Monday 24 February 2014

Scribing Oak Skirting

I had to do some fairly difficult oak skirting last week. It had to be scribed both ways, into the floor and the wall by as much as an inch in places.
Showing how bad some of the walls were
With something like this I try to limit myself to being allowed to make three sets of cuts on each piece. One for the floor, one for the wall and then one just to make it a little tighter, all marked with a pair of compasses then cut with either a jigsaw or the electric plane and finished off by hand..
I can get it pretty tight in those cuts.
The scribe cut for the floor - a slight bow in it I'm sure you'd agree!

A bend in this wall made it really difficult as oak doesn't like to bend!
 The customer was really pleased with the result and it now means that the room can be finished. The pictures don't really show just how far out the floor was!

4 comments:

  1. Over here no one would use oak for baseboards, usually its Eastern White Pine. But as of late we tend to go with poplar as the availability of clear knot free pine has become more limited. Rarely is it finished clear, so now a days lots of folks especially in new construction use the finger jointed pre-primed stuff or even MDF.

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    1. I've used a lot of MDF in the past (I thought it was baned in the US?) and pine. The pine is normally covered in knots but it's much easier to work than oak (as I'm sure you know). When I was an aprentice all I ever used to fit or work with was oak! So I guess from your comment you guys call them baseboards and not skirtings?

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    2. Yes baseboards or mopboards is what we cal them here. We use lots of MDF here. Especially new construction projects where they are trying to save every penny and the architect specs it that way. We get all sorts of mouldings in the stuff even hollow core doors made out of it. I don't much care for it as it is heavy, very dusty when cutting and way to mushy so it just doesn't hold out as well as wood. The 3/4 inch thick sheets works OK for work bench tops if you soak it with epoxy.

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  2. Old houses can make for tough work.

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