Mitering Baseboards for Dummy Carpenters

cutting baseboard on miter saw

We can't say it often enough, but one of the first things our research staffers look for when evaluating a DotD candidate is clear evidence that writers have no idea what they're talking about. Today's nominee tripped one of the team's bull detectors right away. Why? because Kevin Ann Reinhart started out with an introduction that had nothing to do with the question. We don't think that someone at Hunker.com telling us "How Big of a Miter Saw Cuts 6-Inch Baseboards" would not start out by telling us,

"A miter saw is the tool of preference for making angled cuts in baseboards. The size of saw required depends on the width and thickness of the baseboard stock that you are installing. Since no wall is perfectly squared with its intersecting counterpart, the ability to make precisely angled cuts is key to achieving a finished, professional look devoid of annoying gaps. Choosing the correct tool will also depend on your budget and where and how often the 6-inch baseboard application will be used."

While we're aware that Reinhart was forced to start with a 75- to 100-word introduction, anyone actually familiar with miter saws wouldn't need the prettification she used. An experienced power tool user would open by explaining that the design of a miter saw places inherent limits on saw capacity. Kevin Ann never got around to that, though. No, instead she merely chewed up and regurgitated a bunch of factoids unrelated to her task. Kevin started out by telling her readers about miter boxes – the manual kind, with a hand saw¹. These, she says in a rather puzzling conclusion,

"The traditional miter box with accompanying handsaw is not designed to deal with 6-inch wide baseboard stock. The wood will not fit in the box if it is stood up against the fence, and many hand miter boxes are not wide enough to accommodate nested 6-inch boards laid flat within the box."

Kevin's apparently unaware that the higher-quality molded plastic miter boxes allow for a diagonal cut of boards lying flat in the base of the box. She's also apparently unaware that few people use a hand miter box for anything larger than quarter-round. Reinhart then moved on to what the OQ probably wanted to know, and that is the cutting capacity of power miter boxes. That's where we learn that,

"Powered compound miter saws are available in 8-1/2 inch, 10-inch and 12-inch models. For precise cuts, a 6-inch baseboard needs to be laid flat in an 8-1/2 inch saw to slice off a partial degree. The larger 10- and 12-inch models allow the 6-inch board to rest upright against the miter fence. Visualizing a cut is therefore easier since this is the same orientation in which you will subsequently attach the baseboard to the wall."

In the first place, we're not certain what it means to "slice off a partial degree." Second, we doubt anyone who finds a need to shell out more than $400 for a miter saw needs help "Visualizing a cut." Reinhart's ignorance of the tool is most clearly displayed in her next statement:

"The 10- and 12-inch compound miter saws have larger scales [sic] that make precision cuts easier to accomplish than the smaller-scaled 8-1/2 inch models."

Setting up a miter saw for a precise cut is a function of its design, not its "scale." But, then, it's pretty obvious that Kevin Ann doesn't know the difference between 8½-, 10-, and 12-inch saws. That's the blade diameter, dummy! Reinhart went on to blather about "add-ons," a list she scraped almost word for word from a Popular Mechanics article. Our candidate did not know the difference between miter saw sizes, never used the word "capacity," seemed totally unaware of what controls the capacity of a miter saw (blade diameter, mostly), did not seem to know what "compound" entails in a "compound miter saw," never used the word "bevel," and in general merely reworded some content she found somewhere. Given all that ignorance, she still wrote an article about miter saws. Is it any wonder she's our Dumbass of the Day? We didn't think so.

¹ Usually a back saw.

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