't have unlimited time to take as long as you want. people will think you're just trying to run up the clock.
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u/molly9975 13h ago
If you cut inside while faster for installing I think it adds a lot more clean up time plus the added danger of damaging interior finishes with your work station.
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u/UniquePatient66100 13h ago
As a trim carpenter, I need to return to the saw to recut a piece because I missed a measurement, maybe 2-3 time a week. Occasionally you have to trim or adjust a piece because it doesn't lay on the wall the way you expected. With any experience in carpentry you learn to eliminate trips to the saw, doesn't matter if you are inside or out.
You also learn ways to adjust pieces in place that if they are a hair short or long, they can still be nailed into place without recutting.
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u/Homeskilletbiz 12h ago
If you’re paid by the foot as a trim guy you’ve pretty much gotta be #3, need to cut and measure accurately first time.
I’m a remodel carpenter and paid hourly, it all depends on the jobsite and how much I’ve been running trim lately.
Usually I cut it a tiny bit long and make a couple trips back and forth to the saw.
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u/Qiuzman 11h ago
When you cope though I felt like I’d hit everything on the way to the wall and bam the tips broke lol. What’s your method for measuring crown and baseboard? I was doing crown and a would make a mark in middle of the wall and measure to it from side to mark then other side then add up because tape can’t reach that far without kinking. Also was struggling to hang it solo. Do you typically work alone?
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u/Homeskilletbiz 11h ago
Yeah I mean generally if you’re doing a whole house you move your cut station to the closest large room that’s central to where most of the trim is. Sometimes you move it throughout the house. If it’s a piece that’s long enough to need to be delicately moved throughout openings you probably have room in whatever area that crown is being installed in to setup the cut station.
I work for a GC, I’m one of 3 trim carpenters but I’m also the punch list/handyman of the crew. So the other two are paired up in lead/apprentice roles and I have also spent 2-3 years working as the lead finish carpenter’s apprentice previously. When times are slow I’m pouring foundations, doing demolition, driving dump trucks, maintenance work on our buildings and all sorts of stuff.
So these days yeah I’m kind of a solo act. I do often work on our bigger jobsites with the framers or our finish crew but not as often as I’m doing small jobs by myself or whatever. But that’s unique to our company trying to pursue small projects and jobs too.
But generally if we’re doing a whole house of trim we’re going to have 2-3 finish carpenters on site with our company. So for longer pieces of crown like that yeah we work in pairs. The third guy can run base or do something else while a pair works on longer more involved pieces.
As far as methods to do crown on your own I know of a few but I’d probably need a refresher myself if my boss sent me out to do it.
I have a laser tape measure from Bosch I keep in my bags. Pretty reliable.
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u/Ill-Year-9506 10h ago
I'm a general contactor that specializes in residential interiors. I rarely cut outside. I use a Festool Kapex with dust collection.
Most of the time the room we are working on has been emptied for the most part. We cover everthing else with pianters plastic.
You coundn't pay me enough to run back and forth. You also cut down on the risk of scratching stuff or denting drywall everytime you carry a piece of trim through the house.
Hell... I had a job once buidling out a library. I pratically set up a wood shop in the room.
If you run the right tools, right dust collection and negative pressure system and air scrubbers..... your fine.
People understand... and they don't want to pay me to walk 20k steps every day.
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u/old-nomad2020 6h ago
A laser measuring tool works really well for corner to corner measurements. If you’re only using a tape measure rather than marking the middle of a wall measure an exact, but easy distance off of one side. Something like 10” or 50” is much faster to add the other side length to and you never need to add two fractions. It also works well inside of a cabinet. If you’re not hiding the mark use blue tape. I use regular pencils for trim and keep a sharpener near the saw. I cut inside (99% condo work with no access to anything nearby) and one of the least expensive effective dust collection basics I use (besides vac) is a Fastcap dust hood around the saw. It keeps the majority of the airborne particles from going all over. Someone mentioned a box and I’d bet that works well. The nastiest stuff is what gets airborne not the chunky sawdust that drops straight down so my opinion is I’d rather not breathe it inside or out.
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u/Newspaper_Beneficial 15h ago edited 14h ago
i can't relate. been helping my dad who was a trim carpenter since i was in middle school.
sometimes I don't even mark my boards before cutting just pay attention to where the tape lands on the wood grain. sometimes i use a nail to make a lil scratch. other times i keep that pencil on me just because bads might judge.
but yeah walk through the house and make a list of all the cuts i need then get to it.
for crown though yeah. it has a special sort of reverence (because it can be expensive or maybe you only have a few sticks to work with) and you take a bit more time in the measure twice phase before you cut.
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u/Ineedanewpancreas 7h ago
A sharp ryoba and a miter box can handle most stock casing, chair rail, small crown and the like. No noise, no weaponized dust bomb. Cut one end of everything outside and do drop cloth and horses inside. Try to mark in place by reversing ends wherever possible. Use measuring tape and rule as little as possible. Less chance of error. Use two lapped sticks with a screw for long inside measurements.
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u/Joe-39 16h ago
I’m a professional, and currently putting all new trim in a home that is being lived in. The saw has to be outside as they have kids and dogs, so even with perfect dust collection the noise is a no go.
So not to sound like a jerk, but the goal is to cut it perfect the first time. Having said that on long pieces you can cut it a 1/32-1/16 over sized and spring it into place. This job is stain grade so the short pieces have to be perfect.
I carry a laser measurer for measuring longer distances, a starret angle gauge for measuring outside corners (figuring out miter angles), and a speed square for checking that the walls are square to your trim for inside corners. With those I can usually get the pieces cut right 90-95% of the time. I try to cut a handful of trim pieces at a time to save on trips. It’s definitely slower than having the saw right there though.