It’s quite tricky to know how to cut skirting board with hand saw, but brushing up on a few skills and techniques makes it an enjoyable DIY project. There are many ways of cutting a skirting board. Professionals use a multi-cutter, with a varied range of blades. But for DIY enthusiasts, a typically handy and widely available tool to cut a skirting board is the hand saw. Additional materials you will need are sandpaper, a miter box, a coping saw, a planer, and a pencil and ruler to take measurements. Here are some steps you can follow on how to cut skirting board with hand saw.
Cutting Eternal Corners
If you are fitting skirting boards on an external corner or the corner that a protruding wall makes, here are steps on how to cut skirting board with hand saw.
- The first step is to measure the length of the skirting board. Set the skirting board against the wall. Using a pencil and ruler, mark the spot on the board where the wall’s corner falls.
- Next, identify which of your skirting board sits to the left or to the right of the wall’s corner. If your skirting board is on the left side of the wall’s corner, mark it with an arrow pointing to the left. In the same way, if your board sits to the right of the corner of the wall, draw an arrow pointing to the right. This helps ensure that the corners fit seamlessly together.
- To guide your hand saw to cut at precise angles, use a miter box. Attach the miter box to a stable surface, like a workbench—drill screws into the miter box’s holes. The screws need to be longer than the miter box by at least one centimeter so that these can go all the way through your workbench.
- Now with the miter box in place, position your skirting board in the miter box. Be sure to make the front of the skirting face you, and that the lines that you marked on the wood are visible to you. These lines will guide you through cutting straight through the board. Also, the part of the board that you need to cut must also be right in the middle of the miter box.
- The next step is to insert the hand saw into that slot in the miter box, which follows the angle that you need to cut. For example, if the arrow that you marked on your skirting board is to the left, position your hand saw on the slot that is towards the left, and vice versa. Allow these slots in the miter box to guide you through cutting towards your intended direction or angle. Make sure that the hand saw touches the surface of your skirting board.
- With one hand holding the skirting board firmly in place, and your other hand holding the saw that is now in your desired slot in the miter box, begin to cut the skirting board. Make long cutting strokes by making a sawing motion, back and forth through the skirting board. Push the hand saw back and forth slowly until you work your way through the board’s length. A trick is to keep your elbows closer to the body when sawing. Once done, take out the cut pieces of wood from the miter box.
- Smoothen the surface of the cut parts of the skirting board using sandpaper. With the gritty side of your sandpaper, rub the rough, splintered surface of the cut skirting board until this is evened out. This will take about ten seconds.
- Finally, put the skirting board against the wall, ensuring that the surfaces seamlessly touch each other. If the corners do not fit evenly, use a planer to shave excess wood bit by bit until the boards match and form a perfect corner.
Cutting Internal Corners
If your skirting boards are for recessed or joining walls, you need to learn these steps on how to cut skirting board with hand saw for internal corners.
- Start by pushing the skirting boards into the internal corner to be perpendicular to each other. The first board that you push into the wall’s corner is your bottom board, while the second piece, which hits the bottom board instead of the wall’s corner, is called your top board.
- If your skirting board has a curved surface, trace the top board’s curved profile, or your second piece, onto the bottom board. Use a pencil to trace this shape.
- Using a coping saw, slice the bottom board following the shape that you traced from the top board’s profile.
- Now fit the skirting boards together, this time by pushing the top board into the corner of the wall first, followed by the bottom board to form a perpendicular angle. The two skirting boards ought to fit together nicely. If the joint that these boards make fit perfectly against the corner, and the top board’s surface using sandpaper to remove splinters and bumps. Now, you know how to cut skirting board with hand saw.
Conclusion
How to cut skirting board with hand saw is not rocket science; it only takes the right techniques. Basically, you just need to check if you are cutting external corners or internal corners to ensure that your skirting boards will join seamlessly together. Brushing up your skills and techniques will make your DIY projects enjoyable. Here’s how to learn more about hand saws.