Coping Saws for Dummies

Using a coping saw on crown molding

It's often small details that trip up freelancers when they're faking it. If you actually know something about the topic, you read along and suddenly think to yourself, "Wait: did he actually say that?!" Today's example of freelance misinformation comes from the nice people over at HubPages.com, where a member calling himself (herself? itself? who knows?) wowleveler regaled readers with an article titled "How to Use the Coping Saw."¹ 

At first glance, it looks like the World of Warcraft fan may have actually seen a coping saw somewhere, sometime. His/her/its general description and examples of using a coping saw are accurate, although that information is readily available just about anywhere. It's when he started talking about a project that he tripped himself up:

"Before you start making your own crown molding and other large projects, it is best to start small. Try to trace the letters of your name (or your children / grandchildren's), on a 2 × 4 block of wood (or some scrap in your shop). Use a rough saw of choice (I like my band saw for this) to get the basic shape of the letters right, then small holes in the letters that are inside (like "O" and "A"' s above)."

Never mind that wowleveler didn't know how to pluralize O and A or that he referred to the letters "above" even though there's no image to refer to: concentrate on the instructions. Yeah, there you go: "Try to trace the letters ... on a 2 × 4 block of wood..."  A 2-by-4? Is he kidding? A standard coping saw blade is about five inches long and a quarter of an inch wide, and he wants me to cut 2-by lumber with it? Or even better, "Before you start making your own crown molding..."? You don't make crown molding with a coping saw, you use a coping saw to install crown molding.

Yep, there you go: another Dumbass of the Day, caught pretending to share knowledge when he's really only trying to get paid for rewording information borrowed from someone else, someone who does know what he's talking about.

¹ The post has been deleted, but you can still see it using archive.org's Wayback machine. Its URL was   https://wowleveler.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Use-the-Coping-Saw

copyright © 2015-2022 scmrak

SE - HAND TOOLS